In this issue…

Weave Sync APIs + developer resources
Mozilla Labs, following on last week’s launch of Weave 1.0, has now released its first set of developer resources including the Weave Sync + User APIs, documentation, and Python + JavaScript client libraries. The hope is that developers will use these resources to increase the number of places you can easily and securely access your personal data whether or not Firefox is available. “This first set of APIs focuses on enabling Weave clients to provide users access to their stored data from other devices and environments.” The team has also released a number of early prototypes and pieces of sample code.

Firefox on Android progress
The project to port Firefox to the Android operating system is progressing well, and the team recently posted an update. “After working out a few kinks, I got our first page load,” writes Vlad Vukićević, “Mouse events sort of work, toplevel windows sort of work, keyboard doesn’t work yet but shouldn’t be hard to hook up. This is running in an emulator at the moment for ease of debugging, but it’s working just fine on physical hardware as well.” Check out Vlad’s blog for the full story.

Simple vector and matrix math for JS
“One common thread running through the many different and interesting WebGL projects out there is that they all need to do vector and matrix math, do it quickly, and do it in JavaScript. Since this is such a crucial part of a successful WebGL program, I’ve put together a small package that I’m calling mjs. mjs is designed around speed and simplicity.” Vlad Vukićević has posted more information about this library on his weblog, including code samples, performance testing results, and links to the code and documentation.

Enabling Firefox plugins on mobile devices
An experimental feature is available to Nokia N900 users that will turn on plugin support in Firefox on their device. Aakash Desai has posted instructions on his blog, along with a warning that this is currently intended for development and testing only.

Video demo of Firefox on Nokia’s N900
The Firefox team has released a quick video tour of our first version of Firefox on the Nokia N900. Check it out on Caitlin’s weblog.

Visualizing the Firefox Twitter community
Tara Shahian is working on a Twitter visualization that captures the unique and multi-dimensional nature of our community, our conversations, and the energy that flows through our tweets. “As you know, there are some incredibly complex and mesmerizing data visualizations out there… my goal is to create a similarly stunning Twitter visualization that is also built on open web technology.” Tara is looking for ideas and feedback for this project, so head over to her blog post and get inspired.

Mozilla sponsors GNOME accessibility
The GNOME Foundation announced a $10,000 grant from Mozilla to advance accessibility work. “The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source, open standards, and open formats. Part of that effort is working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to make use of a free desktop and Web browser”. See the full press release for details.

“Bugzilla for Humans” video
Johnathan Nightingale has put together a fantastic video introduction to Bugzilla, the Mozilla project’s bug tracking system. “Bugzilla is the devil we know. It’s more complicated than we’d like, it’s pretty intimidating to new users, and adding features can be a slog. It’s also essential to the way we manage our project at scale, and enough of our project’s history and daily activity lives there that understanding it is not really optional. Certain edge cases aside, you can’t really be effective in the Mozilla project without at least a passing ability to wade through Bugzilla.”

GetFirebug.com redesign!
Following hard on the heels of the recent Firebug 1.5 launch, the Firebug team has redesigned the GetFirebug.com website with a whole new look and a brand new (and very fiery) icon. Neil Lee, part of Mozilla’s Webdev team, has posted more details. “Even with intense competition from tools integrated into other web browsers, Firebug is still the leading web development tool in use with nearly two million active daily users. Its web site needed to reflect Firebug’s capabilities more clearly. The primary goals were to make the site easier to use and to highlight Firebug’s many positive qualities.”

Firefox UX team update
Alexander Limi and the Firefox User Experience (UX) team has posted an update about recent progress and UX priorities for the upcoming Firefox release. “Last week, we narrowed down the priorities for the next release of Firefox — which may be a 3.7, may be a 4.0 — in this document: UX priorities.” Limi’s post goes on to outline the main priorities which include: a new theme, home tab and app tabs, notifications, extension manager redesign, and download manager and MIME type improvements. Other ongoing projects include resource packages, Mac installer improvements, and tab matching in Awesomebar.

Helping users avoid Firefox fraud sites
Harvey Anderson, part of Mozilla’s legal team, has written about what Mozilla has been doing — and will be looking to do in the future — in response to user reports about fraudulent sites that try to trick people into paying for Firefox or downloading malware branded as Firefox. “Long term, to really scale to meet this problem, we’re going to need to explore alternative approaches that utilize organizations like Stopbadware.org, so users can be notified in advance when they end up on these sites. In combination, we may also need more messaging to warn users about the subscription traps that exist. In the interim, however, we’ll continue to utilize the tools we have so fewer users are scammed and more get the really great product contributors have created.”

Software releases
* Thunderbird “Lanikai” Alpha 1
* Processing.js 0.4

Upcoming events
* Feb 19 – Testday: OS Testing with Mobile Firefox
* Mar 5 – Learn how to testscript your add-ons
* Mar 19 – Improve the quality of QMO
* Apr 2 – Litmus 2 development review

Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page. Notes from previous meetings are linked to through the Calendar as well.

About about:mozilla
about:mozilla is by, for and about the Mozilla community, focusing on major news items related to all aspects of the Mozilla Project. The newsletter is written by Deb Richardson and is published every Tuesday morning.

If you have any news, announcements, events, or software releases you would like to have included in our next issue, please send them to: about-mozilla[at]mozilla.com.

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