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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Bug Week 146

Posted by michael from the black-flag dept.
Gerv writes: "Do you run Mozilla? Is there something about Mozilla that bugs you? Do you have an itch you want to scratch? From Saturday October 27th to Sunday November 4th, mozilla.org will be running a "Bug Week". Experienced Mozilla hackers will be available to help anyone who wants to get involved with the Mozilla code. Engineers from companies using Mozilla or Mozilla technologies, interested onlookers, and those who are involved with the project, but have never hacked on the code, are all welcome to come along and get their feet wet."

Gerv continues:

"You'll be shown round our world-class web-based tools (Bugzilla, Bonsai, Tinderbox, LXR), and led through all the steps between discovering a problem and having your patch checked in to the Mozilla source tree. After checkin, those fixes and features will be appreciated by an audience of millions in Mozilla derivative products.

Not Just For Hardcore Hackers

"Mozilla's user interface is written in web technologies - defined in XUL (XML-based User-interface Language), animated with JavaScript and styled with Cascading Style Sheets. This means it can be understood, and hacked on, by anyone who understands HTML/XML, JS and Style Sheets. mozilla.org has recently developed technology to allow fixes to be made to Mozilla's UI without the need to compile Mozilla - all you need is a self-installing nightly build. This widens the field of potential contributors to everyone who's ever made a decent web page.

"So, if you have thought about getting involved in a free software project, but it all seemed to complicated or difficult, here's your chance.

"On the other hand, if you want to check the entire source tree out from CVS, compile the embedding test harness, and go into deep hack mode on Mozilla's C++ core, we'll help you do that too.

"Bug Week will be happening on IRC. Mozilla's nightly builds even include a chat client, ChatZilla, to make it even easier to participate. Look for people whose nicks begin with "BW_". We hope to have people there most of the time, although the help may be concentrated when the US West Coast or Europe is awake."
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Mozilla Bug Week More

Mozilla Bug Week

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  • Bugzilla (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27, 2001 @09:26AM (#2487164)

    Rather than just ranting and raving about your pet peeve, you should rant, rave AND enter it into Bugzilla [mozilla.org] (after ascertaining that it isn't already in there).

    Subnote: Don't directly link to individual bugs in slashdot comments. It causes spam when people add ME TOOs as comments.

    (Hey, mod this anonymous bugzilla pointer post up, not the various karma whores to follow.)

    • Actually, I'm glad that you brought that up.

      Bugzilla is way too involved for public use. If I'm going to stick a toe in the water, I want my first interaction to be very simple, and rewarding. And [hint] everybody feels this way about new things.

      1. Bugzilla has a million fields to fill out. Wanna know why the major search engines are so popular? one text box to fill, press Submit and voila, you might have your answer right there. Wanna know why email is so popular: To, Subject, Body, and then From defaults itself. And half the time, I can't even think of a Subject. Bugzilla needs to be this easy, or I and thousands of others will not use it [don't blame the messenger]. I don't know if my thought is already in the database, so I'll be damned if I'm going to fill out forms all day.

        And if something does seem important enough for me to put in, I recall being asked a bunch of precious little questions where I was supposed to qualify, characterize, topicalize, and quantify on scales that seemed entirely random. At least, they should put in a "cowboyneal" choice.

      • Re:Bugzilla (Score:2, Informative)

        by grahams ( 5366 )
        Bugzilla is way too involved for public use. If I'm going to stick a toe in the water, I want my first interaction to be very simple, and rewarding.

        You should use the Bugzilla Helper [mozilla.org], which still has a few fields (many less than the main bug entry page), but they are mostly necessary for a bug tracking package... You would never get it down to one field. :)

        This helper form simplifies the bug submission process and describes every field fully. You may complain that that there are still too many fields on this form, but I would argue that they are all pretty necessary for a good bug report.

    • Re:Bugzilla (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tsk ( 2863 )
      Rather than just ranting and raving about your pet peeve, you should rant, rave AND enter it into Bugzilla [mozilla.org] (after ascertaining that it isn't already in there).

      That's exactly (i think) why mozilla.org is hosting such event. If you read the weekly mozilla status [mozilla.org], you'll often read that what mozilla.org's dev tend to do most is triaging their bugs in bugzilla, once bug are targeted and assigned they can start working on finding an norrowing the bugs and coding the fixes. For most of these steps you'll find information on mozilla.org's web site [mozilla.org]. You'll evne be able to run bugathon [mozilla.org], help qa etc ....
      Some people just help eliminate bug duplicates but that's not enough, they still need the work force to creat patches and fixes. I've downloaded the source code once or twice, I've tried hard with the limited time I can devote to such project (I have a work, and ssocial life), I was disapointed, becaause I could not get fast enough in the internals of the code.

      Such events can help people like myself without much time to dig into it and bust bugs out of the product. OTOH Universtity started and now most CS clases are starting many students will have some time to work on the project in the forthcomin year, with a little help in the bigenning this will (I'm pretty sure) widen the number of mozilla developers that are not from the AOL/Netscape Alliance. Also many school project can with such be launched, that will focuse maybe on a module of mozilla, but such project are really good for the quality of the code, I hope some cs teachers will see the oportunity to base some of the projects they'll lead focused around the mozilla project.
  • I made an effort to comment of XSLT functionality with multiple newsgroup posts, but got no response. These days, I may have the time to hack Mozilla.

    A very good idea of theirs to have an open house.

  • This should be obvious but ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @10:08AM (#2487211) Journal
    shouldn't the mozilla bugs be discussed in the Moz chat area, etc.? (noting some of the earlier comments)

    yaking about them here on Slashdot is not going to help get them fixed any faster. At least go to the right forum, or write up the bug.

    it is very easy to chew the fat about a problem, and then not do anything to fix the issue. Which seems to be par for the course.

  • There's one major problem with Mozilla's email component, something that that will probably keep me from using Mozilla all together, specifically the lack of a spelling checker.

    I really like the mail reader, it's got all the features that I've been looking for (multiple 'from' options, mixing pop and IMAP accounts for example) but the lack of a spelling checker is really a problem for me.
    • Try this [homeip.net]

      Individual apps don't NEED a friggin' spell checker. They should hook into the stuff already on your system. That said, the solution in the link above allows you to simply hilight the stuff you want to check and checks it (if your windowmanager is smart enough to give you the ability to see what is in your X selection)

    • The main reason for the lack of spellchecking is Mozilla is not the codebase, in fact, we already have support for spellchecking. The problem is that we've been unable to find one that is compatible with out license so we can check it into the CVS tree.

      See the netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news newsgroup for more info, since this is almost a FAQ by now.
  • Damn it bugs me that the home buttonis on the personal toolbar. put it back on the damn button bar where it belongs. It's been there on every bloody browser since I first downloaded that first version of the ncsa mosaic browser oh so many bloody years ago.

    I want to look up and see a little picture of a fucking house and click on it and end up at my homepage.

    Otherwise it is a great browser.

    • Dude... I think it's time to check your blood pressure...

      Seriously though, that bugs me too, but remember, Mozilla uses skins. All you have to do is hack the skin and you (should) be able to put the button back where it belongs. I haven't really had a chance to look into it, so ymmv.

    • It makes no sense to have a bookmark item together with your navigation buttons.

      That said, you can enable the "Home" button in the Preferences dialog.
      • That said, you can enable the "Home" button in the Preferences dialog.

        That only enables the Home button on the Personal Toolbar. The Home button mrfiddlehead is talking about would be (missing) on the main Navigation Toolbar.

        I'm with mrfiddlehead on this, there should be a Home button on the main Navigation Toolbar. I really detest that Personal Toolbar and want to turn it off, but I can't because the dang Home button is there.

        I also can't seem to find a way to display the navigation icons without the words as in Netscape 4.x. I've been using Netscape forever and I don't need reminding what the buttons do. I would rather reclaim that real estate for viewing content.

        (/rant)

        • Browser designers seem to love crapping on the screen with oodles of menubars at top, statusbars at bottom and sidebars on the side. I don't want a gazillion menus, I want to surf the web dammit. I'd like to see a fullscreen mode, please. Secondly, in order to see the current URL, I need to have 2 menus. I.e. the main and the navigation menu. I'd love to see it folded into a one-line main menu like so...

          File Edit View Bookmarks Help | http://slashdot.org

          All on one line. And please scrap the crap with the honking big "M" icon so the bar doesn't have to be so thick.

          • File Edit View Bookmarks Help | http://slashdot.org All on one line.

            Then write such a theme.

            And please scrap the crap with the honking big "M" icon so the bar doesn't have to be so thick.

            There already are several themes like this. Including them in the default install would make the download size too big for those who do not have the resources to move their families to areas that offer high-speed Internet access.

    • Really, how often do you need to press the "home" button? I think it's fine where it is - I don't want it polluting the rest of the toolbar with its un-usefulness.
  • To be a lot more effective such announce should be spread a little bit more.

    Mozilla will be the browser for many alternative OSes (read OS/2, BeOS, Linux, Qnx, Aix ....). Some of these OS already back up the mozilla project , and donate engeeniring forces to the project thats good but for other OSes, distro etc it's not the case So i sugest this announce to be publihed on sites like :

    advogato [advogato.org]

    Beunited [beunited.org]

    QnxStart [qnxstart.com]

    I don't know any windows related sites, but adnantech should do it.

    This announce should also be mailed on developing mailing lists like apple's darwin [darwinfo.org] developement list
    .

    Anyway a lot of great doc are available here [mozilla.org] and are good sartup point. Sometimes ago some video detailling how to dig in the code where available on mozilla's web site (but I can't find them right now).
  • Why I can not specify personal CSS in Mozilla GUI setup? Yes I know that it is possible in some config text file to specify JS like command. But I will need to run Google, or dig in far conner of Mozilla.org. I will probably just run Opera. Ideally it should be enabled / dissabled with some hot key. Personal CSS is a good thing. Consistent fonts, colors and even one more way to disable ADs.

    Also I wish Mozilla would be more keyboard friendly which makes working on laptop much more pleasant. Even better - with configurable keys.
    • They are actively working on it - I've seen a bunch of activity over the last few days in bugzilla. Look up bug #107023 as a startingpoint.
    • Why I can not specify personal CSS in Mozilla GUI setup?

      There's no UI for it yet, but just put a file called userChrome.css (for modifying the UI) or userContent.css (for web content) in your chrome directory. You may need !important on the rules.

      See mozilla.org for more docs and info.

      Gerv
      • That exactly what I didn't liked. Yes, it is possible to to use Personal CSS in Mozilla, but I have to remember fixed, specific to Moz path and name for CSS file. I am using the same Personal CSS file in three different browsers. So if every browser behaved like Moz, I should have tree copy of CSS file or make symbolic link mess in my home dir. If file can be shared with other apps, it's name should not be fixed.

        I am myself prefer VIM/CL/Text conf files environment. But GUI app should be configurable from GUI. Mix GUI with CL/text configs is bad thing.

        Otherwise congrats to Moz teem for a good work!

  • isn't this every week? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't every week Mozilla bug week? :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The fact that you can not get the Flash plugin for Mozilla when running it on Windows 98. I am very happy to see that Mozilla works better at home on my Linux Mandrake 8.1 box than at work on this silly Win98 box that I am posting from right now! ;-)

    Just out of curiosity, how do you get the Netscape plugin for Flash to work for Mozilla? It appears to only need to be redirected to mozilla.exe from netscape.exe? Is that true, or do I need to lay off the crack pipe again?? ;-)
    • The fact that you can not get the Flash plugin for Mozilla when running it on Windows 98.

      Yes you can. Just go to Macromedia's site [macromedia.com], do the "get flash" thing, and select the Windows plugin for Netscape browsers. The installer will automatically detect Mozilla and install the plugin. You may need to restart Mozilla afterward, but then you are set.

    • When I first installed Mozilla I noticed that the Macromedia installer looks for Netscape.exe. It only does this after it has already installed the plugin itself, though. You can give the installer your Mozilla directory instead of Netscape, and the plug in will work fine. The installer might crash or ask for a reboot, but you can ingnore that once the NPSWF32.DLL file is in the Mozilla/Plugin directory.

      It only needs to know where Netscape.exe is to launch a browser and send you to the Macromedia website for some promotional junk.

      Once you've got a Mozilla installation working with Flash, just copy the plug-in directory to any future Mozilla installations. I haven't had to install any plugins since 0.8.3 or something.

  • Good idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @12:10PM (#2487470)
    This is, essentially, a good idea.

    The biggest problem I have with Open Source software is that there is this myth that because something is open, anyone can fix bugs and contribute updates.

    Well yes they can. But the problem stems from the lead time required to get the know the project, how it works, what does what and how different functions interact with each other.

    Some examples. One of the companies I used to work for (a large IT consultancy company) I worked on a telemetry project. For every person who joined that project, there was a lead time of about three months for them to get used to, understand and know how the system works.

    Okay, so that was one massive project and with people working full time on it, but Mozilla and other open source projects aren't exactly small either.

    Another example. I wrote a GPL perl script called AvantSlash [custard.org] to take the content of Slashdot and process it for handhelds (since Slashdot's own isn't very good). Unfortunately due to a bug and an overdependence on AvantGo's caching, it accidenly spammed the slashdot site and got its IP barred. (This was in the 1.x thread, v2.0 doesn't suffer this problem).

    A comment [slashdot.org] by Jamie a couple of days ago mentioned why it was banned and suggested that I contribute to slashcode.

    Whilst this, in theory, is a great idea, as it would seem to be common with open source coders he unfortunately forgot that there would be several months of lead time whilst I learn how the code works, what does what and why and then, once I knew the system well, actually apply a well written patch.

    Don't get me wrong, I love open source and the stuff it produces and I have a lot of respect for anyone who spends their time doing such stuff.

    However, I'm just pointing out that there is a common myth amongst people in massive open source projects that people can just download, install and then immediately start dipping into the code and producing patches without having to go through the whole learning process.

    So, back to Mozilla. Anything which speeds up this lead time has got to be a good thing and will have the added advantage of getting more people interested in the whole project.

    • The biggest problem I have with Open Source software is that there is this myth that because something is open, anyone can fix bugs and contribute updates. Well yes they can. But the problem stems from the lead time required to get the know the project, how it works, what does what and how different functions interact with each other.

      You have an excellent point, and yes, startup time on Mozilla is considerable. There is a myth that in an all-open-source world, programmers would be freely dropping in to various programs to fix bugs as they came up. In fact, being able to effectively fix a bug in a large, complex software system requires a great deal of familiarity with that system in order to understand the possible consequences of the fix. Perhaps there is an internationalization standard which means your new dialog won't work for the users in Finland. Perhaps your code was checked in without understanding critical section synchronization locking and will cause the pre-emptive scheduler to crash once a week semi-randomly. Perhaps, as in Mozilla's case, the codebase is simply so vast and sprawling that you would have to practically live there to have a hope in hell of even finding the relevant code.

      I've tried to start up on Mozilla several times. The problem is that it takes over a day just to set it up to build on the Macintosh. By that time, I have other pressing priorities demanding my attention. If I am then able to come back to it a few days later, I have to first refresh myself on the arcane build procedure, then start poring through thousands of files and trying to understand the intricacies of XPCOM and XUL, both of which have incomplete, badly written, and out-of-date documentation. I have never succeeded in doing this. I think I would have to carve off two weeks solid to become reasonably fluent and be able to start contributing. Unfortunately, I have a job and a personal life.

      I had a similar experience when I thought an interesting project would be to find key performance issues in GCC and bring it closer to CodeWarrior performance. I searched for days to find a performance profiler for Linux that worked -- I was directed to a couple that seemed not to work, and somehow GCC itself doesn't seem to have one, unlike most commercial compilers. Looking into the GCC code itself, I realized it would take, once again, weeks of startup time to understand what was going on. I don't have weeks to spare, so I gave up. Sorry.

      It really seems that contributing to large open source projects is less like dropping in to help clean up a house, and more like joining a religion. Which program you will be part of is a lifestyle decision. This does not seem to be factored in to the common idylls of open source distributed bug fixing. Yes, I could probably fix a bug in fetchmail or the average perl module in a few hours from a standing start, but not in any of the more significant software systems.

      Tim

    • First, avoid blanket generalisations.

      I was missing a piece of documentation for mysql. I wanted to know what order configuration files were opened in. Knowing a little C I downloaded the source RPM, cracked it open, and spent quarter of an hour trawling around until I found the pertinent. Not long at all!

      Again, I had beef with a certain feature of PHP, and it only took me five minutes to find it and stomp it.

      I'll admit that to add features to PHP will take a while, as there are plenty of #defines that completely obscure the code going on behind the scenes. But to actually dive in and fix something doesn't have a large lead time.

      So I've removed a feature of PHP, but I have also submitted a couple of bug reports. Anyone can do that. If you can't submit the bug report, there is some J R Hacker out there who already groks the project, and they may be able to write the fix for you.

      So what's my point?

      • Find a problem (no, crashing is not acceptable, no matter what the vendor tells you)
      • Isolate the problem and reproduce it
      • If you don't know how to fix the problem, submit a bug report - move on with life, communicate with the developers if they ask for more information
      • If you can see how to fix the problem quickly, fix it, test it, and include with your bug report - move on with life
      • If you can kinda see how to fix it but haven't the time, then submit the bug report anyway

      I haven't written a dot of code for Mozilla or PHP (so I lie, I have written a file to add another search engine) but I have submitted bug reports.

  • This is a great chance for people to discover how mozilla is more than a browser. More importantly, it looks like the mozilla folk are responding to their critics who are calling this an open source project that is, in reality, closed to all but a select group

    My only question is why isn't this info posted on mozilla.org? Wouldn't that be the logical place to put an announcement like this?
  • 'nuff said. Show me the IE bug week.
  • Every week should be bug week, and not just for Mozilla. The fact is that if we want software to perform up to our expectations, we need to fix it, or at least explain our gripes to someone with the proper skills. Bugzilla is one such mechanism, but in a sense, every project on Sourceforge would greatly benefit from this kind of support.

    Sometimes just showing interest is enough to motivate a developer to pursue his efforts; just think about it: why spend all your time working on something that no one else will see ? Many open-source projects fall victim to underappreciation, and are quickly abandoned. They don't ask for money, so at least give them a few minutes of your time. It's really all it takes.

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