Preview: Main Site

Phases 1 and 2 of the ‘big changes’ are already or nearly completed. Earlier this week, we did move over the Wiki, the main site, The Email Mafiia blog and sites and a handful of other sites to the new sever. Surprisingly, the migration went a lot smoother than I was expecting. Did some have minor issues with the Wiki, but was able to get those resolved very quickly.

As for the main site, just have a little more tweaking and adjusting to do before we launch the new main site. So far, I am very impressed with the flexibility of being able to work in WordPress. I had heard some complaints from a friend of mine about how the first page is still going to look like a WordPress Blog (shows post title, author, date, etc). Well, thanks to the Twenty Ten Weaver Theme, you wouldn’t know this was built on WordPress.

The biggest thing you are going to notice is we really cleaned up the main page. The big Facebook & Twitter widgets have been removed, replaced with buttons. The releases section has been cleaned up a bit as well. There really isn’t much going on with main page. It is acting more as landing page with links to the Blog and Wiki as well as to our sister site, The Email Mafia.

I have decided to move the Wiki to Phase 3 instead of Phase 4. The template is still going to take some tweaking, but should be fairly simple as all I will need to do is copy over the custom CSS and install a few plug-ins. The fun part is going to be moving the content from Media Wiki into WordPress.

The final phase will be the blog. That really should not take very long as I won’t have to ‘de-blog’ the template. Upload the new header, import the content then install some pliug-ins and should be ready to go. Will need to figure out how to redirect on the wordpress.com side over to my server as right now my server is redirecting to the wordpress.com site.

One more thing, since this whole process went fairly well, there’s a good chance I am going to redo the main Email Mafia site into a WordPress as well and creating a ‘wiki’ for that site too.

Firefox 4 Code Name: Tumucumaque

Mozilla’s tradition is code naming Firefox major releases after national parks from around the world, and, since recently, Thunderbird major releases after beaches. The latter we have seen with the first development release of Thunderbird 3.3 code named Miramar. For whatever reason there has not been much use of the code name for Firefox 4, especially given we are nearing the release of Beta 8. Percy at Mozilla Links did a little digging and found the code name for Firefox 4 is Tumucumaque, borrowed from the Tumucumaque Mountain National Park in Northwest Brazil.

Fix Unresponsive Script Warning

There are times depending on what is running in the background and other Internet activity that Firefox (or Thunderbird) may get bogged down and a JavaScript may take a little longer than normal to complete. Users will get a warning similar to the one below advising that the script is unresponsive.  The reason for this is because the application thinks the script is running wild and never going to finish processing thus causing the application to freeze and/or crash. This is very similar to Windows Task Manager warning you that an application is not responding, but the application is just a bit bogged down (which commonly happens with JavaScript) and needs more time to finish what it is doing.

The ‘fix’ for this is fairly simple, just increase the amount of time before a script is considered ‘unresponsive’. This can be done in both Firefox and Thunderbird via about:config (Firefox) and the Config Editor… (Thunderbird):

Firefox

1. In a new tab type about:config in the address bar and press enter
2. In the about:config manager type dom.max_script_run_time in the Filter field
3. Double click the entry and in the in the pop-up box type 20 and press enter
4. Close the tab

Thunderbird

1. Go to Tools >> Options…
2. Click on the Advanced tab on top
3. At the bottom of the window is a section Advanced Configuration
4. Click on the Config Editor… button at the lower right
5. In the Config Editor… type dom.max_script_run_time in the Filter field
6. Double click the entry and in the in the pop-up box type 20 and press enter
7. Close the window

Source: Itchy Hands

Still Waitin’ On Firefox 3.5.10/3.6.4

As we are now a third of the way into June, still no updated release date for the upcoming Firefox 3.5/3.6 updates. Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 is still listed as tentative for June 24th. However, Firefox 3.7a5 is now on the list but as TBD. As you may recall Firefox 3.7 was going into the beta builds as Firefox 4.0, so this really is odd. I’ll check again Friday night when I get ready to post the Weekly Release Recap.

There is some good news, Thunderbird 3.1RC2 came out on Wednesday ahead of schedule. Mozilla Messaging seems to be moving fairly quick on these RC builds so we could be seeing Thunderbird 3.1 released later this summer. Updates and news will be posted over at our sister blog, The Email Mafia.

Stuck on Firefox 3.6.3pre

After my earlier Firefox Lorentz Beta Released post, I noticed something didn’t seem quite right with my Firefox nightly build. For one thing I had not seen the Mozilla Runtime Environment (mozilla-runtime.exe) kicking in for Flash sites. I also kept noticing that every time I would get an update offer I was being informed Chrome Edit Plus add-on was not compatible and would be disabled. Also each time thought I had updated when Firefox restarted I would get an updated noticed for 3.6.4pre but when I went to install I would get an error about not being able to find the license. Checking in Help and About Namoroka still showed the 3.6.3pre nightly from around March 24th.

No matter how many times I tried to apply the update to 3.6.4pre and restarted Firefox, it would not apply. At first I thought may be Comodo Firewall was blocking the installation but my Shredder (Thunderbird 3 developmental) updates were being installed just fine. Okay, crossed the firewall off the list of suspects. Next thought was may be the Chrome Edit Plus extension was not getting disabled and this somehow was preventing the update from installing. From within the add-ons manager, went ahead and disabled the extension then restarted Firefox. Once again tried to apply the update without success.

Okay at this point it must have had something to do with that particular nightly build (the joys of nightly builds). I really didn’t want spend a bunch of time looking through old posts in the mozillaZine Firefox Builds forum so I would try one more thing. I downloaded Firefox 3.6.3 then closed Firefox. Went into the Windows Control Panel to uninstall, but this install was not listed. So into Windows Explorer and manually removed this Firefox 3.6 nightly install. Installed Firefox 3.6.3 and then did a check for updates. Since my profile was still intact and my update channel is ‘nightly’, got offered the latest nightly for 3.6.4pre. After installing the update then restarting, I saw a screen I have not seen in a long time, ‘updates are being installed’ screen. Well, that was a good sign. Further Comodo was throwing an alert firefox.exe has changed, another good sign. Once Firefox restarted, I knew things were good when I saw in the title bar Lorentz and About Lorentz shows in the Help Menu.

Upon entering my WordPress Dashboard which has a flash applet for blog traffic, mozilla-runtime.exe kicked in (with a warning from Comodo Firewall). Also, the title bar and the border around the Firefox application have turned blue. I took a look in System Explorer and saw underneath firefox.exe was the mozilla-runtime.exe and like Percy mentioned on average it is using about an additional 10% of the memory Firefox is using.

Still have no idea why I was stuck on that old nightly. I did take brief look around in the mozillaZine Firefox Builds forum to see if this was a common problem. Apparently not. Did find an interesting thread with an explanation for name change from Namoroka to Lorentz.

Some ‘Brief’ Issues

First off this post has nothing to do with underwear but rather Brief – feed reading extension for Firefox. I’ve been using this extension to handle all my RSS feeds for quite some time and never really had problems. Then a while back I started to notice that even though I have it set to automatically check for new feeds about every 10-minutes it wasn’t. Further when I opened Brief in a tab I would notice the progress bar was stalled at around 95%. If I pressed the ‘stop’ button and then did a manual check, it would work fine. Further, it didn’t always ‘stall’, sometimes it would work fine for hours or days.

To fix this issue I have I tried uninstalling then and re-installing the add-on; wiped out my Feeds folder and re-setup all my feeds. No change. Back when I first started having this issue I had checked the developers site and that time I didn’t see anything related to the issue I was experiencing. I decided early this morning I was either going to look for a new reader as I was missing (more like getting late) Firefox/Thunderbird news and even some of the non-Mozilla related feeds.

Whilst I know Thunderbird can handle RSS feeds, I prefer to keep my Thunderbird just for handling my four IMAP email accounts. What I like about Brief is I can read most feeds (some only sites only publish excerpts to their feeds) within the add-on without having to leave the tab. Yes, I could use Live Bookmarks which are nice, but you still have to check to see if there is an update.

I checked again on the Brief developer’s site and this in the forum I found the thread Time relaod stops working. Well, after reading the first post I determined this was indeed what was happening to my Brief as well. The developers suggested trying to install version 1.5 (which is still in Beta) to see if that fixes the issue. The thread was started at the end of January and there had mixed success reported and even some new issues with duplicate entries. I went ahead and installed version 1.5 and so far it seems to be behaving fine and I have no issues with duplicate entries.

Mozilla Project Weekly Status: November 30th

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• 3.6 compatibility up to 58%

  • Engaging with a number of high probability authors who will bump this number by ~10% or more when they flip to 3.6.

• Blog from Jenny Boriss on redesigning the Add-ons Manager

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.6

  • builds started today
  • planning to go to beta this week, after QA spot checks
  • on track for mid-December ship date

• Firefox 3.0.17 / Firefox 3.5.7

  • schedules posted
  • early February release target
  • any feedback on these?

• Firefox 3.0.15 -> 3.5.5 Prompted Major Update (PMU)
  • overall crashes in 3.5.5 are down from 3.5.3 and 3.5.4 thanks to CrashKill
  • some crashes were fixes in our code, others were blocklisted add-ons
  • even more fixes coming in 3.5.6
  • as a result, we’d like to resume pushing users from 3.0.x to 3.5.x
  • planning to go live with a PMU tomorrow morning

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)
  • Released Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 on Thursday, Nov 26th in the morning
  • if you’re working on an add-on that integrates with the new lightweight theme technology, please take note of this late change to the observers/notifications structure
  • latest metrics show half of our 400,000+ beta users are running beta 4
  • data from these users is helping us ensure a very stable Firefox 3.6 release
  • closing on blockers in order to deliver a release candidate build this week
    • still aiming to be ready to ship in late December
  • mozilla-central will remain restricted to 1.9.2 blockers and approved patches only
• Firefox 3.7

  • Rob Strong is looking at updater fixes for Firefox 3.7 and wants input and feedback

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • We killed and added blockers over the holiday. 38 remaining blockers for 1.9.2. Watching and fixing regressions & crashes based on beta feedback.
  • News from the CrashKill front:
    • These numbers are being updated as we get more data from the beta 4 testers. It’s really hard to tell if this beta crashes more than beta 3. We’ll know more in a few days.
    • Reminder: We now have the ability to block specific DLLs from loading. For the list of DLLs we intend to block, see bug 525103.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 2
    • P2: 11
    • P3: 0
    • Other: 25
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 4
    • Content: 1
    • GFX: 3
    • JS: 21

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • 3.0rc1 released
  • 1 POP3 bug is causing us to consider a 3.0RC2, we hope to have that decided and (ideally) spun today.
  • Planning for 3.1 and onward is underway in dev-apps-thunderbird.

Complete Meeting Notes

Mozilla Project Weekly Status: November 23, 2009

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• 3.6 compatibility up to 58%

  • Engaging with a number of high probability authors who will bump this number by ~10% or more when they flip to 3.6.

• Blog from Jenny Boriss on redesigning the Add-ons Manager

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.6

  • QA is currently testing
  • should give a go to build in a week

• Firefox 3.0.17 / Firefox 3.5.7
  • should have a schedule this week
  • likely targeting late January release

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6) there are still over 80 blockers left to be fixed for Firefox 3.6
  • many are fixed on other branches and need to be moved over
  • some seem to be tracking bugs for stability issues, and may not block
  • there are still several code blockers awaiting patches or review which should be the highest priority for everyone in advance of the long weekend
• Firefox 3.7

  • No Report

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • Wrapping up remaining 37 blockers for 1.9.2. Watching and fixing regressions & crashes based on beta feedback.
  • News from the CrashKill front:
    • In last week’s discussion we talked about how to compare releases. We’re still refining it, but it’s a good starting point.
    • Reminder: We now have the ability to block specific DLLs from loading. For the list of DLLs we intend to block, see bug 525103.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 3
    • P2: 20
    • P3: 0
    • Other: 14
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 3
    • Content: 6
    • GFX: 1
    • JS: 14

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • 3.0RC1 build 3 available
    • please help us test and file bugs
    • autoconfiguration of new accounts at various providers needs special testing
    • we hope to label and announce as RC1 in the next small number of days

Complete Meeting Notes

Mozilla Weekly Status: November 2, 2009

NOTE: The US and many other countries ended Daylight Savings Time early Sunday morning and returned to Standard Time. So now the Update meeting with be at 19:00 UTC (the “new” 11am PST) Monday.

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• Thanks for coming to last week’s meetup, about 40 people showed up and a good time was had by all
• Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 was launched last week along with the new Add-on Compatibility Reporter
  • 3600 active users
  • 363 reports of incompatible add-ons, 857 reports of compatible ones
  • Currently about 54% of usage is compatible with some version of Fx 3.6 but only 39% are marked as compatible with 3.6b1 and above.

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.15 / Firefox 3.5.4
  • shipped last Tuesday!
  • 3.5.4 stability issues caught after push…

• Firefox 3.5.5

  • scheduling a short-cycle release
  • developers jumped on creating fixes and had them ready by Friday evening (yay!)
  • hoping to start builds today or tomorrow

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.6
  • code freeze is November 10 at 11:59pm
  • please work on your blockers
  • targeting mid-December release

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)
  • Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 shipped on Friday, check out the plea for feedback or release notes.
  • Nightly and beta users are encouraged to help us by reporting add-on compatibility
  • zpao’s “session restore optimization” patch landed on trunk, should be moving to branch shortly
  • main development focus is on Firefox 3.6 Blockers
  • last week at the development and delivery meetings we decided to issue frequent updates to Firefox 3.6 Beta users on that update channel; aiming for the first update to be this week with:
    • DLL component directory lockdown and blacklisting patch (see bug 524904 and bug 519357
    • syntax changes for CSS gradients
  • some questions were raised about the schedule for Firefox 3.6:
    • code freeze for RC is targeted at November 18th
    • RC release estimated for late November
    • final release estimated for early-to-mid December
• Firefox 3.7

  • No Report

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • Fun times in CrashKill meetings:
    • dbaron has a patch in bug 521750 that will potentially fix 5-15% of crashes due to thread badness + cycle collector. This is going into release as soon as possible.
    • Other crash patches, from newer bugs: Font crash on startup: bug 524462, and a gif encoder crash: bug 525326
    • Will be talking about metrics and tools in today’s meeting, along with individual bugs.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 4
    • P2: 83
    • P3: 1
    • Other: 9
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 12
    • Content: 20
    • GFX: 10
    • JS: 19

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • 3.0rc1 still has 22 blockers
  • RC1 build tomorrow seems unlikely; more news on tomorrow’s Tb3 call

 

Complete Meeting Notes

Mozilla Project Weekly Status: October 12, 2009

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

• AMO 5.2 Code freeze tomorrow
  • Personas in AMO
  • Download sources
• Add-ons Meetup in MV tomorrow at 7!
• Fx 3.6 Compatibility at 52%

FIREFOX

• Firefox 3.0.15 / Firefox 3.5.4
  • 3.5.4 went to beta early on Friday, hoping to get better coverage
  • 3.0.15 will go to beta this week, likely Wednesday
  • Still on track for release on October 21

• Firefox 3.0.16 / Firefox 3.5.5
  • no set schedule yet
  • opening the tree and starting approvals this afternoon

• Namoroka (Firefox 3.6)
  • No more front-end beta blockers (bug queries).
  • moving on to remaining 3.6 blockers so that we’re in a good position to ship this quarter
• Firefox 3.7
  • ongoing theme development work for Firefox 3.7 and 4.0, discussions in dev-apps-firefox
  • targeting find-tab-in-awesomebar for Firefox 3.7
  • prioritizing projects for Firefox 3.7 work this week, watch this space for more!

GECKO

• Gecko 1.9.2
  • Last week, on Tuesday, we attempted to freeze for 1.9.2 beta 1. There were several remaining issues at the close of the usual dev meeting, but the consensus seemed to be that we were good to freeze. Still, two bugs (bug 517355 and bug 517909) kept us from freezing and we’re still working on one of them. The last one is a perf regression that is taking the time of Jason Orendorff, Boris, and Andreas. Andreas produced a couple of patches that will hopefully fix the problem, but we need to see numbers today to know for sure.
  • At today’s CrashKill we will go over top crash assignments again. Also, we may be at a point where this meeting isn’t necessary as we’re tracking crashes closely now. We’ll have that discussion then.
  • Blockers:
    • P1: 3
    • P2: 90
    • P3: 0
    • Other: 0
  • Team blocker numbers:
    • Layout: 17
    • Content: 13
    • GFX: 9
    • JS: 29

THUNDERBIRD

• TBird 3.0RC1 (Shredder)
  • Thunderbird 3 string frozen
  • Schedule:
    • comm-central branches: 2009-10-22
    • Code Freeze for RC1: 2009-10-30 23:59 PST
    • L10n deadline: 2009-11-02 23:59 PST
    • RC1 builds start on: 2009-11-03
    • Subsequent RCs as necessary.
  • Please help us make the release happen with
    • Testing nightlies and providing feedback/filing bugs
    • Fixing blockers

Complete Meeting Notes