In this issue…

Fennec 2.0: what’s coming
Mark Finkle has written about ongoing planning for Fennec 2.0. “We haven’t even released the final Firefox for Maemo 1.1 yet, but we have been very busy working on features and changes for the next major release. Check out the Fennec 2.0 project planning page. The biggest changes are related to out-of-process web content (Project Electrolysis) and accelerated rendering (Project Layers). Significant amounts of platform work have been done on both projects. Fennec 2.0 will integrate both Electrolysis and Layers.” Read more on Mark’s weblog.

Why tabs are on top in Firefox 4
“In the Firefox 4 nightly builds, and in Firefox 4 Beta 1, we are changing the default tab position so that tabs are on top. This is a preference that users can change by right clicking on any of their toolbars. Moving the default tab position is obviously a significant and to some extent controversial change to the Firefox UI, which is why we have made a video to help explain our rationale.” Read more and view the video on Alex Faaborg’s weblog.

Firefox Input feedback mechanism
Mozilla has created a new feedback mechanism that we hope will help more users tell us what they do and don’t like during the next Firefox Beta. “In order to see/use it, you’ll have to get a beta build for Firefox 4 (when it’s available) and head over to the right side of your navigation bar. There you’ll see a small suite of options available to offer feedback to the Firefox team.” Aakash Desai has written more about this new tool, including what the feedback process looks like, how to access the public dashboard of feedback data, and detailed notes about the privacy features related to this new tool.

Student Reps goes global
“Students around the world love Mozilla’s products and embrace our mission. Our 2,100 student evangelists have a global presence, reaching schools in 77 countries. To more effectively communicate with our student leaders, we are going international with our student guide as well.” The team is in the process of relaunching the Mozilla campus program as Student Reps, which will now live at studentreps.mozilla.org. “More than just a fresh design, the new Student Reps site also offers localized content to make it even easier for students to participate around the world. Our very own Student Reps made this possible, translating the site into their native languages with the help of our localization team.” Read more on the Mozilla Blog.

Help test our new Support forums!
Stephen Donner and the Web QA team is looking for your help! “Building off the momentum from the SUMO 2.1 release, which converted the old Tiki-Wiki-based Contributors/Off Topic/Knowledge Base forums to Python (code-named Kitsune), we’re redesigning (and reimplementing from scratch) the more prominent and feature-rich Firefox Support Forums. It’s starting to take its shape in our 2.2 milestone. As is always the case with Mozilla projects, we value and need your input and help in reporting issues/feedback along the way.” Find out how you can help and how to get started over at Stephen’s weblog.

Firefox 3.6.6 by the clock
Firefox 3.6.6 was released this past Saturday and turned out to be our fastest Firefox release ever, being the first time we have shipped a release in under 24 hours. “From ‘Dev says go’ to ‘release is now available to public’ was 22h 33m wall-clock time. The Release Engineering portion of that was 10h 15m. By comparison, our previous fastest release turnaround was FF3.5.5 (3d 4h 45m from start to finish, with Release Engineering taking 13-16 hours).” John O’Duinn’s blog has all the details about this incredible feat.

Console code now in Firefox nightlies
The new web console code has landed on mozilla-central and is now available in Firefox nightly builds. There are still a number of follow-up bugs that need to be addressed, the list of which is available in Bugzilla. “The console itself has the standard API: console.log, console.info, console.warn, and console.error. This initial landing into Minefiled nightly will hopefully generate some valuable feedback from web developers and Mozilla developers alike.” You are invited to leave your feedback on David Dahl’s weblog or in Bugzilla.

Drumbeat project communications
The Drumbeat team has initiated a strategic communications planning process for Drumbeat’s launch through the rest of 2010. “As we launch the Drumbeat initiative and help each of the supported projects progress to success, there are literally a billion people we could be talking to. How do we decide who we are going to talk to and when, what we want them to know and ask them to do, and which tools and communications channels to use? To answer these questions we created a strategic communications plan.” Read more about this initiative on the Drumbeat site.

Inspector milestone 0.5 preview
Rob Campbell has made the Inspector Milestone 0.5 Preview available for people to download and try, and is asking for feedback. You can read more about the Inspector, other ongoing work related to DevTools development, and grab the Inspector download through Rob’s weblog.

Jetpack SDK 0.5
The Jetpack team has released Jetpack SDK 0.5. “This latest release offers more APIs for you to build add-ons with. For instance, one of the new APIs enables you to access tab information and control tab-related actions, e.g. opening/closing tabs.” The new APIs in Jetpack SDK are: Tabs API, Request API, Load/unload reasons, Localization API, and Selection API. Previous releases include a Page Worker Widget, and Simple Storage and Private Browsing APIs. A complete list is available in the core library reference. “If you’re new to the Jetpack project, it aims to make it easy to build Firefox add-ons using common Web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and with this latest release, building Firefox add-ons has never been easier! To get started, check out the Jetpack SDK tutorial and download the SDK.” See the Add-ons Blog for more info.

Results from Developer Survey #2
Mozilla Hacks has posted the results of their second developer survey, conducted in March. “In this post we’ll share the results of our latest survey and provide some data and insights from all the great feedback we have received. We hope this will help us better understand developers’ needs and continue to build out the Mozilla Developer Network to better engage with them.” Read all about it on Mozilla Hacks.

Two week about:mozilla hiatus
With the 2010 Mozilla Summit coming up next week, I’ll be pausing publication of this newsletter for two weeks. Regular weekly publication will resume on July 20th.

As always, if you have any feedback about this newsletter please feel free to send a note to deb-at-mozilla-dot-com. Thanks!

Software updates
* Jetpack SDK 0.5
* Bugzillas 3.2.7, 3.4.7, 3.6.1, 3.7.1
* Thunderbird 3.1
* Lightning 1.0b2

Upcoming events
* Oct 1-2 – New York City – Open Video Conference
* Nov 4-6 – Barcelona – Drumbeat Festival 2010
* Nov 5-7 – Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit (FSCONS)

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.

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.