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.

(More thoughts on making a good list)

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. maxaeran: how does this fit with the WHAT-WG Audio object proposals? - Gerv
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? Who regularly wants to "load their preferred extensions on any firefox browser in seconds"? - Gerv That would be a side-benefit. Basically, it's adding the same batch-installation that is currently being discussed in the Google Greasemonkey group, but for extensions at large. Once enough extensions are bookmarked and tagged, the social bookmarking system could be integrated into the Mozilla Add-Ons site. I think it's an *important* idea because the quantity of extensions is going to increase ten-fold over the next year, and therefore there is much more of a need for (1) attention agents and (2) spam filters; both needs can be solved through a social bookmarking system. - Hivemya
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
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
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		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. Grev: Point taken ! Removed my name from mentor column. I can help the student who comes in to work on this as an outside contributor, and not as GSoC student, as I just graduated :-(
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.)
"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. Comment(jigar): Google Browser Sync extension already exist for this purpose Google Browser Sync Such an extension would have value if it were open source and usable with any storage backend, not just Google's - Gerv Comment(Peter Kemp): Thank you jigar, I didnt know about the browsersync. For the storage backend i was thinking about implementing it via XML files. What is your opinion for a backend storage ? Thank you