about:mozilla is a weekly round-up of news and contribution opportunities. Here’s what’s happening this week.

New Features, Less Interruption For You On The Web

During the last weeks, thousands of Mozillians have coded and tested the next version of Firefox to a fare-thee-well. A few days ago, we were proud to finally release Firefox 20, in which we have fixed about 300 bugs. But we also added new features: You can now open Private Windows that allow you to surf the web without saving any information about which pages you’ve visited. We have also added a new download button to your toolbar. Last but not least, Firefox is now able to open PDF files directly without using a plugin like Reader.

Find out more about the new features.

Samsung, Mozilla And Our Browser Engine
Firefox is already fast by default, but at Mozilla Research, we want to make it even faster by experimenting with what’s next when it comes to the core technology powering the Web browser. Since we need to take advantage of tomorrow’s faster computing architectures, we’ve recently teamed up with Samsung on an advanced technology Web browser engine that is called Servo. This program is basically a clone of Firefox that has been built from the ground up on modern hardware. It’s been written in a language that prevents entire classes of errors that lead to crashes and security vulnerabilities.

Find out when the first major revision of Rust will be completed in Brendan Eich’s blog post.

Public Mozillians Profile Mozillians.org is our community directory that our core contributors use to find and contact each other. Several of you have asked us for an option to share their profiles with other people who aren’t registered and we’ve listened to them: From now on, you can also display your profile publicly by using the new privacy controls. You can choose which information you want to be on your publicly viewable profile. If you want your profile to remain visible to only Mozillians, you do not need to make any changes.

Read William Reynolds blog post, in which he explains how to change the visibility for your profile.

Preparing for the Next Chapter
When Gary Kovacs became the CEO of Mozilla in 2010, he joined us to make a dramatic pivot – to move Mozilla from the desktop browser world into the mobile ecosystem with Firefox for Android and Firefox OS. We have accomplished so many things since Gary joined us. Last Wednesday, Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, announced that he will step down as CEO later this year. This is the perfect time to thank him for his contributions to our cause, and for bringing new things to Mozilla.

Find out more about his accomplishments in Mitchell Baker’s blog post

Thoughts on Mozilla Research
Brendan Eich, inventor of the JavaScript language, gave a brief talk at the Mozilla Research Party, which happened to fall on the celebration of Mozilla’s 15th anniversary. In his talk, he talked about his memories, but also about his thoughts on Mozilla Research. He started off by stating the main problem: Software, especially “in the large”, remains quite challenging. In his opinion, calling software an art should not relieve us from advancing computer science. In the past, we already found that out: Because code kind of rusts over time, Brendan declared it time to rebuild major parts of the code back in 1998. Today, he designates this near-total rewrite as a big mistake.

Find out how this mistake hurt Netscape but helped Mozilla, Firefox’s predecessors.

Mozilla Summit 2013
Every once in the while, the core contributors of Mozilla from all around the world get together in one place. This is called the Summit. This year, we’re doing something different: We want to have three locations with up to 700 people, some shared content and some innovative ways to join the three locales. If you’re a registered Mozillian, you have already received an e-mail with instructions on how to be considered for an invitation. Till the deadline on the 17th of April, you can still apply for an invitation that will be sent out in May.

Read more about Mitchell Baker’s greatest hope for the Summit.

Photo of the Week

Mozilla Festival in Bhopal, India. Find some more pictures of the event on Flickr.

Upcoming events
* April 12-14 – Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Mozilla Meetup Romania 2013
* April 13 – Toronto, Canada: Open Web Open Mic
* April 13 – Utah, US: Mozilla Utah MozCafe
* April 13 – Durgapur, India: MozConnect-Durgapur
* April 13 – Long Mountain, Mauritius: Webmaker
* April 16 – Bogotá, Colombia: Mozilla Colombia Meetup
* Find even more near you on the Events Calendar

Get Involved
These are just some of the available contribution opportunities. Learn more about other ways to get involved and find other Mozillians in our community who share your interests.

About about:mozilla
The newsletter is written by Mozilla’s Community Engagement team and is published every Tuesday. For more on what has been happening this week also checkout the Mozilla Project Meeting. If you have anything you would like to include in our next issue, please contact: about-mozilla[at]mozilla[dot]com or send us a status message on mozilla.status.net or a tweet @aboutmozilla. You can also subscribe to the email version.

Have a good week folks and keep rocking the Web!

about:mozilla is a weekly round-up of news and contribution opportunities. Here’s what’s happening this week.

15 Years of Mozilla – Celebrate With Us!

Fifteen years ago, the source code of Netscape was published as open source – this marked the birth of the Mozilla project. And also made this day a special day: It’s Mozilla’s 15th birthday and we want to celebrate with you today. You can attend one of the three events in India, France or Serbia. Or you could submit your personal webstory and tweet it with the hashtag #webstory. No matter if it’s just a tweet, a video or an image – we’ll be retweeting and responding throughout the day to amplify these stories around the world.

Help us marking the beginning of our year-long celebration.

Checkboxes That Kill Your Product
It’s time for us to do some scrubbing and cleaning of the Firefox settings – this is Alex Limi’s conclusion when he looks at some of the checkboxes in the current version of Firefox. In his latest blog post, he takes a look at the settings and found some things that we need to fix: There are too many options that will render the browser unusable to most people by preventing the browser to load any images, disabling JavaScript and making all buttons disappear.

Read more about how we got to this point with Firefox and learn more about the settings that you should better not change.

Get Excited with Firefox OS
The Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona was definitely a success! Thanks to our awesome team of supporters, we were able to show everyone the power of Firefox OS, our upcoming mobile operating system. Although the congress is over, we are only just getting started! The excitement of Firefox OS is still in the air. If you missed Jay Sullivan’s demonstration at MWC, we have good news for you: It’s available online.

Watch (or re-watch) it on air.mozilla.org to see how Firefox OS will change the way you interact with the web on the go.

Mozilla Paris: Finally United!
Gold leaf walls surrounding and uniting Mozillians – that’s the best way to describe the new Mozilla office in Paris, the City of Light. This day marks the first day in the office, which is inside a historic building with fascinating architectural details. But until our grand opening celebration in June, we still have lots of things to do (and to polish). Since all Mozilla spaces aren’t just designed for the paid stuff but also for volunteers (like you!), you can also feel free to come by and code, design, research, talk or have a drink.

Learn more about the Mozilla Space in Paris and when the grand opening celebration happens.

Find Things Faster With Firefox
Finding things on the Internet with Firefox is very simple – you just have to enter the phrase you’re looking for into the Awesome Bar and hit the enter key. But sometimes, when you’re busy, every second counts. And to help you find stuff even faster, there are four handy search shortcuts that are easy to use. No matter if you want to search with the Awesome Bar without having to reach for your mouse or touchpad, or if you are looking for a link on a specific website.

Find out how to use the shortcuts on our cozy The Den blog.

Photo of the Week

Meetup of the Hispanic Mozilla community in Perú. Find some more pictures on Flickr.

Meet Some Mozillians
Mozilla says bonjour to Konstantina Papadea. Read more about how she contributes to Mozilla.

Upcoming events
* April 5 – Subotica, Serbia: Serbian Community Meetup
* April 5 & 6 – Istanbul, Turkey: Free Software and Linux Days 2013
* April 6 – Athens, Greece: Athens Webmaking 101
* April 6 – Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Selenium Unconference
* April 6 – Nashik, India: Webmaker init() Nasik
* April 7 – Mumbai, India: BarCamp Mumbai 2013
* Learn more about these and more events or find even more near you on the Events Calendar

Get Involved
These are just some of the available contribution opportunities. Learn more about other ways to get involved and find other Mozillians in our community who share your interests.

About about:mozilla
The newsletter is written by Mozilla’s Community Engagement team and is published every Tuesday. For more on what has been happening this week also checkout the Mozilla Project Meeting. If you have anything you would like to include in our next issue, please contact: about-mozilla[at]mozilla[dot]com or send us a status message on mozilla.status.net or a tweet @aboutmozilla. You can also subscribe to the email version.

Have a good week folks and keep rocking the Web!