Today the Mozilla Labs team announced its Test Pilot platform is opening with the release of the first Test Pilot add-on for Firefox 3.5. They are looking for Firefox users of all levels of skill and technical knowledge to help improve Firefox and Labs experiments.
The Mozilla Labs teams explains the project further in its blog post, excerpted below:
Test Pilot is an opt-in program that everyone on the Web can join to improve the Web experience by participating in usability related tests.
As a Test Pilot, you will not only be able to try out the newest features and user interface ideas before anyone else, but also see and learn how those results may contribute back to the product design.
For now, we will start the Test Pilot program with a survey to understand what type of Web users this pilot community represents. Soon, we will roll out the first tests on specific Firefox features and other Mozilla Labs experiments.
Visit the Mozilla Labs site to learn more about joining the Test Pilot team and see how you can get involved.
Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.5.x and 3.0.x users on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.2 and Firefox 3.0.13 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:
We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 3.5.2 Release Notes and the Firefox 3.0.13 Release Notes.
Note: All Firefox 3.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.5.2 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
Today Mozilla Labs announced its Personas gallery has reached 20,000 designs! Since its launch on March 31st, the Personas experiment has provided people with easy-to-style, easy-to-share “skins” for your Firefox browser. The results have been inspiring. Since the launch, Personas has been downloaded by nearly 7 million people, who have now have access to designs from more than 10,000 artists.
For more information see the Mozilla Labs blog post, and learn what’s in store for Personas in the future.
Editor’s note: The Bugzilla Project released Bugzilla 3.4 on Tuesday, July 28, 2009. Check out the official announcement for more details.
The Bugzilla Project released Bugzilla 3.4, which brings a lot of great enhancements for Bugzilla over previous versions, with various improvements to the user interface, lots of interesting new features, and many long-standing requests finally being addressed.
The release contains many new features, including:
- A greatly-simplified bug-filing page.
- A new front page for Bugzilla.
- Users’ email addresses are now hidden from logged-out users (helps prevent users receiving spam)
- Emails can be sent in the background (which greatly speeds up editing bugs)
- URLs of searches are now much shorter, so they can be more easily shared.
- Exciting new custom field enhancements
- A field that allows you to refer to bugs in other Bugzillas.
For complete details on all the new features, check out the release notes. If you’re upgrading, make sure to read Notes On Upgrading From a Previous Version. If you are upgrading from a release before 3.2, make sure to read the release notes for all the previous versions in between your version and this one, particularly the Upgrading section of each version’s release notes.
Check out Max Kanat-Alexander’s blog, one of the main developers in the Bugzilla Project, for more information on the release.
Today Mozilla Labs announced the release of Jetpack 0.4. The release is closely aligned with Mozilla’s goal of enabling open video and audio on the Web, and includes experimental support for recording audio directly to Ogg-Vorbis. These new audio encoding APIs will allow developers to build Jetpacks that record high-quality audio directly from within the browser, which can then be played back using Firefox 3.5’s new audio tag support.
To learn more about what’s new, see the Mozilla Labs blog post, excerpted below:
Hot on the tail of the Firefox 3.5 release, Jetpack is adding the ability to record audio directly to Ogg-Vorbis format on all major platforms (i.e. Windows, Mac, and Linux). Firefox 3.5 added the ability to play sound with the audio tag, and now you can record it. Live streaming coming soon. Check out the Voice Memo demo which lets you annotate any webpage you are looking at with your voice. You can also check out the Audio Recording API documentation.
Additionally this release enables the ability for developers to add features or functionality to any website being viewed in the browser using the “page mod” API Jetpack discussion group.
To learn more how to get involved in the Jetpack project, visit the Jetpack discussion group.
Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.5.x users on Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 6:34 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.
As part of the Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing security and stability process, Firefox 3.5.1 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users as a free download from www.firefox.com.
We strongly recommend that all Firefox 3.5 users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
For a list of changes and more information, please see the Firefox 3.5.1 release notes.
Please note: If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3.5 by downloading Firefox 3.5.1 from www.firefox.com.
Today the Firefox Add-ons team announces the pilot release of its “Contributions” program. Contributions will give developers the opportunity to request an optional dollar amount for their Firefox Add-on. Along with requesting this amount, Mozilla is helping developers tell their stories with its new “About the Developer” pages, which explain to prospective contributors the motivations for creating an add-on and its future road map. Since contributions are completely optional, users will have ample time to evaluate an add-on to determine whether or not they want to help a developer.
Mozilla will be working with PayPal on this initial pilot to provide a secure and international solution for facilitating payments. Developers can optionally create a PayPal ID for each of their Firefox Add-ons. Users will be presented with a “Contribute” button that gives them the option of paying the suggested amount or a different amount.
Add-ons Director Nick Nguyen explains more in his blog post, excerpted below:
Our aim with this pilot is to help support a growing ecosystem by providing our users with the opportunity to support their favorite add-on developers. We’re asking for feedback from our community to drive the future of this pilot and we look forward to learning as much as we can.
For more details on Contributions, please see the blog post FAQ. The Add-ons team will be evaluating this pilot as they receive feedback to incorporate into future revisions. To share your thoughts and ideas, please contribute via the AMO newsgroup.
The Mozilla Labs team has announced the release of Jetpack 0.3. Jetpack 0.3 focuses on adding some new abilities, as well as continuing to refine existing APIs. The Project now has more than 60,000 people who have the Jetpack platform extending their browsing experience, with many of these Jetpacks have been written by first-time extension developers.
New features include selections and clipboard. To learn more, visit the Mozilla Labs blog post, excerpted below:
Selections:
One common design pattern in Jetpacks has been performing an action on or upon a selection. For example, looking up a selected word on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, getting the currently selected text, or figuring out when a selection has occurred used to be far easier said than done. Now it’s super simple. Take a look at the demo and API documentation.
Clipboard:
You can now get and set text from the system clipboard. Check out the demo and the API documentation.
Updates to existing features include improvements to the slide bar, persistent storage, and look and feel.
Today the Personas team launched a new “Film” category for Personas, which includes exciting art from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. To learn more see the Mozilla Labs blog post, excerpted below:
Over the past three months, Personas has been downloaded more 6 million times, while the community gallery has welcomed nearly 17,000 designs, including art from popular brands like Greenpeace, BCBG, All American Rejects, No Doubt, and the White Sox.
Today, the Personas gallery launches a “Film” category with designs from the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which releases in the U.S. theaters on July 15th. To wear these designs on your browser, click here.
For more information on you can create your own Persona, click here.
Today the Mozilla Labs team released a major upgrade to the Ubiquity project with Ubiquity 0.5. The release focuses on making the instructions you give to Ubiquity feel more natural and human, as well as bringing Ubiquity’s power to many more languages. For more information and to learn how you can download and get involved in the project, read the Mozilla Labs blog post, excerpted below:
This new release brings:
* The first internationalized Ubiquity, where even non-coders can help bring Ubiquity to their language
* A more natural, human, and robust way to give Ubiquity instructions.
* A new, game-inspired interactive tutorial.
* Experimental smart suggestions: type “pasta” and Ubiquity recommends Yelp. (This feature needs to be enabled on the Ubiquity settings settings page).
You can also check out Planet Ubiquity for the latest and greatest Ubiquity happenings.
