Mozilla Links Newsletter

Mozilla Links - English Edition
Issue # 26 - April 28, 2005
_______________________________________

One of the most prevalent Internet threats currently is, no doubt,
phishing.  This consists of tricking a user to believe they are going to a
trusted site like a bank, eBay, PayPal and or some other popular site. The
trick is usually done using a web address very similar in appearance to the
original (like paypa1.com). At the fake site (which would have the
appearance of the authentic web site) the user is asked for personal
information like social security number, account number, username, password
or birth date, which can then be used to impersonate the user and access
their account, money or credit.

Firefox and Thunderbird provide a number of anti-phishing features. Firefox
1.0.1, released a couple of weeks ago, comes with International Domain
Names support crippled to avoid phishing attacks. This feature, which
allows the use of international characters like Chinese or Arabic in web
addresses (domain names) is properly implemented by Firefox. However,
malicious sites can be created with web addresses which, when converted to
occidental characters in the location bar, look similar to different
trusted sites. Since the risk of being phished is worse than the
inconvenience of having international addresses displayed in encoded form,
the trade off makes complete sense.

Alternatives to this crude fix are being evaluated, including a proposal by
Gervase Markham to associate a specific color to a site so we can easily
know if we are at the original site.

Thunderbird 1.1 will alert when going to a site which web address doesn't
match the one stated in the text of and e-mail link. In the meantime, be
alert when visiting money-related web sites. Double check the complete
spelling for the site address, check the secure connection status and
always be suspicious when you are asked for personal and financial
information.

Thanks for reading and please leave your comments at
http://newsletter.mozdev.org/contact.php

Percy Cabello
Mozilla Links

__________________________________


In this issue:

1. BETTER MOZILLA
      - Review: ForecastFox
      - Tip: Enable Quality Feedback Agent
      - PowerTip: Create a New Firefox Profile
      - PowerTip: Disable Error Messages Windows

2. NEWS
      - Firefox 1.0.3 Released
      - Nvu 0.9 Released
      - Chronicles of Mozilla
      - Moves in The Mozilla Foundation
      - Internet Service Provider Offers Firefox to Customers
      - Firefox Books
      - New Features Coming to Next Thunderbird
      - Yahoo! Toolbar Beta Released for Firefox
      - Google Desktop Search Final Released With Firefox and Thunderbird
Support
      - More Products for Firefox

3. COMMUNITY: Asa Dotzler and the Quality Assurance Process

4. MOZILLA PROJECTS

5. POLL

6. CONTACT INFO

________________________________

1. BETTER MOZILLA
________________________________


Review: ForecastFox
___________________

Developed by Jon Stritar, Richard Klein and Alexander Slovesnik

Want to know how is it outside or what tomorrow's weather will be? Well, we
know how accurate weather forecasts can be, but, for current conditions and
a best guess of tomorrow's, provided by The Weather Channel (TM), try
ForecastFox. This capable extension will add small icons or text
representing weather conditions to your Firefox window.

First, look for your city code with the embedded search tool. Then you can
start setting other preferences like number of days to forecast, placement
of the forecast icons and wether you want temperature in Celsius or
Fahrenheit degrees or wind speed in miles or kilometers per hour.

A very welcome feature is profiles. You can create different ones for
example for different cities and easily switch between them by right
clicking on the forecast icons.  Customization can go as far as selecting
exactly what information you want in the tooltips that pop up when you
hover the weather icons.

ForecastFox is available in 19 languages and, thanks to The Weather
Channel, forecasts and current conditions are available for almost
everywhere in the world.

Download it here:
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php...


Tip: Enable Quality Feedback Agent
__________________________________

If you want to help to make Firefox and Thunderbird, even better products,
take note of this the next time you install one of these products.

During Firefox and Thunderbird, when chosing a Setup Type, select
Custom. Click Next twice and in the Select Components window, check the
Quality Feedback Agent. This is a tiny application that will run whenever
Firefox or Thunderbird crashes. It will compile information about the
current product's state and send this information back to Mozilla for
aggregation with thousands of other users' feedback and will help the
Mozilla people to faster identify and solve bugs related to your
problem. You will find it is as easy and unobtrusive as it gets.

For more details, check this month's Community section.


PowerTip: Start With Profile Manager
__________________________________________

Contributed by Percy Cabello

One computer, many users. All accessing with the same account. But you all
want a special Firefox with your own bookmarks, themes, preferences,
extensions and toolbar arrangement. Firefox can handle this with profiles,
which as you may guess is your collection of preferences that makes Firefox
unique.

During installation, Firefox automatically creates a profile (called
default) for the logged on user. If you need to create additional profiles,
in Windows, right click on the icon you use to launch Firefox and select
Properties. In the Target text box, add "-p" (without the quotes) to the
path. Press OK and you are done.

Now launch Firefox with the just edited icon and it will launch Profile
Manager.  This tool allows to create and delete profiles. You can even tell
Firefox where to create your profile, so it can be placed, for example, in
a folder your backup process will pick up from. From now on you will be
prompted with Profile Manager to select a profile to start Firefox with.


PowerTip: Disable Error Messages Windows
________________________________________

Contributed by Percy Cabello

When Firefox can't locate a web address entered in the location bar
(because it's not available or you mistyped the address), it show raise a
dialog window with the error message that you will have to close to try
entering the address again.

If you find this annoying, you can disable it and have the error displayed in as a
page.

To do this:
- Enter about:config in the location bar.
- Look for preference browser.xul.error_pages.enabled, and double click it to set it
to
true.

________________________________

2. NEWS
________________________________

Firefox 1.0.3 Released
______________________

On April 15, Firefox 1.0.3 was released featuring several bug fixes and
security vulnerabilities fixes. This a maintenance release so no new
features are found here but users are strongly encouraged to update. It can
be downloaded here:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Nvu 0.9 Released
_________________

On February 1, 2005, Disruptive Innovation's Daniel Glazman and Linspire,
Inc.  released (http://glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?2005/02/02/8...)
the latest version of Nvu, a Mozilla based web page editor. It features
experimental XHTML support, PHP (a web applications programming language)
Comment editing support and line numbers in the source view. Daniel
announced there will be no new features until after version 1.0 is
out. Work will focus on stability and speed.

Get it here: http://www.nvu.com/download.html

Chronicles of Mozilla
_____________________

Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation and Chief Lizard
Wrangler tells the story of the very last hours before Firefox 1.0
release. Down websites, bad fonts, false alarms, twelve timezones. How
Murphy's Law was worked around and came to a happy ending.  Go: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2005/01/...

A few days later, she takes us on back in time again to the first days at the
Mozilla Foundation:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2005/01/...

And more recenlty, Mitchell was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100
most influential people in 2005 (http://www.time.com/time/2005/time100/). Once
again, she chronicles the events here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2005/04/...
Congrats to Mitchell for this important achievement for herself, the
Mozilla project and open source in general.

Moves in The Mozilla Foundation
_______________________________

On January 24, Ben Goodger, Firefox lead engineer announced that he will be
leading the Firefox development as a Google employee (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/007366.html). Mitchell
Baker, Mozilla Foundation president, confirmed that this is good for the
project since it means more resources will be available for other
activities and expects "Ben's role within the Mozilla project to be just
about the same as the role he's played for the last 18 months".

Darin Fisher, Mozilla's networking module owner and previously employed by
IBM and Netscape/AOL, is also headed to Google (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/darin/archives/007401.html). As
he notes on his blog, he will continue to be very much involved with
Mozilla.

On the other hand, John Aas, leader of Camino (Gecko-based MacOS browser)
and Boris Zbarsky, a main contributor to several Mozilla products
development were hired as part time employees until they finish college.

Internet Service Provider Offers Firefox to Customers
_____________________________________________________

On January 25, Speakeasy (http://www.speakeasy.net) announced in
a press release that it will be offering its customers a customized version
of Firefox. Initially, customization is limited to adding a menu with links
to different Speakeasy services, but in the future it may make deep changes
including VoIP (phone calls over the Internet) capabilities.

As The Buzz Report commented: "he wants to minimize the chances of hackers
turning his customers' PCs into drones that help perpetrate massive DDoS
attacks."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1754842,00.asp?kc=EW...

Firefox Books
_____________

On April 14, Pearson Education announced the availability of 'Firefox and
Thunderbird Garage' (http://www.phptr.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=013187004...)
authored by Mozilla Foundation's Chris Hofmann and Marcia Knous, and John
Hedtke.

'Don't Touch The Blue E' by Scott Granneman
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bluee/)
helps Internet Explorer users to migrate to Mozilla Firefox.

'Firefox Hacks' (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/firefoxhks/)
by Nigel McFarlane (http://www.nigelmcfarlane.com/)
is aimed at advanced users who want to get into Firefox's deepest
customization capabilities providing 100 tips for fine tuning Firefox.

New Features Coming to Next Thunderbird
_______________________________________

Besides anti-phishing protection commented in the editorial, at least two
new features are coming to the next major version of Thunderbird. New
capabilities for stripping mail attachments from messages. With this,
Thunderbird users will be able able to save lots of space by deleting
attachments already saved to a local drive. Also, a new feed subscription
dialog ... that the new dialog have all the stuff I missed.

Read more about the new redesigned dialog in bug 281237. A screenshot of
the new dialog is also available.

Also David Tenser announced a slight improvement to Thunderbird's Start
Page. Look at it here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/djst/archives/007530.html

Yahoo! Toolbar Beta Released for Firefox
________________________________________

Yahoo!, Inc. has released the "official" Yahoo! Toolbar (http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox),
a handy shortcut to all Yahoo! services.  After installation it will ask if
you want to change your homepage to some Yahoo! portal and if you want to
use Yahoo! as your default search engine. Basically all Yahoo!  services
are available and you can add as many or as few services to the toolbar as
you wish.  Spyware protection should also be coming soon.

Note, that it is a beta (not final) release and has only been tested with
Firefox 1.0 on Windows, but support for Mozilla Application Suite and
Netscape, other operating systems, and international Yahoo! IDs is on its
way.

Google Desktop Search Final Released With Firefox and Thunderbird Support
_________________________________________________________________________

On March 7, Google released the final version of its desktop search
application with added Firefox and Thunderbird support. With this addition
users will now be able to search Thunderbird downloaded e-mail messages and
Firefox history. GDS is available for Windows only and can be downloaded
from http://desktop.google.com

More Products for Firefox
_________________________

- France based, Lektora, Inc. (http://www.lektora.com/) announced the
release of its sake named RSS feeds aggregator, Lektora 1.0. Now available
for Windows only, Lektora installs for both Internet Explorer and Firefox
at the same time.

- Jybe (http://www.jybe.com/download/files/download.aspx),
a Firefox extension, allows you to link your browser to one or more
friends' browsers and be able to chat and browse the web together. Initial
features included full frames support, chat, and a PowerPoint presentation
system, with more to come. It is compatible with an Internet Explorer
version so users of Firefox in Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. can collaborate
with users of Internet Explorer.

- Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 now includes Thunderbird support,
complementing support for Firefox recently added.

In The Field
____________

Contributed by Robin Monks

This month has seen some more releasing action with Firefox 1.0.1 and
Thunderbird 1.0.2.  Both of these versions address new security
vulnerabilities in the Programs.  The question now is, will Firefox 1.1
release on time?  Probably not.

Mozilla Lightning is also in the works.  Its similarity to Mozilla Sunbird
and Mozilla Calendar is striking, so could the developers be doing double
work?  A quick look at the wiki page reveals "Lightning is the working
project name for an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality
(scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird"..."While the Mozilla Calendar
extension for Thunderbird acts essentially as an alternate launcher for the
Sunbird application window, Lightning is designed to integrate into the
main Thunderbird UI and user interaction model as tightly as possible".
So, apparently this will spell the end to Calendar.

Meanwhile Netscape's ill-fated DevEdge has been given another chance by
Mozilla Foundation.  Deb Richardson has been hired to oversee the DevMo
project (http://developer.mozilla.org).
Oddly enough, just days after MozNetwork (http://moznetwork.mozdev.org) was
publicly announced. This will be interesting to watch, even as integration
becomes even more of a necessity.

Spread Firefox will soon be getting a makeover with more community
integration and with more products than just Firefox.  A newly announced
Project spotlight will allow smaller projects a bit of advertising space.

That's it for this month, In The Field.

________________________________

3. COMMUNITY
________________________________

How to help to make Mozilla products better ones? The answer may be right
on your PC.  This month, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla Foundation Quality Assurance
Lead, took a time to tell us about himself and Mozilla and how all users
can help to make these products even better.

Mozilla Links: Tell us a little about your involvement with the Mozilla
project and the Foundation.

Asa Dotzler: I've been involved with Mozilla for almost as long as Mozilla
has existed.  I first got involved testing binaries of the classic source
that were compiled by some of the early Mozilla community members and maybe
one or two Netscape engineers. In those days, mozilla.org did not provide
builds.

After some months of testing builds and reporting bugs, I realized that I
could help more by spending some time to teach others how to use Bugzilla
to report useful bugs.  As that group of testers and bug reporters grew,
mozilla.org saw my work, and the growing volume of work produced by the
volunteer testing community and they hired me to work on that effort full
time as a member of staff@mozilla.org. I'm still spending considerable time
working to build a more effective community quality and testing
organization.

As mozilla.org began to differentiate itself from Netscape, it became clear
to us that we needed our own roadmap and our own release schedule and
process. I was invited by Brendan Eich to join a team of Mozilla technical
experts to build the Mozilla 1.0 roadmap and help deliver the releases on
the road to Mozilla 1.0. My work with that group, drivers@mozilla.org,
continues today.

When the Firefox and Thunderbird projects were born, I immediately began to
contribute some of my project management skills and my community testing
experience to those projects and I've been intimately involved with all of
the with Firefox product releases in particular.

ML: How does the QA process work and at what levels the community takes
part of the process?

Asa: I like to describe our QA and testing community as a series of
concentric circles with the inner circles being smaller but more focused
than the outer circles.  The broadest group of testers are those who
download and use all of our releases and offer either Talkback reports,
commentary in forums or on blogs, and occasional bugs in Bugzilla. That
broadest group numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

The next group is somewhat smaller, numbering in the tens of thousands, but
more focused than the hundreds of thousands giving non-bug feedback. This
second group is our bug reporting group. Right now there are 80,000 people
who have been active in Bugzilla.  Over 30,000 of them have activity in the
last year.

As the time commitment and focus increases, we have a smaller group who do
triage, testcasing, and other Bugzilla activities. This group numbers about
2,000.

Within that group, there are even smaller teams that are focused on
specific products or features. Some of the "stars" in these groups have
reported literally thousands of bugs, triaged thousands of bugs, and
attached hundreds of testcases to bugs.

ML: How does the Quality Feedback Agent work? What data is compiled and
what is done with it?

Asa: The Quality Feedback system has two major components. There is a small
application that ships with Firefox and Thunderbird that will start up
whenever Firefox or Thunderbird crashes. It takes note of the circumstances
of the crash, including a stack trace, and sends that information to the
second component, the Talkback server.

On the server, these reports are processed and put into a database where we
can run various reports on them. Jay Patel, our primary admin and engineer
for the QFA system, writes all kinds of great reports that let us see which
are the most common crashes, where in the code they're happening, what
kinds of sites are causing the crashes, etc.  He extracts this data and
files Bugzilla bug reports on the "top crashes".

ML: What has been the impact of including this tool with Firefox?

Asa: This tool has been extremely valuable to the Mozilla developers. We
are able to identify, isolate and resolve our worst crash bugs, and then
verify the fixes, with help from millions of people who use our software
and it costs them very little time to help.

My experience with open source QA has taught me at least one valuable
lesson, and that is that whenever you can lower the barrier to entry into
testing, you will dramatically increase the number of people
participating. Widespread participation is critical for any application
that runs on as many operating systems and machine configurations as the
Mozilla applications. Talkback is one of the easiest ways that people can
give valuable feedback to the Mozilla development team.

About 1,000 of our worst crash bugs were fixed with help from people
submitting Talkback reports. By my calculations, that's about quarter of
all of the crash bugs we've fixed.  And more important than the percentage
is that those "top crashes" were the most frequently observed crash bugs,
and fixing them gives us "the most bang for our bug fixing buck."

ML:What can end users do to take to the "next step" of involvement?

Asa: We're about to launch a new tool that I'm very excited about. Like
Talkback, this tool will ship with the Firefox application and will give
users a very easy mechanism to report websites that do not display
correctly. As we do with Talkback, we'll generate reports that find the
most visible and problematic websites and be able to tackle those problems
first. This should be available within the next couple of weeks and
hopefully it will do for our layout and evangelism issues much of what
Talkback did for our stability.

We are an amazingly successful open source project, in a large part, due to
our awesome testing community. This community ranges from the hardcore
testcase writer to the casual Talkback submitter, and everything in
between. Without any one of the component groups of our testing community,
we would not be where we are today.

Thanks to Asa for his time for this article! For information on using the
Quality Feedback Agent check this month's Tip.

________________________________

4. MOZILLA PROJECTS
________________________________

Contributed by Brian King

Seamonkey is dead, long live Seamonkey. As the Mozilla Foundation
officially stops development on the Mozilla Suite[1], a new external group
has formed[2] to take over the running of the project. This is another
example of the Mozilla Community stepping up and playing a valuable
role. Some people like the idea of a separate browser, mail client, editor,
and so on. Some like integration, so let's hope Seamonkey survives and
thrives in some form, as they can certainly live in parallel. Extension
authors will continue to busily do their thing, creating great little
add-ons and larger programs based on Mozilla technologies. As this month's
reports shows, there is still a lot of activity.

mozdev.org currently has over 250 active projects[3] and that number is
rising.  Full status reports for March are available on the site[4].

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/seamonkey-transition.html
[2] http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/SeaMonkey:Home_Page
[3] http://www.mozdev.org/projects/active.html
[4] http://www.mozdev.org/status/2005-03-14-status.html

Read more about each of these projects in the full report at
http://www.mozdev.org/status/2004-12-20-status.html

________________________________

5. POLL
________________________________

On our last issue, we asked what should be the next step for Firefox development?.
Here
are the results:

   * Get under the hood and make it as    46%
     slim and fast as possible.
   * Improve it. Period.                  23%
   * Focus on spreading the word and      15%
     grab more market share
   * Improve tab browsing                  7%
   * Improve Live Bookmarks/RSS support    5%
   * Improve current theme                 3%
   * I'm in net nirvana. Don't touch it.   2%

________________________________

        ADVERTISEMENT
________________________________

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at the Mozilla Store for only $6.95.

Visit: http://store.mozilla.org

****

Try OpenOffice.org, an open source office suite available at
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Then, check the OpenOffice.org newsletter at
http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/spotlightindex.html Open source just gets
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****

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how to reach our 15,000 worldwide subscribers!

________________________________

6. CONTACT INFO
________________________________

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