Community:SummerOfCode07:Brainstorming
Projects with a confirmed mentor and approved by the Mozilla project SoC administrator will be moved to Community:SummerOfCode07. Potential students should look at that page to find project ideas for which we'd like submissions.
Ground Rules
- Be specific. It's hard to understand the impact of, or the size of, vague proposals.
- Consider size. The student has eight weeks to design, code, test and document the proposal. It needs to fill, but not overfill, that time.
- Do your research. Support the idea with well-researched links.
- Don't morph other people's ideas. If you have a related idea, place it next to the existing one, or add a comment.
- Insert only your own name into the Mentor column, and then only if you are willing to take on the responsibility. Potential mentors sign up here.
Suggestion List
Last year's ideas: General, Thunderbird
Please use this format for submitting ideas.
| Title | Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc | Reporter | Mentor(s) | Comments |
| Internal streamed audio player for Firefox | This tool will play streamed audio files in firefox itself.( For example .ra files). Currently there must be external player (like real player) to play them. | maxaeran | When user clicks to play a streamed audio file, I am suggesting two methods to play it. First one is view the downloader and supply a Firefox’s “internal player” to play it. Second one is supply a player options within tool bar. I don’t know the possibility of this project. Please comment on this.
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| Extension for bookmarking and sharing scripts and extensions. | An extension tying into a web-based tool - a "del.icio.us for extensions" that also allows users to load their preferred extensions on any firefox browser in seconds. | Hivemya | JS coded extension w/ Open ID based accounts. SQL-based bookmark accounts directly linking to XPIs, with support for RSS. Is extension auto-installation possible through RSS/JSON subscription?
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| Firefox Tab Grouping | This feature will group the logically related tabs into related groups in Firefox into similar logical groups. | maxaeran | These groups can be made by user or it can be done automatically ( can be configured ) This proposal is too vague - Gerv | |
| JPEG 2000 | Add JPEG 2000 support to Mozilla | schapel | This could be done in Gecko itself or as an Imagelib extension as described in this Bugzilla comment Who is using this image format? What are the benefits? - Gerv No one at the moment. Because it is not currently supported in browsers, no one can use it. The benefit is that it could finally be used to some degree on the web. In other words, this will break the Catch-22 situation that currently exists. | |
| Allow the option of passing URL to helper application instead of downloading | See bug 225882 and bug 137339 | |||
| Metalink | A simple XML format for downloads (bug 331979) that lists mirrors and checksums, along with other useful metadata such as mirror location. Listing multiple URLs for a file increases availability while the checksums guarantee integrity and let downloads be repaired automatically. You can also filter downloads by location and other things. This is currently supported by over ten download managers. | Antini | ||
| Auto verify MD5/SHA1 hashes & PGP signatures | Automatically verifying MD5/SHA1 hashes, and optionally PGP signatures, of downloads. When you have downloaded a file, the download manager should try to download filename.md5, filename.sha, filename.asc and run the associated tool on the downloaded file to verify. Mark the entry as red or something in the download manager, and change the Open link to Info link, if the file did not verify. The Info link would open a page explaining what is wrong. It could perhaps have a open or preferably just delete file button. More difficult case would be to get the md5/sha1 signature if it is just embedded on the page where the download link is, but you could try some heuristics... (see also bug 292481). | HeikkiToivonen | PGP signature support would probably be easiest to build on top of Enigmail extension. See Metalink which supports associating MD5/SHA1 hashes and PGP signatures with files, and hash microformat for embedding within a page. Making three extra 404 hits on a website for each file downloaded is not a friendly thing to do (remember favicon.ico) - Gerv | |
| Add tabbed messages support for Thunderbird | Tabbed message reading is a highly demanded feature for Thunderbird and was on the planned feature list for version 2, but missed the bus and currently there is nobody working on it. Having to change the selected folder and/or message or opening a new window decreases productivity (increases waste of time). The new message pane should also be available for the tabbed view. See Bug 297379 and Bug 218999 | Archaeopteryx | There had been experimental builds by Myk in the past, so there are already some concepts. | |
| Internal audio | Allow Firefox to play WAV and AIFF audio files internally | schapel | This would probably need to be done following the WHAT-WG specs for the Audio() object - Gerv | |
| Memory Manager | Try to implement an internal memory manager. It should, for example, pre-allocate about 10% of system ram memory and try to operate within that memory. All calls to "free()" should release memory to this global memory pool and all calls to "malloc()" must allocate memory from this memory pool. If properly implemented, we can even reduce the overheads that may arise due to such an implementation. | Shyam | Shyam | A repost of the idea I posted Here (Firefox3 Brainstorming). Shyam: what qualifications do you have to mentor this project? - Gerv Grev: Replied to you by e-mail, and updated this wiki. Needless to say, I {can/would like} to get dirty in implementing this along with the student (In case of time constraints). Shyam: mentors need to have Mozilla community experience. A mentor is not a co-worker by another name :-) - Gerv |
| Image type finder | Implement an image type finder as described in this Bugzilla comment | schapel | ||
| Remote Cookies | Write a Firefox extension that stores/retrieves cookies on a server instead of in the local cookies.txt file. This will enable Firefox users to use the same cookies on all their computers and Firefox profiles. | Eric H. Jung | Eric H. Jung | Think of never having to authenticate against all of your websites again! If the student runs out of time, I will write code to keep the server contents encrypted and the SSL delivery/retrieval mechanism. Student needs to write the GUI and web progress listener hooks. Why just cookies? Why not full remote profiles? Do you have an algorithm for handling merge conflicts? How does this relate to Google Sync? - Gerv |
| Broken Add-on Detector | Let the user show a problem with the application which happens only with extensions enabled (fine in -safe-mode) and let the application search for the broken add-on/conflicting add-ons itself. | Archaeopteryx | The user recognizes a problem with the application (Fx, Tb, ...) which does not happen in safe mode, so a wizard will demand him to perform the steps to reproduce in normal mode and for comparing in safe mode and try to find the problematic extension by disabling an extension, starting the app and testing and continue with the next extension. Basically, I think about the red code (broken translations and so on) or obvious problems with doubling the event handler which let the tab control keys jump two tabs instead of one. Finally, the problematic extension(s) should be disabled and the user informed about this action. | |
| E-mail send/receive progress dialog | Write a Thunderbird extension that displays a dialog showing the progress of e-mail send/receive, showing the total number of mails to process, their size and a progress bar. | Bartosz Piec | Look at Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express for an example dialog What benefits does having such a dialog give us? - Gerv | |
| Bugzilla: Duplicate Bug Detection | Implement a system in Bugzilla that detects automatically that the user has likely entered a bug that is a duplicate of another bug, and display a list of bugs that this bug might be a duplicate of. | mkanat | Malone can do this now, although I'm not certain its code is actually open source. (Anyhow, GPL'ed code can't be included in Bugzilla, which uses the MPL.) | |
| Firefox automation & Tinderbox integration | Tinderbox integration of test automation framework (Linux Desktop Testing Project - LDTP) and Firefox GUI automation using LDTP. | Nagappan | Nagappan | Once the system is integrated with Tinderbox, then we can extend it to use for Thunderbird automation testing too. Nagappan: please tell us your Firefox/LDTP/Tinderbox-related experience on the Mentors page. - Gerv |
| "Search as you Type in addressbar" extension | This extension will search in local bookmark and History | jigar shah | jigar shah | Most of the time user want to find a page on a particular website; say mozilla developer, He goes to that website and browses through all available links. If when he starts typing in addressbar he gets suggestions based on his bookmarks and History it will reduce his search time. This is easy to do in Firefox 3 since there are plans to add SQLLite in FF3. Don't know about possibilities for FF2. |
| ODF stylesheet support | Extension using XSLT stylesheets to make ODF documents viewable in-browser | Gerv | ODFReader already exists, although it's quite simple, for OpenDocument Text only, and requires a stylesheet whose licensing isn't quite compatible with that of Mozilla. This project would enhance ODT support, and perhaps add support for ODS (spreadsheet) and ODP (presentation), such that these types could be reliably viewed in a pleasant (if not 100% accurate) way directly in the browser. A "Save" link or button would also be provided, for the potentially confused. | |
| Firefox 2 Go. | Write an extension that will allow users to sign into firefox anywhere in the world and have their history,bookmarks,browser settings, plugins(firefox profiles) automaticaly loaded into the browser. They will basicaly have a browser that will go anywhere they do. Ofcourse when they sign off everything will be removed if they wish.
Please post comments on this idea |
Peter Kemp (BCIT Student) | Looking for mentor | Why should you be limited to surfing your way and style only at home! What if you could travel anywear in the world, to any computer and your browser would be right there for you. It would Supply you all of your bookmarks, your browser settings, your history and even the plugins that you use everyday.
No long is firefox just a browser, but a travel companion. Firefox, you travel, we follow. |