Blog Year in Review: April 2007

April 2007, included some big announcements from and involving Google.

• Google TiSP - Need an internet connection but fed up with the prices charged by the cable and telephone companies? Perhaps you are stuck paying for a satellite service with speeds only slightly faster than dial-up at three times the price. If you have a toilet that is connected to a sewer system, Google’s free TiSP Broadband internet service is for you.
• GMail Paper (beta) - With all the news going around about people’s GMail suddenly vanishing or discovering their accounts have been locked because they violated some obscure part of GMail’s TOS, this service has you covered. GMail allows you to get a physical paper copy of your e-mails sent to you in about 2-4 business days.
• Microsoft Accusing Google of Antitrust! - In what could only be described as highly ironic, Microsoft who is no stranger to antitrust suits themselves, claimed that Google’s acquisition of online advertiser DoubleClick was an antitrust violation. Microsquish claimed this would “hurt competition in the fast-growing market for advertising on the Web and raise questions about how much personal information would be collected by Google.” However there was more to this story as Microsoft as well as AT&T were in the market to acquire DoubleClick too.

Big releases during the month of April included:

• Thunderbird 2 - The much anticipated next generation of Mozilla’s E-mail Client was finally released. TBird 2 offers users a newly designed visual refresh and host of other new features including message tagging and interactive new mail notifier.
• Firefox 3 Alpha 4 - This release still did not have Places reintegrated into, but it did however include the new crash reporting tool, Breakpad on the Mac OS X build.
• An Updated Firefox 3 Roadmap - The new Roadmap projected Firefox Beta 3 would be released in September. This Roadmap was almost mirroring that of Firefox 2.

With this Firefox BBC News Article and the false assumption we would be seeing Firefox 3 by the fall, I had added a Firefox 4 tag. Last check, there were only two posts which have been assigned this tag; the above mentioned BBC News article and the announcement of the Firefox 4 tag. Obviously there wasn’t much Firefox 4 news since Firefox 3 hasn’t even been completed yet.

We even had a couple Red Pandas (Firefox) posts in April. The folks at Mozilla Links found a couple online merchants that still sell plush Red Pandas. These had been discontinued from the Mozilla Store. Also, 3-month old twin red pandas made their public debut at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. They were part of a breeding program that aims to ensure the survival of the endangered species.

Finally, what would be the first of many Windows Vista related posts, is this easy to follow video How to Install Windows Vista.

March

2007 Index

May

Blog Year in Review: March 2007

March 2007, saw big changes for The Blog as well as Addons.Mozilla.Org (AMO) plus some new (and delayed) releases.

After dealing with a broken theme only in Firefox (Oh ,the humanity!) for a couple days I ended up doing a major overhaul on the blog. I reverted back to a 2-column theme and created a new custom designed header. I also took the same design and used it to re-skin the blog’s FeedBurner headline animator. Also did some housekeeping with the categories. Nearly nine months later, there hasn’t been any problems with the theme thus far. Well one minor problem is the tag line: Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Tips, Tricks, News and more… no longer appears (see comments in this article for explanation).

Back in the February review, I touched on the new design and overhaul of the AMO site and the add-ons/extension submission/review process. Part of the new review process was the Sandbox where non-approved add-ons/extension would reside. I suppose it was those ‘well, it looked good on paper’ concepts. Unfortunately, there was a bit of backlash when Firefox users were trying to get to existing extensions but were being instead getting an ‘Add-on not found’ error. While the AMO folks worked out some kinks they ended up All Pre-Existing Add-ons Public Again. Of course this was after the deployment was delayed to March 19th, no wait make that March 22nd or was it later than that?

Those who have followed Firefox’s development quickly learn that planned releases, updates, etc just never goes as planed. Case in point the Major Update, the marvelous update feature which would allow Fx 1.5 users to go to Fx 2.0 without having to download/install Fx 2. In the mozillaZine forums was this sad but true comment made by Pedestrian in reference to the new release date for the major updated had been pushed back to mid-march:

“The date has been mid-something since mid-December”

While on the subject of missed release/milestone dates, the Firefox 3.0a3 milestone was suppose to be March 20th. Turns out, Fx 1.5.0.11 & 2.0.0.3 were released (after being delayed nearly two weeks) on this date instead. Turns out it did finally get released on March 23rd. Finally all the planned releases were done, but wait there’s more! Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 was also released during the month of March.

In other Mozilla news:

• The Scoble Show interviewed Chief Lizard Wrangler/CEO Mitchel Baker. The 40-minute interview is available in it’s entirety on the blog via PodTech.
• The crash reporting tool/utility, Airbag (formerly Talk Back) has been rename to Breakpad. Expect to see this fully function in the final releases of Firefox 3 (due out sometime). Then again we were told last year Airbag would be in place while Firefox 2 was in development (didn’t get added until after Alpha 3). May be we will see this in Firefox 4 and under yet another name. Rumor has it though, it is being used in the development of TBird 3.
• It was announced Firefox 3 would be capable of supporting animated PNG images.

There were only a couple extension reviews during March:

• Resizeable Textarea - allows user to resize any textarea regardless if was designed to be resizeable.
• URL Fixer - automatically fixed common address bar boo-boos on the fly.

To wrap up this review, we have a photo which proves there is water on Mars.

February

2007 Index

April