WeeklyUpdates/2009-04-06

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Development Updates

Branch work: Firefox 3.0.x / Thunderbird 2.0.0.x

• Firefox 3.0.9
  • Handed off to build today
  • On track for release on April 21
• Firefox 3.0.10
  • Opening tree this Tuesday for approved checkins
  • Please work on your blockers

Gecko 1.9.1

• Beta 4 progress: JS has 11 bugs blocking the last planned beta, and five of those 11 have patches or has a potential fix. At this rate we should be able to hit the new freeze date (next bullet). Overall, there are 24 remaining JS blockers.
• Code freeze for beta 4 is now Wednesday April 15th.
• I mentioned this last week, but it's still happening and it's important that people participate: We're in the middle of planning new features and work items for future releases.
  • Each team has created a list and prioritized possible major work items for the next release.
  • There's several ongoing dev.planning discussions of the work lists for each of the groups. Links to threads: Javascript, GFX, Layout, and Content.
  • For overall Platform planning, see this wiki page.
  • Next steps are to discuss the overall plan for what the next Gecko release will look like, not just features, but duration and timing.
• Blocker Status:
  • 12 final blocker bugs left in content. (9 last time)
  • 3 GFX final blockers. (Last week: 4)
  • 10 Layout final blockers. Six have patches. (Last week: 11)
  • 2 SVG final blockers.
  • JS with 24 blockers. (Last week: 37)
• Triage needed. 22 (I updated this number this time!) noms are in the queue right now.
• For weekly engineering meeting notes and other info see the Platform page.
• 70 total 1.9.1 blockers (last week: 88).

Firefox 3.5

Firefox Front End Work

• 6 blockers left, only 2 of which are complicated
• some likely UI opportunistic updates for Beta 4
  • updated privacy preferences pane bug 462041 (needs review)
  • updated clear recent history dialog bug 480169 (needs review)
  • restoring only visible tabs first upon session restore bug 480148 (landed)
  • updates/fixes to PFS so plugin installers can be executed bug 435788 (landed)
  • new tab experience - under evaluation, would require some string changes

Beta 3

• getting great feedback from community
• around 500,000 users daily
• most add-ons now compatible

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4

• SCHEDULE CHANGE
  • we are string frozen
  • code freeze Wednesday April 15th
  • release late in week of April 20th

TB 3

• 3.0b3 work continues

IT

• Lots of database work
  • SUMO moved to separate cluster
  • Added slaves to AMO/Bugzilla/Bouncer
  • Built second "b" level cluster, moved databases around
• Upcoming hardware (going online this week)
  • Xserve for SeaMonkey (bug 464325) & AMO (bug 483018)
  • Four new ESX hosts for RelEng

Release Engineering

• TryServer backlog cleared [1] [2]
• Please file bugs when you see a service down
  • Try server backlog, jobs waiting 24hours to start
  • Try server waterfall not up for 4 days after iscsi failure
• Downtime coming this week for ESX host migrations; details being worked out

QA

Test Execution

• Mozmill 1.1 Testday on 4/10
• QA Meetup in Mountain View on Wed, 4/22
  • If you can attend, please add yourself to the Participants list!
• Bug Verifications last week
  • 107 1.9.1+Trunk bugs verified (core/firefox/toolkit)
  • 69 1.9.1 bugs verified

Web Dev Testing, Metrics, Accessibility, Localization, Community

• Marcia delivered a keynote speech entitled "Mozilla: Under the Hood" to 150 attendees at the ICST 2009 International Conference
• Tomcat is leading an idea to host meetups

Test Development

• Completed Windows Mobile testplan
• Working on testing interruptible reflow
• Added bunches of crashtests for old security bugs to be sure they don't regress

Security

• No updates this week

Marketing/PR

General

• Quarterly Survey Update
  • Ran the survey with 3.07 release with more than 15K responses.
  • The "Customer Satisfaction Rating" came in at 82%
  • Took a deeper look at all of the results for the past few quarters and we are concerned about the validity of our findings.
    • We feel like most of the respondents are long-term Firefox users, which means that our pool of respondents is probably more biased, which makes us question the accuracy of our numbers.
    • We are talking with consultants to see how we can improve our methodology and findings
    • Read more here:http://livetolaugh85.blogspot.com/2009/03/q1-2009-survey-results.html
    • And here: http://livetolaugh85.blogspot.com/2009/03/looking-at-q1-2009-survey-results-time.html
• All.html Redesign test and results
  • Tested four designs (including the 'old' design to see which design improved user experience and downloads the most
  • Winner was All-3.html (tweaked version of the 'old page')
    • Improved downloads by .89%
    • Improved UE by 8%
    • Already implemented the change, so All-3.html is now the 'new' All.html page.
    • Plans to continue tweaking and testing the page are in the works.
    • Read more here:http://livetolaugh85.blogspot.com/2009/04/results-of-allhtml-test.html
• Spread Firefox:
  • Launching tomorrow, April 7th. Expect downtime starting at approximately 8:00 a.m. PDT.
  • Join us for a brownbag at 2:00 PDT today for a walk through of the site on Air Mozilla with guest stars Alex Buchanan, Krupa Raj and Stephen Donner.
  • Help test the affiliates now tracking by clicking on this affiliate button and downloading Firefox.
• Next Community Marketing call is this Wednesday, April 8th, at 10am PDT. Dial-in Info: +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#. Or you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#. For those that can't make the call or want to participate online, join us in #marketing on irc.mozilla.org.

PR

• Mozilla launches new designs for Personas
• Firefox market share continues to rise
• CNET looks at Fennec at CTIA
• LA Times on Ubiquity
• Firefox.next in the news
• Linux Link Web Radio discusses Ogg Theora and HTML 5 video in Firefox 3.5

Events

• Congrats to Marcia Knous for her keynote at the IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, ICST 2009.
• JSConf, April 24 - 25, 2009, Washington, D.C.: Mozilla is signed up sponsor. John Resig and Kevin Dangoor are speaking!

Support

• No updates this week.

Metrics

• Market Share
  • Firefox passed 50% in two more regions -- Slovakia and the Philippines
  • Firefox became the #1 browser in Poland
• Firefox Installer Feedback
  • Three part blog series walking through our recent initiative. Please comment on possible product/marketing changes.
    • Part I
    • Part II
    • Part III

Evangelism

• No updates this week.

Labs

• See Aza's TaskFox prototype at http://azarask.in/aza/TaskFox/ for an interactive demo of how ubiquity features might be incorporated into the AwesomeBar without breaking users' existing AwesomeBar use habits.

Developer Tools

No update this week

Add-ons

5.0.4 Release this week

• Experimental add-ons no longer require login to install
• Public Stats Dashboard
• Remove old developer dashboard
• Improved registration flow
• Adding blog, contact, about links to footer (woo!)
• Editor queue now sorted as a FIFO queue, so we'll be able to see how long add-ons are in the review queue so we can react appropriately

Compatibility update

• 82% compatible with Fx3.1
• 66% compatibility with 3.1b3

Review queue update

• 230 editor reviews last week
• 152 accepted
  • 41 nominations
  • 111 file updates

Webdev

• Personas site launched
• SUMO 1.0 launched, 1.0.1 to go out tomorrow
• AMO 5.0.4 code freeze is today, push on Thursday
• New Socorro hardware arrived and the team testing/configuring it this week
• SUMO database was successfully migrated to dedicated hardware (thank you IT!)
• New SFX will launch this week (stage might give you a cert error, just fyi)

L10n

• No updates worth announcing to everyone
• Slow, continuous work by localizers on Firefox 3.5 beta 4
  • Updates to each locale are on the dashboard.

Foundation Updates

• The Mozilla Education / Creative Commons Open|Web|Content|Education online course is now underway; session two will be later this week. Presentations and more will be posted soon.
• As an outgrowth of the Mozilla Education program we've been compiling information about online presentation systems (PDF). If you have information on this topic you think we'd be interested in, please contact Frank.
• Work on the www.mozilla.org redesign is proceeding apace, including feedback on the round 2 designs and a planned change from CVS to Subversion for the site repository.
• We're looking for more volunteers to help with www.mozilla.org. If you're new to all this, check out our new guide to how to work with the site; for the latest doings check out the planning meeting notes.
• We approved a CA request from TC TrustCenter (bug 392024).
• This coming week: Foundation team is participating in a virtual work week.