17
Jul 09

Automating Calendar Testing

As Simon noted, our esteemed Estonian localizer, Merike Sell, is working on automating testing for the Calendar Project. Specifically, she is writing Mozmill tests for Lightning.

Mozmill is a new UI automation tool for the Mozilla Platform. Mozmill can run either as an extension or as a command-line tool. So, once Merike finishes her tests, we will begin running these via command line, and having them automatically report their results either to the Calendar Tinderbox or some place else (It’s up to the team).

The first step is to automate the basic smoke tests that we would normally run on a lightning build to be sure that everything is functioning properly. After that, she will move on to writing tests for more complicated scenarios such as recurring events, meeting appointments, and timezones so that we can be certain those critical areas are free from regressions.

We hope that Merike’s valiant attempts to tame the uncharted jungle of calendar test automation will help others to follow in her path. Her tests are stellar examples of Mozmill tests, and they create a perfect starting point for anyone who would like to learn how to write these types of tests. We are looking forward to a great summer of automation.


17
Jul 09

Donations update – How we spend our money

It’s been three months since I last posted a donations update. And it’s more than time to update our community on the current state of things, because two exciting things have happened or are about to happen.

  1. Back in April we had accumulated roughly 1150$ of donations and we were heavily contemplating what to do with it. At the same time, a long-term localization contributor, Merike Sell, offered to create an automated testing framework for the calendar applications as part of Google’s Summer of Code. Unfortunately the project was not accepted (only a few of the dozens of worthy projects were accepted by Google), but the offer was too good to let it slip.

    So we decided to use our money to fund Merike’s project outside of Google’s summer of code. Unfortunately our money was not enough to fund Merike for the three months period, but David Ascher (CEO of Mozilla Messaging) graciously agreed to cover the remaining 3350$.

    Merike is already hard at work. You can watch her progress in Bug 500469. Her mentor, Clint Talbert, will post an introductory posting explaining the overall goal of her project. And hopefully Merike will post here as well with a short introductory post and a status update once in a while.

  2. The mozilla.org add-ons site has finally introduced the possibility to ask for donations (or contributions as they call them) directly on the add-on page of each participating add-on. The Calendar Project to participate in this program in the hope of increasing its donations through this avenue. Let me state clearly that these donations/contributions will be optional.

Let me close by aying “thank you” to everybody who has donated to the Calendar Project so far and to everyone who is planning on doing this in the future. As you can see, these donations can really do some good, so donate now!


14
Jul 09

Announcing Lightning “Inverse Edition” 0.9.5

Our friends over at Inverse are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Lightning “Inverse Edition” v0.9.5. This is a maintenance release of Mozilla Lightning based on our 0.9 release which focuses on stability and includes many bug fixes, several small enhancements and some new features of the upcoming Mozilla Lightning 1.0 extension.

What is Lightning “Inverse Edition”

The Inverse Edition of Mozilla Lightning is based on the last official release for Mozilla Thunderbird 2 from the Mozilla Calendar project – which is 0.9. Inverse’s strong desire to continue supporting and improving Lightning for Thunderbird 2 consists on the following activities:

  • Backporting bug fixes or security fixes from upstream versions
  • Backporting important features from upstream versions
  • Improving Lightning and sending contributions for the upstream versions

It is important to note that this is neither a fork nor an official release from the Mozilla Calendar Project. Also, keep in mind that the Inverse Edition of Lightning is not supported by the Calendar Project. Support is rather provided directly by Inverse.

Getting Lightning “Inverse Edition”

The “Inverse Edition” of Mozilla Lightning can be downloaded from this page:

http://www.scalableogo.org/downloads/frontends.html

You can also download the sources by following the instructions on this page:

http://www.scalableogo.org/development/source_code.html

Getting Support

For any questions, please do contact Inverse directly by writing an email to: support@inverse.ca.

Continue reading →


14
Jul 09

[July 14, 2009] Lightning/Sunbird Status Update

Three weeks after the last status update, it’s time for another. We’re hard at work to finally get our next release (1.0 beta) out of the door for Lightning and Sunbird. Over the last three weeks we have fixed 12 bugs, which are listed below.

  • Bug 392021: Event dialog: Option to delete event/task
  • Bug 413594: move alarm indication icon to the extreme right
  • Bug 431126: Revise calIItipTransport::defaultIdentity
  • Bug 435168: New Calendar Wizard shows empty focus box next to “Show Alarms” check box
  • Bug 455281: Color of drag-and-drop shadow in day/week and multiweek/month view is different
  • Bug 459478: Tooltips in main view don’t work anymore
  • Bug 460967: Sorting of tasks to their title in the task-tree is not working
  • Bug 483582: Multiple requests for master password on startup of Sunbird
  • Bug 485912: Recurring events with monthly rule: “every” + “day of the month” show wrong recurrence summary
  • Bug 499542: View menu entries Rotate View and Workweek Days Only are always disabled
  • Bug 500488: Can’t open Calendar and Tasks tabs; adopt Lightning to openTab API changes in Bug 467768
  • Bug 500908: Find events button keeps its own state and may work invertedly

As always, our thanks go to all developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters that have made this possible.