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Mozilla Bug Week
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."
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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 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 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.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
If you habitually misspell words in your e-mail messages, the problem is likely to lie with your education rather than the software. Inclusion of software crutches for a wetware problem only makes the latter worse.
Utter nonsense. Typographical errors are a fact of life, especially for those of us with some degree of wrist problem. I was third in my state in the national spelling bee in the eighth grade and yet I thank the gods daily for the passive spelling checker in Outlook Express, which saves me from the errors of my aging eyes and hands. I only wish Explorer had the same capability in text areas.
Yours is more of the "blame the user" philosophy that is endemic to the UNIX world. Errors happen. Humans are fallible. Software should try to prevent them and help you correct them, not laugh at you for making them.
Tim