Mozilla Bug Week

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."

Comments

Bugzilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than just ranting and raving about your pet peeve, you should rant, rave AND enter it into Bugzilla (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.)

Re:Bugzilla

[grahams]

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, 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

[briandonovan]

I haven't downloaded it yet (I wasn't even aware that it existed until you mentioned it), but I found a download for a prefs toolbar at xulplanet. While I was looking for it, I also stumbled across David Illsley's useragent toolbar, which is pretty neat-o (and useful if you're tired of getting redirected by sites because you're using Moz or simply *not* using MSIE). Thanks for the hint about the prefs toolbar. Otherwise I'd have never found it.

Re:Full Screen View!

[skt]

you can download a plugin to get a fullscreen view in mozilla. try multizilla.

Re:Full Screen View!

[skt]

yeah, but in the mean time displaying a tab in fullscreen is probably close enough. There is a toolbar that comes with multizilla that allows for this. It acts just like the IE fullscreen view I would imagine (minus the tabs of course).