Mozilla Calendar Project Blog Its about time for some news…

I am happy to report, that the 0.7 of Lightning and Sunbird has been completed and is now available via AMO and the Calendar Project website.

Just 1.5 weeks after our originally scheduled release date, Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 bring us a huge step closer to our 1.0 release, which we hope to release in 2008.

Notable improvements of this release are:

• It is now much easier to switch between the mail and calendar parts of Thunderbird thanks to a user interface redesign
• A redesigned event/task dialog has been enabled to gather feedback from the community. It offers a much cleaner user interface and additional functionality including:
  • Events/Tasks can be created in different timezones
  • Attendees can be added from a local or corporate LDAP directory
  • Free-Busy information is available for users of the Sun Java Calendar Server
  • Integrated display of recurrence patterns, reminders and attendees
  • Custom recurrences and reminders
  • Clear separation between tasks and events
• The new event summary dialog lists all the details of tasks and events for calendar which are read-only
• The Today Pane gives a quick overview over your current tasks and upcoming events. The Today Pane can be enabled/disabled by a toolbar button
• Colliding events (events in the same time slot) are shrunk so that they fit into the display of a day. This no longer affects other events on the same day
• Localized releases of Lightning and Sunbird in Chinese (simplified), Georgian, Lithuanian, Portuguese (European), Spanish (Argentina) and Turkish
• A full list of changes that have gone into this release can be found on The Rumbling Edge website

Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 are available for Windows, Mac OS X (universal builds) and Linux in 27 different languages including English.

Please use the following links to download the release:

• Lightning 0.7 (fully localized for 27 languages)
• Sunbird 0.7 in English or
  other languages

Please read the release notes for Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 before downloading.

Thank you again to all our developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters. We would not be able to do this without your assistance!

UPDATE: We have heard reports, that after upgrading Lightning to 0.7 all tasks and events are no longer displayed. To get your tasks and events back, switch to Calendar Mode using the toolbar button below the folder pane and ensure that all your calendars are marked as visible.

Very late during our test cycle we found one bug that is serious enough to warrant an RC3. It is bug 400407. Thanks to the help of Nick Thomas (cf) from Mozilla IT we have a patch ready, but are waiting on some
of the comments to be addressed before checking it in.

We also said that if we spun an RC3 we would take bug 385155, since it is serious enough to need fixing in 0.7 and is a very low risk change. The patch for bug 385155 has already been checked in.

We should get the RC3 to you as soon as possible. Hopefully, it will be available Monday or Tuesday.

We’re almost there!

We have just released Lightning & Sunbird 0.7 RC2 two weeks after we released our first release candidate (RC1). The RC2 is available in 27 languages (including English) for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (Universal).

The RC2 contains the following fixes that were added after the RC1:

• Bug 375390:
  New event boxes appear too large in month/multiweek view
• Bug 397642:
  stale agenda update
• Bug 398046:
  Add Turkish as an officially supported language
• Bug 398278:
  Superfluous freebusy debug messages in javascript console
• Bug 398303:
  Attendee preview is broken in new event summary dialog
• Bug 399433:
  Automatic scrolling feature doesn’t work when searching for the next free meeting slot
• Bug 399616:
  Event on daylight saving time start or end day shows incorrect hour in day and week view
• Bug 399780:
  Automatic reminders for tasks not taken into account if no day has been selected

Here’s where to get your hands on the RC:

• Lightning 0.7 RC2 (Scroll down to the pre-release section)
• Sunbird 0.7 RC2 in English (Scroll down to the pre-release section)
• Sunbird 0.7 RC2 in all other languages (Scroll down to the pre-release section)

After finishing RC2 we’re holding a community test day tomorrow (Thursday, October 18th). We need you to tell us, if Lightning and Sunbird are ready for release, or if our developers have to fix some so far unknown bugs. So, join us in #calendar-qa on Thursday. All the information on the test day is in our Test Day Wiki Page.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this release. And, an even bigger thank you to everyone who has waited for us to release it. Thanks!

Happy 0.7!

The 0.7 RC1 has been out for a few days and has already been downloaded a few thousand times. We have already taken a few additional fixes, which will be in the next RC and are detailed below:

• Bug 375390:
  New event boxes appear too large in month/multiweek view
• Bug 397642:
  stale agenda update
• Bug 398278:
  Superfluous freebusy debug messages in javascript console
• Bug 398303:
  Attendee preview is broken in new event summary dialog

I also want to remind you of the community test day tomorrow on Tuesday, October 9th. We need you to tell us, if Lightning and Sunbird are ready for release, or if our developers have to fix some so far unknown bugs. Also the localized versions of Lightning and Sunbird need to be checked for completeness and correctness. So, join us in #calendar-qa on irc.mozilla.org tomorrow.

Two weeks ago, Philipp (Fallen) and I went to the CalConnect RoundTable 10. (yeah, this post is a little overdue). The interoperability testing segment of the conference gave us a chance to pit Lightning and Sunbird against several CalDav servers. We tested it against Oracle Calendar Server, Apple’s Leopard iCal Server, Bedework Calendar, Chandler Hub (Cosmo), and Kerio Calendar Server. We had a few glitches here and there, but we came out looking OK. The most obvious items we are missing are CalDav scheduling and Free Busy support.

Since iCalendar (RFC 2445) is now in its final draft, we also tested some of the differences in the latest version of the specification with our software, to ensure we interpret it properly. Not surprisingly, we had a few issues here with specialized iTIP responses that no longer need to have either a DTSTART or DTEND property. There is also bug 393414, but that had been reported some time ago. Happily, Lightning and Sunbird supported most of these new features, but it demonstrated to me a huge hole in our testing — more on that in a moment.

At the actual roundtable part of the conference, we discussed VALARMs (among other things). RFC 2445 doesn’t give a clear picture of how these should be handled, so we (us and several other members) are drafting an extension to the specification which will give some guidance on how VALARM objects should be used.

There are lots of questions that need to be addressed:

• How do you annotate a snoozed alarm? What happens if you move the snoozed alarm? Is it remind me in 5 mintues, or remind me 5 minutes before the event?
• How do you handle alarms on shared calendars? On remote calendars?
• How to determine when an alarm was acknowledged? There was some agreement that we should standardize our X-MOZ-LASTACK property to carry this information.

I’d like to give you a chance to give us your feedback on how our alarms can be improved (both in ICS and in the UI). Please append your thoughts to this page that Chiller2 started for us.

More than anything, this conference demonstrated to me our dire lack of test automation. This is incredibly important as many changes are now occurring to the iTIP RFC (RFC 2446) which is going to be a crucial feature in 0.8.

Unfortunately, all the calendar team members are doing everything they can to continue making forward progress. We really need help in order to do any kind of meaningful automation. So, we have decided to host an Automated Test Summit some time after we ship 0.7.

In keeping with calendar tradition, we intend to make this event open and accessible to everyone. We (and hopefully many of you) will teach people the basic skills they need to write simple, Javascript-based automated tests.

In order to get this Summit off the ground, we desperately need you. I mean we need everyone. We need people who don’t know Javascript. They will be our first editors. We need people who know how to teach and present. They will find the perfect style of online presentation for this. We need javascript programmers. They will craft the details of the training materials. We need writers. They will make those materials easy to follow and entertaining. If you’ve ever wanted to get involved and didn’t know how, here is your opportunity.

We started the Calendar-QA team with a “Testcase Writing Day” that many said was doomed to fail. It didn’t fail. It succeeded because so many of you made it happen. Once again, we have the opportunity to do what no one has done before. We can hold an online Automated Test Summit and set another standard of excellence for this project by breaking new ground in the online world.

Are you with us? If you want to get involved, ping either mschroeder or me (ctalbert) on IRC (#calendar, #calendar-qa), leave a comment on this blog, send me an email. Let us know. We’ll post more details here as our plans take shape.

And…Don’t forget about the 0.7 Release Candidate Test Day on Tuesday, October 9!!!!

I come with good news, the first 0.7 release candidate (RC1) is ready! We have the Sunbird RC’s for all our supported locales (26 including English) as well as the Lightning RC’s for all our supported locales AND a Lightning Universal Mac build.

Here’s where to get your hands on the RC:

• Lightning 0.7 RC1 (Scroll down to the pre-release section)
• Sunbird 0.7 RC1 in English (Scroll down to the pre-release section)
• Sunbird 0.7 RC1 in all other languages (Scroll down to the pre-release section)

After finishing RC1 we’re holding a community test day next Tuesday, October 9th. We need you to tell us, if Lightning and Sunbird are ready for release, or if our developers have to fix some so far unknown bugs. Still a long list of bugs fixed since the release of 0.5 waits to be verified fixed, and the localized versions of Lightning and Sunbird need to be checked for completeness and correctness. So, join us in #calendar-qa on Tuesday. All the information on the test day is in our Test Day Wiki Page.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this release. And, an even bigger thank you to everyone who has waited for us to release it. Thanks!

Happy 0.7!