In this issue…

• Firefox parties in full swing
• Being a localizer in the rapid release cycle
• New Adventures for Spark and Ember
• Know your creative!
• Design this book
• Get Personas is getting a new home
• Upcoming events
• Community Calendar
• About about:mozilla

Firefox parties are in full swing

With the an awesome launch of Firefox for desktop and mobile behind us, it’s time to celebrate. Parties have already kicked off. Congrats to Mozillian KAMI for hosting a great Firefox Launch party in conjunction with Document Freedom Day in Budapest, Hungry. Next up are the Mozilla Hispano party in Madrid and the Firefox 4 party hosted in Rome, as well as many others. Come out and celebrate!

Being a localizer in the rapid release cycle

With the introduction of the new Nightly, Aurora and Beta channels for Firefox, community members across Mozilla are adjusting to the new release schedule. If you are a localizer, learn more about what this means for you. If you are involved in other project areas or are interested in getting involved, this post might have some interesting tips for what this means for your contributions.

New Adventures for Spark and Ember

Andre Lewis, an aspiring wildlife documentary filmmaker, is the winner of a 15-day panda trek through the forests of Nepal with the Red Panda Network (here’s his winning video). The Firefox Live site will also be closing down this Thursday and the two grown cubs will go to other zoos with the goal of having cubs of their own next year. Can’t get enough of them? You can make your own 3D paper dolls here designed by Mozilla Indonesia!

Know your creative!

John Slater gives us an update on the Mozilla Creative team who are tasked with communicating the Mozilla Firefox story through visual design, copywriting, brand projects and website management. He introduces new members and new roles. Take a look and meet the team!

Design this book

The Drumbeat team is turning Learning, Freedom and the Web site into a book. The writing is mostly done. And now graphic designer Chris Appleton has shared his proposed visual language and design elements. Take a look and give us your feedback.

Get Personas is getting a new home

Wil Clouser writes that we’re working to migrate GetPersonas.com to AMO completely. The migration will allow personas to, “leverage AMO features like statistics reporting and collections, and AMO will get a fresh look at reviewing user submitted content and an influx of creative designers.” Wil has shared out the migration plan. Check it out if you’re curious and/or if you’d like to get involved.

Upcoming events

* April 14th and on, the world, Firefox Launch Parties
* May, Huajuapan de León, Mexico, Kids on Computers Summit

Community 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 Mozilla’s contributor engagement team and will be published every Tuesday.

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.

You can also subscribe to the email version!

In this issue…

• The future of messaging
• Getting more developers involved with Mozilla
• What is Mozilla?
• Taking our message to the streets
• Progress on Do Not Track
• Time to celebrate!
• Upcoming events
• Community Calendar
• About about:mozilla

The future of messaging
Mitchell Baker and David Ascher announced this week that Mozilla will be stepping up our focus on messaging. With this strengthened focus we’re going to be, “consolidating the teams working on messaging on the Web and related topics like identity and contacts, by integrating the Mozilla Messaging team with Mozilla Labs.” This collaboration isn’t new – Labs and Mozilla Messaging have worked together on the popular F1 add-on for Firefox, and the experimental Raindrop project. Nothing will change in the near term for Thunderbird users.

Getting more developers involved with Mozilla
There has been a hearty discussion on how we can make it easier for developers to contribute to Mozilla on the dev-planning list.  Paul Biggar has summed it up nicely if you’re not game to read the whole thread.  He summarizes the challenges, experiences, engagement efforts, tools and documentation.  We’ll be hosting a session this week at the Mozilla All Hands to discuss this further.  Please keep an eye on Paul’s blog and the dev-planning list for updates and to provide feedback.

What is Mozilla?
Brett Gaylor helps us answer that question for folks that are new to Mozilla. The video is now hosted on Mozilla’s refreshed Get Involved page – please share it. He also gives a shout out to Rainer Cvillink, Mozilla’s in-house video wizard, for all the great camera work, and to Jenn Strom for editing and motion graphics.

Taking our message to the streets
John Slater provides a great update on the our recent brand message work.  We’ve made it part of all our communications around the Firefox 4 launch (and beyond), but are going further to launch specific campaigns to help people understand who we are. The first initiative is a series of billboards that can be seen around the SF Bay Area and will run until the end of April.  If you’re in the area please check them out and be sure to take photos!

Progress on Do Not Track
Alex Fowler posted an update on the Do Not Track privacy feature in Firefox which provides users more control over online behavioral tracking. Two developments bring it closer to being respected by industry. According to Alex we’ve been working with leading companies and trade groups to implement DNT, as well as the W3C and IETF organizations to standardize the DNT header. Microsoft has since included the mechanism in Internet Explorer 9. Additionally, the AP News Registry service, run by the Associated Press, implemented the DNT header across 800 news sites servicing 175 million unique visitors each month, while the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) is initiating a process to explore incorporating the DNT header. The DAA represents more than 5,000 leading media and technology companies that span the entire marketing-media ecosystem. Read more.

Time to celebrate!
With two awesome launches down, it’s time to think about celebrating. Congrats to Mozillian KAMI for a great party in Budapest. If you’d like to host a party, please sign up here. Note we can’t guarantee the delivery of party packs next week.

Upcoming events

* April 9-10, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, Bulgaria Web Summit 2011
* April 15th and on, the world, Firefox Launch Parties
* May, Huajuapan de León, Mexico, Kids on Computers Summit

Community 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 Mozilla’s contributor engagement team and will be published every Tuesday. This week’s issue is brought to you by Mary Colvig.

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.

You can also subscribe to the email version!