Lightning — 2 comments
05
Dec 10

Migrating the Lightning help documentation to the Mozilla Messaging Support Knowledge Base

In our last blog post we were asking for help with migrating all support documentation from the Mozilla Wiki to Mozilla Messaging’s Knowledge Base.

Unfortunately the traffic in the #calendar-website channel was quite low, or in other words: we didn’t get any help, so the migration process took us a bit longer than we’ve expected – but we’re finally done! :-)

The calendar website team was checking, updating and migrating all articles and we’re happy to announce that users who need help with Lightning can use the Mozilla Messaging Support KB!

You can view a list of all Lightning articles here.

–The calendar website team
(Tobbi, Jan, TMZ)

QA — 9 comments
04
Dec 10

Lightning 1.0b3pre now with numerous improvements

If you have been using Lightning 1.0b3pre nightlies, you’ve been missing out on a number of fixed bugs and new features. This is because we’ve been concentrating on making Lightning work with trunk (the newest comm-central/mozilla-central code).

Although not finally decided, the next Thunderbird version is likely to be from the more stable comm-1.9.2/mozilla-1.9.2 branch. Therefore we have now backported all relevant patches to the comm-1.9.2 branch, giving you the chance to see what the next version will be like. If you are wondering why this hasn’t happened before, it is important that bugs are fixed on trunk first. Otherwise it may happen that a future version loses features and bugfixes a previous release contained, due to problems while porting the code.

The Calendar Team would really appreciate if you could give this nightly a spin, especially if you are maybe using your own calendar server, or maybe one that is not so common. The earlier you test this version, the more likely it is that the 1.0b3 release will not contain bugs that make it unusable for you.

If you haven’t yet downloaded Lightning 1.0b3pre, make sure you have a copy of Thunderbird 3.1 and get Lightning here. If you encounter any bugs be sure to search first. If you can’t find a matching report then file a new one. Please also note which version of Thunderbird/Lightning you are using.

Note: The list of bugs that were fixed, which includes the new features can be found here.

QA — Comments Off on Helpers wanted: Migrating calendar software documentation to the SUMOMO KB
24
Nov 10

Helpers wanted: Migrating calendar software documentation to the SUMOMO KB

Dear Calendar community,

This Friday between 7am – 2pm PST we are going to begin migrating the Calendar software documentation to the SUMOMO KB – and we need your help!

Helping is really simple. Connect to our IRC server (irc.mozilla.org) and join #calendar-website – for the migration backchannel.

All you need is:

  • An IRC client (or simply click HERE)
  • A support.mozillamessaging.com account, if you don’t have one, create one here
  • Time and patience
  • Lightning installed is a plus

    • What are we going to do?
    We need your help porting over all the existant help articles on wiki.mozilla.org to support.mozillamessaging.com. Many of the articles are outdated, so it would be great if you could help us check all of the steps mentioned are correct then before migration and  This includes updating the screenshots.

    Once all the articles are ported over, we will send a invitation to the localization community to help us with localizing the articles into other languages.

    Thanks in advance!

    –The calendar website team
    (Tobias Markus, Tom Ellins, Jan Bambach)

    Project Updates — 3 comments
    23
    Nov 10

    Recent Rumors Cleaned Up

    In a recent blog post, some rumors have emerged. Partially this is due to bad wording on our side, so I’d like to straighten things out here.

    • “Since we never leave our users with one outdated version of Sunbird, we always give Sunbird new updates with new cool features and bugfixes.” – This is plain wrong, we are not actively working on Sunbird. Nevertheless, due to a shared codebase between Sunbird and Lightning, users who build Sunbird on their own might still profit from some changes. The sentence was corrected in the original blog post.
    • Philipp writes all the blog posts here – Nope, please take a close look at the Author. We now have great support from Jan, Tobbi, and TMZ. I unfortunately don’t get notified about comments on blog posts I don’t write, so I didn’t have a chance to answer via comment. Sorry about that!
    • The latest version of Sunbird is 1.0 beta 2 – Although the folder structure on the ftp server might suggest this, the latest version of Sunbird is still 1.0b1. The naming of that folder is merely an artifact of the release automation used for Lightning 1.0b2. There were no Sunbird builds produced and promoted during that Lightning release.
    Project Updates — 9 comments
    08
    Nov 10

    Bringing your Calendar to the Web, Part 1: Introduction

    Lately, I’ve been exploring some new ideas on how to attract new users and maybe also developers. There are many people out there that prefer using a web-based calendar, which is fine, but I believe they can find added value by storing their data locally.

    Surfing the web, you probably make a lot of contact with calendar related websites. The most obvious is a web-based calendar like Google or Yahoo Calendar. But there is actually a lot more. Have you ever used a short-term scheduling service like doodle.de or tungle.me ? Or to go one step further, you’ve surely visited a site that contains a massive amount of calendar data, for example local event sites like eventful.com or upcoming.yahoo.com.

    So what happens when you visit a scheduling site? You’ve probably been invited to participate by a friend. So you look at the site to see what times are suggested. Then you switch back to your calendar to see if you have time. Then you switch back to the site and after a few clicks you have set up your availability. But then you forgot to check for the next week. You see whats going on here? You are switching back and forwards, wasting a lot of time. If you could allow the site to access your calendar, you could see all the data in one place, no need for switching to your calendar application or website. The same goes for upcoming events. If you’re looking for a nice concert to go to, it would be swell to know if you are free on those days.

    This post is the start of a series, I will be posting more about this topic soon. Next up I will be writing in more detail about the possible consumers of your calendar data. Please stay tuned, you are welcome to leave your feedback and ideas.

    Lightning / Sunbird — 19 comments
    05
    Nov 10

    The growth of our download numbers and active users

    About one month ago we shared our download numbers and we announced the majority of the lightning users are on Thunderbird 3.x. The numbers showed that roughly 75% of our users now used a Thunderbird 3.x. During the last month some things have changed: Even more users have downloaded lightning for Thunderbird and the number of users who use Thunderbird 3.1 has grown.

    In this chart you can see that most users are still using Thunderbird 3.0, but the number of users who use Thunderbird 3.1 is steadily growing and it will lead very soon. The number of Lightning users on Thunderbird 3.1 has been growing very fast in the last two months, which shows that Lightning is a great add-on and people just love it as much as we do.
    While the number of Thunderbird 3.1 users is growing, the number of Thunderbird 3.0 users has literally collapsed, although the number of Thunderbird 2.0 users is going down very slowly.

    Chart

    In this chart you can see the active daily users of Lightning on Thunderbird. You can see, that the number is still growing, but in the last few weeks the number has been falling a little bit.
    Chart

    That’s all about Lightning – let us move on to Sunbird!

    In this chart you can see the active daily Sunbird users. The average is still moving up, but earlier last month the number was moving down for some weeks. This chart explains itself pretty well, so let us move on again…
    Chart

    Sometimes people are still using an outdated version of Sunbird. Although the development of Sunbird has stopped, you are still able to update Sunbird. Now, you may ask how much the daily growth of updates is. In this chart you can clearly see that the numbers are really random…
    Chart

    So, let us finally compare the download growth of Lightning and Sunbird.
    You can clearly see that we got more Lightning users on Thunderbird than Sunbird users. While the number of Lightning users is still growing, Sunbird is almost dying. In the 35-day moving average you can see that the download number was rising for a short while, but suddently just dropped again.
    Chart

    Now, what do these numbers mean for us, the calendar software and its future?
    To find this out, you need to have some different angles of view on the download numbers: The future of Lightning seems really good so far, while the future of Sunbird looks very dark. But what have we learned from this? Well, we learned lots of things, for example that some users don’t want to use an application for mail and for calendar – they don’t want to use more than one program, they want to use an add-on that brings the calendar-function to Thunderbird, an awesome mail client, while some users prefer using multiple applications.
    We also learned that people really like to have the latest version of software installed, although some people just want to stay on the old versions.

    The future of our calendar software seems obvious, but even if you take a closer look at it you can’t really predict what the numbers will look like…

    Lightning — 12 comments
    11
    Oct 10

    Lightning 1.0b3 Release Planning

    As you may have noticed, that blog posts are not as common as they were before. This doesn’t mean that development has slowed down, but as you may remember, Simon has reduced his work on the project to an absolute minimum, due to job and real life restrictions.

    Nevertheless, we are working as hard as we can to get the next release out of the door. If you are currently testing a 1.9.2 branch nightly (labeled as 1.0b3pre), you will not have noticed any improvements over 1.0b2 yet. Our current work has happened on comm-central (labeled 1.1a1pre, this is not the final version number though), which uses the latest version of the Mozilla Platform. Mozilla has done loads of changes to the platform with far-reaching consequences for the Calendar Project. We’ve decided to follow these issues to reduce the work needed later on.

    We’ve also been working on lots of new features and bugfixes though and will be porting our fixes to the 1.9.2 branch very soon. If you’d like to see the list of fixes beforehand, check out this link.

    We haven’t decided on a firm release date yet, but our goal is to release 1.0b3 towards the end of the year. Currently, there are 22 bugs left to fix for the release. 6 of them are in review and I’m confident that we’ll be able to fix the others soon.

    But what can you do to help us towards the release? Yes, exactly! Testing! There is no way we can make a stable release without the help of our testing community. If you’d like to help out, you have two options:

    • Testing for adventurers: You’re up for a challenge? You make regular backups of your calendar data? Then this is for you! You’ll need the latest nightly of Thunderbird from comm-central, together with the latest nightly of Lightning from comm-central. Be sure to create a full backup of your Profile.
    • Testing with some safety ropes: You’d like some safety? Maybe you don’t want to upgrade your Thunderbird just yet? Thats fine too, but you’ll have to bear with us! Use your stock Thunderbird 3.1 together with a nightly version of Lightning from comm-1.9.2. Currently, this version doesn’t bring much advantage over the 1.0b2 release, but we will soon be porting patches so that you can take advantage of the new fixes. Note you should be backing up your profile in this case too, but its a lot less likely that something will break.

    In any case, be sure to check out the Lightning Nightly Updater Extension to make sure you’re getting the newest testing version(s) on a daily basis

    .

    Thank you for your help and remember: We can’t do it without you!

    Lightning — 11 comments
    02
    Sep 10

    Lightning on the Shiny new Try Server

    After reading about Thunderbird getting a new Try Server, I thought it would be nice if the same would be possible for Lightning. After just a few failed builds, I successfully built Lightning using the Try Server and had a lightning.xpi uploaded to the right target directory.

    If you want to try this on your own, you need a hg account and this patch file. Note also that you should be using mercurial queues. This not only makes managing multiple patches easier, it also makes using the Try Server a piece of cake.

    1. Set up your ~/.hgrc. This is not strictly needed, but makes life easier. Add the following lines: 
      [alias]
push-to-try = push -f ssh://hg.mozilla.org/try-comm-central

      This will allow you to simply start a try build by calling hg push-to-try

    2. Get the calendar tryserver patch and import it into your mercurial queue. 
      hg qimport -n tryserver-calendar.diff https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=471566
    3. Apply (with hg qpush) any amount of patches that you’d like to test.
    4. Call hg push-to-try (yes, with all those patches applied to your tree!)

    Thats all! If you want to watch your progress, see the Thunderbird Try Tinderbox. You will get email when your builds have completed, together with a link to the ready built lightning.xpi. Thunderbird files will not be uploaded.

    For more information on the Tryserver, especially on how to exclude certain platforms or provide extra mozconfig options, please read the Thunderbird TryServer Guide or the Firefox TryServer Guide.

    Lightning — 10 comments
    02
    Sep 10

    How are Lightning users doing in terms of Thunderbird usage

    Six month ago, I shared our usage statistics for Lightning with you, which showed that Lightning users on Thunderbird 3.x had surpassed Lightning users on Thunderbird 2.x for the first time.

    Now it’s time to look at things again and I’m happy to report, that as of yesterday roughly 75% of our users now use a Thunderbird 3.x build as can be seen in the chart below.

    It’s also important to note that nearly 60% are already using the latest Thunderbird 3.1.x builds, while users of the old Thunderbird 3.0.x series are decreasing fast. This is mostly due to the major update offers of Mozilla Messaging for users of Thunderbird 3.0.x.

    Major update offers have recently (last week) also started for users of Thunderbird 2.x, but haven’t really been unthrottled yet (throttling means, that currently only 1 in 5 users of TB2 gets a major update offer to Thunderbird 3.1.x). Once major update offers go out to every TB2 user, we expect their numbers to decrease much more heavily. The current state of things (showing the last six months) can be seen in the chart below:

    As frequently noted in earlier articles, the ratio of Thunderbird 3.0.x and TB 3.1.x users is much higher on the weekends compared to the Thunderbird 2 users. The graphs show that very well.

    For those interested: The “other” number contains users on older Thunderbird 1.5.x builds, SeaMonkey users and users, who have mistakenly tried to install Lightning into Firefox. Generally that number always fluctuates between 0.35% and 0.5% of our total active users.

    I hope that you will find this as interesting as I do.

    Localization — 6 comments
    30
    Aug 10

    Resignation from the Calendar Project

    Hi everyone,
    it’s really hard for me, but I’ve decided to resign from my different roles in The Calendar Project (mainly as webmaster and l10n contact) as of today (Monday).
    Within the last six months it has become clear to me, that I’m not able to do the job adequately anymore, as my time has been more and more occupied with matters related to my private life and my day job. Therefore I’ve not been able to dedicate as much volunteer
    time to this role as I would have liked or hoped.
    I don’t want to fill a role any longer, where I’m not satisfied with my performance and where a motivated person with more time on his/her hands could really make the difference, that I can’t make anymore.
    I’m currently working with Philipp, our lead developer, on a transition plan. Once a new person takes over, I’ll make sure to be available and help him/her with ramping up in the new role. If anybody is interested in picking up some or all of this work, we (meaning Philipp or me) would love to talk to you.
    I’ve written up a list of things, that I’ve performed regularly in this role to give people an impression of what’s involved. The list is available here.
    In my eyes, the Calendar Project is a project, where one person can really make a difference, unlike in large projects as Firefox, where the impact of one person is often just a drop in the sea. So please get in touch!
    It’s been a real pleasure working with all of you
    PS: I will also resign from my role as Thunderbird l10n contact. Please see this blog post for more information.

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