WeeklyUpdates/2008-06-09

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Meeting Details

• 1:00pm Pacific time (20:00 UTC until November 2, 2008)
• Mozilla HQ, 1st floor conference table
• +1 650 903 0800 x91 Conf# 8600 (US/International)
• +1 416 848 3114 x91 Conf# 8600 (Canada)
• +1 800 707 2533 (pin 369) Conf# 8600 (US Toll Free)
• join irc.mozilla.org #staffmeeting for backchannel

note: all participants are muted automatically; if you want to talk, press *1 to un-mute yourself

Friends of the Tree

(Asa) I'd like to nominate Melissa Shapiro for the awesome job she, the PR team, and the spokespeople did putting together the Firefox 3 press tour. In all of my time at Mozilla, I've never seen such an amazing and effective press effort and that includes the launches of Mozilla 1.0 and Firefox 1.0. Great job, Melissa!! and everyone else involved.

Development Updates

Tb Major Update / Fx 2.0.0.15 / TB 2.0.0.15

We had a window of opportunity last week to do a final major update for Thunderbird 1.5.0.14 users. QA is ahead of schedule and expects to finish testing and release later today. Follow along on the wiki.

Firefox 2.0.0.15 is currently scheduled to hand over to build today. However, given the lack of tinderbox coverage (and nightlies) over the weekend, and given that we have a couple more patches we want to land before freezing, the release will probably be delayed a day, possibly two. We're hoping to hand over to build tomorrow afternoon.

Finally, last week while thinking through Thunderbird Major Update and Firefox 2.0.0.15, we scheduled Thunderbird 2.0.0.15. There are certain restraints we have in scheduling it, so it's currently targeted for a week after Firefox 2.0.0.15. Tb20015 will need a larger testing cycle so we might delay a further couple of days.

TB 3

No updates this week.

Gecko 1.9.1

• Planning, triage, etc.

Mobile

• UI work in progress
• Prototype demo of spatial navigation (not currently part of Fennec)

IT

• Storage issue for build VMs
  • Been working on it for some time, netapp thinks they have a solid solution. In the process of implementing it, but takes a lot of time as we have to re-build LUNs, which means moving all VMs to another storage array.
  • Huge thanks to RelEng (and everyone else) for their patience. First priority is to get crazyhorse, production-pacifica-vm and production-prometheus-vm - rest set by build
• Working with webdev to get SUMO perf acceptable for launch - planning on enabling this week
• GeoDNS for releases, mozilla.com, mozilla.org is live!
• mysql5 migrations continue - to be completed this month

Release Engineering

• All trees remain closed while VM NetApp woes continue bug 435134
  • After VMs are stable, it will take time to bring up all build, unittest, talos machines again.
• TB major update
• mozilla-central checkins went smoothly last week, so no more need for metered checkins.
• Central inventory list and new support docs coming together. This cleans up various machine lists, as well as existing support docs.

QA

Firefox/Thunderbird 2.0.0.x [ss-project lead, abillings-QA lead]

• Completed betatest testing for TBird MU to 2.0.0.14. See Test Plan.
• Worked with developers to get more patches in for FFx 2.0.0.15. Got ~30 bugs fixed in the week!! See Test Plan [ss]

Firefox 3 [tchung-QA lead]

• Completed RC2 testing including the live testing for the Wednesday release.
• Investigating the Mac 10.5.3 specific issue (bug 436575).
• Monitoring feedback on Newsgroups, Hendrix, Forums, etc. [tomcat, marcia, others]
  • 4 bugs filed from Hendrix feedback [marcia]
• Another very good test day on Friday with 354 test cases executed and lots of interaction in the IRC channel. See results.
• Monitoring top crashes [ss]
• 6 new leak bugs found [tomcat]

Webdev testing - [stephend]

• Download Day - Continued executing against test plan. Work still on-going for our next two phases--day of and day after
• Mozilla.com - Starting testing the "Get Personal" page. Filed 11 bugs

Test Development and Automation

• Created patches for integration of the externally developed test suites for Prototype and JQuery. Working on the Dojo (bug 424818) test suite and Scriptaculous (bug 424816). [harthur, ctalbert, mw22]
  • Documented the process for integrating AJAX test suites into Mochitest
• Finished improving the known failure format for Sisyphus (JS test suite framework) to make it easier to maintain and troubleshoot. The standard details about the test and the machine configuration are captured in a reduced key for each. The test key consists of the branch, build type, test type while the machine key consists of the operating system, kernel, processor type and architecture, memory, speed and time zone. [bc]
• Gristmill - Finished all the javascript for js side callback infrastructure along with the initial work on Python end. Version for initial user testing should be ready in about a week! [mikeal, ctalbert]

Community

• Tomcat blogged about bug days.
• Accessibility: Put up a German translation of the article on WAI-ARIA on Wikipedia. This should help authors find ARIA-related info more easily.

Marketing/PR

PR

• Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal reviews FF3 View the in-print version here
• Walt Mossberg interviewed for Personal Technology segment on CNBC
• Mossberg also posts video clip and review on AllThingsD blog
• Internetnews.com visits Toronto office: Two articles so far on office space and FF3 performance
• Johnathan Nightingale on CNET's Security Bites podcast
• Brendan interviewed for eWeek Q&A
• John Lilly quoted in Forbes article on Adobe
• RC2 launches to kudos and accolades

Events

• OSCON & Black Hat planning underway.
• Next events triage call is on June 18th at 10 a.m. PDT. 650-903-0800, ext. 91, 248.
• Download Fests & Launch parties: Sending out party packs to party planners now.

Firefox 3 T-shirt

• Now live in the Mozilla Store
• Getting closer to a community store where other designs can be available for print. Stay tuned for more information.

Download Day

• Planning for the Download Day Party (a.k.a. Camp Firefox) is going great. Expect a bar-b-q and lots of games at the Mountain View office. Please let Ulili know if you want to volunteer.

Support

• Firefox Screencast Contest ending next Sunday
• Chris has worked a lot on updating the Knowledge Base for Firefox 3
• Brian Krausz is working on the SUMO site redesign
• Laura, Les, Jason and Nelson have been working on performance.

Evangelism

• Evangelism had successful meet-up in Toronto last week.
• Work on MDC on MindTouch Deki rollout continues to get even more tantalizingly close to complete.
  • Need to get it into SVN for localization of the skin to begin.
  • Otherwise it's about ready to go.
• Continuing the blogging drive towards Fx3. Blog more.
• Will be starting an experimental new blog to expand upon and support the about:mozilla newsletter, talk to Deb if you have questions.
• about:mozilla survey has been completed, will be going over the results shortly to see how we can improve the newsletter.
• Prepare for next about:addons newsletter
• Start work on extension and app tools
  • Scaffolding generation
  • Remote debugging / automation
• planning underway for an Air Mozilla Live on Download Day.
• lots of great new additions to planet. especially want to call out the meeting notes blog that bsmedberg's running. see planet blog for more info. http://blog.mozilla.com/planet/

Webdev, Add-ons, AMO

• SUMO master/slave db patch - will push today or tomorrow, in-product linked shortly afer
• Socorro - database analysis and worked on maintenance scripts - need to agree on an archiving/pruning policy that works for everyone
• Graph Server - met with Alice to discuss graph server future, follow-up this week
• AMO 3.4.3 was delayed last Thursday because of problems with search queries; they will be backed out and 3.4.3 will go out this Thursday instead
• MozParty critical updates last week, 2.2 milestone this week
• MDC - made repo for Deki, importing code today to unblock l10n
• ExtendFirefox 3 ready tomorrow
• Getting ready for Firefox 3
• Webdev on-site was a success

L10n

Firefox 3 - final preparations

• Pascal is wrapping up the over 1000 screen shots for the international product pages on the 46 locales that we are shipping, and finishing work on the mozilla-europe website for the launch. (For those interested in [updates]
• Stuff still to do:
  • translate release notes, (we are waiting for them)
  • create a news item/press release for all locales to publish the day we ship
  • create subtitled videos with translated subtitled
  • migrate old Mozilla Europe web pages into the new design, (pascal is almost done)

New locales to shout out!

• Locales we're shipping newly with Firefox 3 compared to Firefox 2 (..14) are Indonesian, Sinhala, Albanian, and Serbian (ordered by locale code). Georgian is shipping on the mac (subject to testing)
• Shout out to Danishka Navin in Sri Lanka (Sinhala) who has lined up some Press events and parties which he's getting some help from us on for this first release, and
• Hands up for Brian King who volunteered to help us ship Slovenian as Beta with the rest of the team (Matjaz Horvath and I believe Brian's wife helped out too)
• Bulgarian, unfortunately, hasn't made shipping :(

Community Development

• Seth, Gandalf, Jane, and Mic are working on a new community portal to help recruit and organize new international communities and localization teams, and build communities were they already exist. More on this to come, we're expecting to get lots of input from other folks in MoCo (and MoFo)

Firefox .next

• Axel is working on our approach regarding Mercurial

More details on what we're working on can always be found on our weekly meeting notes

Foundation Updates

• Grants and related activities
  • Alexander Surkov completed the intermediate milestone on his Mozilla Foundation-funded project to develop automated tests and regression fixes in the Mozilla accessibility module; so far he’s fixed 16 outstanding bugs (relating to crashes, regressions, and new features), as well as kept the accessibility API documentation up to date and worked on several other accessibility-related tasks.
  • Proceedings, slides, and an attendee list have now been published for the Foundations of Open Media Software 2008 workshop, for which the Mozilla Foundation was a sponsor.

• Legal issues
  • Frank approved a new privacy policy for mozilla.org sites and David posted it to www.mozilla.org. (Note that this is a separate policy from the privacy policy for mozilla.com sites, although it is based on that policy.)
• CAs and related issues
  • Gerv proposed some ideas as to how we might address the Debian weak key problem in a Mozilla context.
  • Kathleen Wilson is waiting on responses from CAs to close out her information-gathering work on their requests. Frank worked with her to identify a set of new requests to look at, including those for Trustis (bug 324126), Microsec Ltd (bug 370505), S-TRUST (bug 370627), and TC TrustCenter (bug 378882).
  • Frank put Entrust’s request to enable the Entrust Root Certification Authority for EV (bug 416544) into the first public comment period.

• Public communication
  • David continued work on a new www.mozilla.org design brief.
  • David also worked to help produce a new draft of the proposed Mozilla brochure and get model release forms signed for people whose photos appear in the brochure.

• Conferences
  • Zak continued preparing for the FOSSCoach event at OSCON.

• Other
  • Gerv worked on a project to calculate what percentage of the world’s Internet users have a localized version of Firefox available in their native language.
  • Gerv also worked on a project to compile a definitive domain suffix list, e.g., suffixes like "co.uk" that do not themselves refer to web sites (unlike, e.g., "co.org"); this list could be useful in contexts like handling of cookies, bookmarks, etc.

• Upcoming activities
  • The Mozilla Foundation will be a sponsor of the Personal Democracy Forum conference (June 23-24 in New York). Brian Behlendorf will be speaking, and Frank is also planning to attend if possible.
  • David, Gerv, and Zak will be attending OSCON (July 21-25 in Portland OR) and the Firefox Summit (July 29-31 in Whistler BC). Frank will be attending the Firefox Summit but not OSCON.

For more information please see the individual status reports from David, Frank, Gerv, and Zak.

Other Business

View Walt Mossberg Video