November 2007

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Firefox 3 beta 1

November 20, 2007 in Apple, GNOME, Mozilla | 7 comments

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is available for download. Packed with new features, but carefully avoiding overwhelming users with complexity, this is a huge release for us and the Mozilla community. Awesomebar, new mac theme (as an add-on), Places and one click bookmarking, progress on a new Linux theme, improved SSL identity reporting, improved password manager, native form controls on both OSX and Linux, full page zooming and many other things. And that is just what you can see.

The platform is much improved. Overy 300 memory leak fixes, the XPCOM Cycle Collector which removes an entire class of leaks, ongoing work on memory fragmentation, improvements to rendering performance and better reliability in preserving user data.

This quote from an ars technica article sums things up well:

Firefox 3 beta 1 delivers an outstanding improvement to the user experience. Unlike Firefox 2, which was a bit light on new features, Firefox 3 is practically overflowing with shiny new goodies. [...] Despite delays and other setbacks, Firefox 3 is shaping up to be an outstanding web browser that delivers innovative new technologies while retaining Firefox’s signature ease of use.

Go get it.

different approaches

November 16, 2007 in Mozilla | 7 comments

There’s been a story that’s been echoing around this chamber we call the Internet that basically accuses Mozilla of ignoring 80% of our bugs in run-up to the release of Firefox 3. This is, of course, a deep misinterpretation of what was posted and other people have said a lot on this topic. But what I loved were the different approaches in building responses.

Mike posted something very shaverly that talked about the larger issues, how we’re focused on quality more than time, how the list in question contains more than just things that will keep us from shipping Firefox and generally try to educate people about what we might do as a project in the run-up to deliver a product. (Also a link in his post that tried to educate people about the origin of the modern calendar. Bonus!)

But I really loved Asa’s response which basically amounted to “I call bullshit.” Simple. Direct. Awesome.

I love that everyone has their own way to respond. My original approach was to go in an even different direction, but I love what these guys did so I’ll leave it at that.

day number one

November 13, 2007 in Mozilla | 4 comments

Today was my first full day of employment at the Mozilla Corporation. I’m of two minds right now: first, it’s exhilarating to be starting a new job. You never know exactly what it’s going to be like, even though you have mapped out a set of goals and ideas of what you’re role is going to be before you start. On the other hand, this feels eerily familiar just because I know all these people and I’ve been so closely tied to the organization since nearly its inception. It’s just strange to have things on my plate that directly affect the organization instead of working so indirectly from outside for so long. I’ll be able to feel the changes I drive in a very tangible and immediate fashion. I’m pretty excited about that.

One of the side effects of taking this role is that I’ve resigned my position on the Mozilla Corporation Board. I’ll really miss the chance to work so closely with Reid, John and Mitchell in that format. I will still get to work with John and Mitchell every day, of course, but it’s not in the same form. Of course, being able to affect things in a much more direct manner makes up for it, but I am still a little sad about it.

Onward to day number two!

memory usage in firefox and gecko

November 10, 2007 in GNOME, Mozilla | 56 comments

Update: If you got here because you just read an article about this issue, maybe you should just go read Stuart’s most recent post instead of this one.

For a long time there have been a lot of complaints about the memory usage in Firefox and anything else that used the Gecko engine. And looking at the numbers for what Firefox would use for memory, they seemed valid. But on the other side of the story, I know that the Mozilla team has been pretty diligent about fixing memory leak bugs. Allocations are tracked closely across checkins and leaks are fixed when they are discovered. So why the different perceptions for what people were seeing in the field and what the programmers were tracking during a development cycle?

As Mozilla starts down the path to running in the mobile space we are spending time looking at memory pressure issues more closely. Stuart and Vlad spent time looking at the behavior of the allocator during some simple tests and it sounds like the early data suggests that Mozilla really doesn’t leak that much memory at all. But it does thrash the allocator pretty hard and that’s what causes the perception of memory leaks. There’s a lot more information in Stuart’s post of course, including some good visualizations.

Over the next few months it will be very interesting to see what happens with both memory usage and perceived performance especially as we connect those numbers to a successful mobile strategy. I’m sure Stuart will continue to post updates as he goes along and as tools become available to be able to spread this work out to others. For those who are trying to use the engine from Firefox in a mobile device (like the Nokia N810, for example) this work will be very useful. Go Stuart!

awesome, dennis!

November 6, 2007 in Fedora, OLPC | No comments

Great news that Dennis Gilmore will be joining the OLPC team to help them out with builds. He will be a real asset to the team. His experience with the infrastructure inside of Fedora will really help with the OLPC team and various countries take advantage of everything that Fedora and that community has to offer.