Ludovic's weblog

Weird interaction between personas and an extension

2010-08-17T09:56:10Z

I've been using Firefox 4.0b3 for a week or so now. As always when I switch to beta, I usually loose some functionality due to some extensions not being validated with the version of Firefox that I use. I've been using delicious to manage my bookmarks for the last two or three years, because it enables me to share my bookmarks (and I don't have a lot) with other computers, other browsers and with my friends (yes I'm a web social beast).

So this morning I was clearly happy to see that the delicious team had a nice extension in beta for me to try out. I was all happy about it and installed it. My bookmarks where back in place ;-) I then noticed that I had lost mouse gesture. I disabled the extension and woot mouse gesture was back. I then send a little email as a piece of feedback to the delicious mailing list.

Two hours later I was contacted on instant messaging by the Yahoo developer. And we tried to figure out what was going on. The only thing That was left was my personas theme. So I went to getpersonas.com , I then noticed that it solved my mouse gesture issue. Restarted Firefox and yet again lost gesture until I opened getpersonas.com in one of my tabs. So I have this weird bug about an extension, a theme that will work together if I load the web site where I got the extension from, I'd love to file a bug, but I have no idea, where/why/how.

Changing irc nick

2010-08-11T13:36:46Z

I'm now Usul instead of _Tsk_ on irc.mozilla.org. It's one character shorter. It was available, and I'm a fan so I took it. I did that while watching the Dunes series on TV. I now have a nick that people can pronounce, I sure nobody will pronounce it the same way :-)

More crash stats from linux

2010-07-15T08:13:18Z

If you look at mozilla's crash reported and peek at the crashes Thunderbird get, you'll see that the number of crashes is very low on Linux. That's because people use the packaged version of Thunderbird on Linux which is slightly different from the official release one (so they don't give us build symbols and disable the crash reporter). So from a QA and dev perspective we are loosing a lot of crash information , because we think we have a good Linux installed base. This is about to change, as one of the Major Linux distribution (SUSE Linux and it's sister openSUSE) are about to send us all those crashes that are happening. This won't be in the 11.3 releases per-se, but it will be from any update package that user will install from now on. Thanks Wolfir for making this happen !

Summit 2010 roundup

2010-07-13T10:46:26Z

I came back from the Mozilla 2010 summit be more like the web edition, two days ago. I'm now still fighting jet-lag but doing way better than yesterday :-). This was a ~~awsome~~ great meeting. I've met a bunch of very interesting people (some of which will unfortunately get spammed on some bugs) working on plenty of position at mozilla. It was nice to finally meet some of the people I've been interacting with online in the last year and a half (Hi , Wayne, rkent, Gary, Archeopteryx, Neil ....). And I ended up having a bunch of very interesting conversations with our contributors. I probably ended up spending too much time with the French contributors (that I've known through previous events like FOSDEM), playing belote contrée. I hadn't play the game for quite a while so no regrets at all. I had setup a PGP and CAcert signing meet. PGP went well as 15 people came and participated while CAcert , only some assurers (not even all of them) showed up.

I'd like to thank all the people who did a amazing job preparing and organizing the summit - it was perfect !

Ho and yes I did make a few pictures while there :

CACert and PGP event date and time @ Mozilla Summit 2010

2010-07-03T08:18:14Z

So I've finally picked dates and time for both the CAcert event and the PGP signing party add , these to your summit agenda. Both event will be held on July 8th 2010. Both event will have the same meeting point. The hotel lobby's front desk.

PGP signing will start at 11:30 (please add your key to the keyring before coming)

CAcert will be at 13:45

CAcert signing party at the Mozilla Summit 2010

2010-07-01T06:54:46Z

While Yesterday I talked about the PGP signing party. I'm also organizing a CAcert signing party. I already have two signed up assurers (and I will do some assurance myself). Time and date are still uncertain but will be announced as loudly as possible a bit before the event. If you are considering participating to it as an assurer, please consider the following points :

add yourself to the wiki page

Print and bring some blank CA cert form

If you intend to get assurance point, print some forms in advance as this will make the assurance process faster and easier for everyone.

PGP signing party during the mozilla summit 2010

2010-06-30T07:47:02Z

The talks and schedule being done, the slot I had requested to organize a Key signing party (for both CAcerts and PGP/GPG) in during a breakout session is dead. The schedule isn't published yet so it still is a bit difficult to announce a date and time to meet. In order to prepare ourselves a bit more efficiently than with pen and paper, I've setup a Keyring on biglumber.
If you want to participate to the keysigning, please consider adding you keys to the event keyring http://biglumber.com/x/web?keyring=4739. Having everybody that wants to participate on file, will help people find each other in a PGP finding buddy quest. Than you can wander the attendee and try to find the person that you haven't met or signed keys with.
When I get a better idea of the schedule I will announce date and time where people will be able to meet and sign keys either on twitter or in #moz10 on irc.

Strengthening the web of Trust @ the Mozilla Summit 2010

2010-06-24T07:25:54Z

I've asked for a Breakout Session at Whistler for this - I didn't get an answer yet, but as I need to get things on the grounds, so I'll post this anyway, so people can prepare themselves and if we don't get a room we can do it more informally

What ?

From the wikipedia article : Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the centralized trust model of a public key infrastructure (PKI), which relies exclusively on a certificate authority (or a hierarchy of such). As with computer networks, there are many independent webs of trust, and any user (through their identity certificate) can be a part of, and a link between, multiple webs.

The web of trust is in other word , you as an individual, telling the world that you trust someone else and that you've tried to verify that person's identity to your best. And publishing that information so other will have access to it.

Why ?

Having a large group of people gathering from all other the world is the perfect occasion to build a good and very decentralized web of trust ( how often will you have a chance to meet someone from say Africa when you're living in say Northen Europe at the same time you meet a north American citizen). So meeting plenty of people is good makes the chance of meeting people who care bigger.

How ?

As said above there are plenty of ways to build web of trusts - I'm organizing signing parties for the ones I use : PGP and CACert. You'll need to prepare a few things if you want to join our signing event and That's why I'm posting this now, to give you the time to read documentation and prepare the paperwork that is necessary for the signings to go smoothly. As a side note I always find it very amusing that the web of trust is something very digital that requires a lot of pen/paper work. You can participate to both web of trusts of course, but for organizational reasons, I'll split the how and what you need to prepare in two.

CACert

CACert provides certificates that can be used to either sign/encrypt emails, software, or setup a SSL protected webserver.
To participate you'll need an account on cacert.org, two valid government issued ID (one is enough but two is better - most of you will have a passport so it's just about bringing another ID (like a drivers licence etc ..)). Bringing a few filled in and printed CAcert Assurance Programme
Identity Verification Form (CAP) will help things go smoothly. The CAPs can be found pre-filled when you have an account.
Recap :

An account on Cacert.org

At least one Governement issue ID (two is better)

A bunch of prefilled CAcert Assurance Programme
Identity Verification Form (CAP).

Note I am a CACert assurer, I'm looking for other CAcert assurers (get in touch with me, to let me know you want to be an assurer there ).

PGP/GPG

OpenPG offers digital signing for software and email. And Also offers email encryption. To be able to participate you'll need to install a OPenPG compatible manager an create a key. Make sure to publish your public key (this will make things easier for the signing part). And we'll use the informal method signing method, so be sure to bring a good number of printed fingerprints to exchange with others.

Recap:

Have a published PGP key

Valid ID(s)

Printout of your PGP fingerprint to hand out to other participants

If you have questions send me an email

3.1 RC1 is almost ready, and I'm looking for a few testers

2010-05-19T07:36:12Z

As the QA lead for Mozilla messaging I'm looking for a few users. These should be willing to spend 30 minutes to an hour reading test and entering test results in litmus, mozilla's test management software. Those test are there to make sure that we are not regressing from earlier releases there. There are a few hundred of these tests, splitting the work between participants is a very important key to a successful test run. The more testers the more coverage we get out of these tests. If you're interested in helping just drop me an email with your computer's operating system. I'll send details instructions when we have RC1 builds and that we are ready for testing.

Focus versus unfocused

2010-03-16T11:35:12Z

Over the last year - the Thunderbird QA team, has organized almost every week a triage event - where we were asking for contributors and users to come and give us a hand. The idea is that with more manpower and more people participating, we would get better bug reports and cleaner bug reports in the hands of the developers.
Usually we are very broad in the scope of the day. The few times we haven't been broad, and that we've been very concise on what we would be working on, more people showed up. With that in mind expect bugdays to be more focus on a very small area of Thunderbird in the next few weeks. If you want to participate, this change should make it easier for you to come and give a hand. This week's bugday is about deleting Attachments. Subject of upcoming bugdays aren't defined yet - they are generally announced on the Tuesday of the week. To get notified - either follow this wikipage or read mdat, where I usually post an announcement.

Testers for Thunderbird 3.1b1 wanted

2010-02-20T14:55:19Z

We are going to release Lanikai 3.1b1. I'm looking for volunteers to work on a complete test using litmus. These are the areas that need to be tested :

Install, shutdown, uninstall

Folder Views

Migration

Updating Thunderbird

Import

Window configuration

Toolbars and menus

Account settings & Preferences (Options)

IMAP accounts

POP accounts (exclude Global Inbox)

Gmail Accounts

.Mac accounts

Global inbox

Mail composition

Spell checker

RSS account & subscriptions

Newsgroups

Message Aging

Navigating and displaying messages

Downloading and saving

Image blocking

Return receipts

Proxies

Offline, disk space

Moving, copying, deleting messages

Views and labeling messages

Message filters

Message search

Address search

Virtual folders

Message Grouping

Quicksearch

Address books

Junk mail

Extensions

Theme management

Help

Printing

Master Passwords & password management

Phishing, spoof detection

Secure connections

Digital signing, encrypting messages

Software Update

Find as you type (FAYT)/Quickfind

Windows Search and Spotlight integration

Like I did in the past, can you send me a private email to ludovic@mozillamessaging.com, telling me on which os you would use to participate and three areas you would like to test ( I suggest that you make your choice in that way , 1st area something you care about and are eager to test, 2 area something you can easily test, 3rd something you never used before ) so I can organize things. The last two times this worked pretty well - except for some people ending up testing things they didn't care about. So i'm trying to make this better by letting you choose before hand. I still need to aim for 100% coverage so you still might end up testing areas you didn't ask for.

Presenting the Thunderbird QA team, Interview #5 Nathan

2010-02-16T07:47:46Z

Me :Hello Nathan, you've been doing a lot of triage work over the last few weeks, could you introduce yourself to our readers (age, location ... things you think a releveant) ?

Nathan :Well, I'm a 21-year-old software developer, living in sunny California - I don't specialize in C++ code, unfortunately, though. As a number of Mozillians seem to be, I'm a committed Christian.

Me :How long have you been a Thunderbird user ? What was the first version of Thunderbird that you used ?

Nathan :I've been using Thunderbird ever since I switched over from Outlook 2007 in mid 2007 - I must have gotten a pretty brand-new version of 2.0, but I didn't notice that at the time

Me :From that answer am I concluding correctly that you are a windows user ?

Nathan :Indeed so - I've been reasonably happy with Windows for half my life, though I've dabbled in Linux a good bit also. I even find Vista to be tolerable.. whether out of misplaced stubbornness, or some other reason, I don't know.

Me :As said earlier you've been giving a much appreciated help over the last few weeks, can you tell us why ?

Nathan :Well, I really started to dig into Bugzilla, finding and commenting on bugs I'd noticed, during the 3.0 release cycle, starting about b2. Then in December last year, I realized I had some extra time, so I volunteered for Litmus testing. One thing led to another, and just a couple weeks ago, I started watching my first QA contacts (only half a dozen, right now), and here I am!

Nathan :That, at any rate, is the sequence. My motive, on the other hand, is mostly that I know I can track down problems in and around Thunderbird fairly effectively, and there's definitely a need for help, so I'm trying to fill that as much as I can.

Me :Indeed , was the learning curve time consuming ? Was it difficult to get into it ?

Nathan :There's a fair amount of policy and guideline material to read first, but I actually like the formalization of it - it makes common sense and experience a lot faster to get a hold of. Filing bugs is definitely an art form, as it requires so much communication in such a small space.
That said, I don't think it took me more than a few weeks of a few hours a week to get into triaging, if even that - maybe because I'm already a developer? And it's not difficult, really, it just takes some persistence.

Me :Do you enjoy doing it ?

Nathan :Most of the time, yes, it's quite satisfying. I suppose that's because I'm taking a load off other people (developers, other QA), and also because I'm helping the reporters in most cases. On the other hand, I see some genuinely unclear and frustrated reports, and that's troubling, partly because I can't do much to fix those - maybe no one can, in fact. But it all balances out, and I'm still on the plus side of the ledger.

Me :How much time do you spend helping the QA effort , say weekly ?

Nathan :A good question. Right now, I'm probably spending maybe 5-15 hours a week on it - I'd give you more specific data, but my time-logging program seems to have gone kaput, so that's just my best guess. If I had to, I could easily reduce it just by watching fewer components - maybe down to 2 hours a week, or even less. But that'd be no fun!

Me :Any advice you would like to give to someone pondering about giving a hand ?

Nathan :Dive in. Like Wikipedia says, be bold! Any mistake can be fixed. But do read the instructions first, and spend some time looking at existing bug reports before making major changes - it'll save a lot of embarrassment later.
Oh yes, and one more thing:
Get another email account for bugmail!

Me :Lol !
Are there areas where you have more interest in than other ? if so which one(s) ?

Nathan :Right now, I'm mostly focused on the visible front end and the IMAP support - perhaps because I have nearly two dozen IMAP accounts, and am definitely a power user. (Scratching the ol' itch, you know?) Some of TB's internals and soon-to-be internals (Gloda, Jetpack, STEEL, etc) strike me as really cool, but they don't touch me as directly; maybe soon, though!

Me :Power user heh ! Do you use extensions ? If so can you lists the one you use ?

Nathan :Sure thing! But there's quite a lot..

Nathan :Add-on Compatibility Reporter, Nightly Tester Tools, Lightning Nightly Updater

Nathan :Bugmail, CompactHeader, CustomizeHeaderToolbar, Display Mail User Agent

Nathan :Mail Redirect, Signature Switch, jsLib, TagZilla, The Real Reply

Nathan :Diccionario español Argentina, Addressbooks Synchronizer, Duplicate Contact Manager, FiltaQuilla, JunQuilla, Lightning, TaQuilla, ThunderNote, ToneQuilla

Nathan :I keep trying ThunderBrowse, but for some reason, I can never quite get used to it.. I guess I'll probably never be a Suite/SM type of person. Seems a good extension, though.

Nathan :Those are just the enabled ones.

Me :What version of Thunderbird do you actually run ?

Nathan :3.0.1 mostly; I have a copy of 2.0.0.23 (re-installed just the other day, in fact) for troubleshooting, and maybe a nightly or so scattered around for the odd regression test. I'll probably start using 3.1b1 soon after it comes out, though I'll still maintain a 3.0.x install for testing.

Me :Anything you would like to add ?

Nathan :Hmm.. well, I would like to mention, on behalf of every QA person in existence, that it really helps if you follow the instructions on the Bugzilla entry form.. really really.

Nathan :I'd also like to thank the whole MoMo team for hanging in on the long road to 3.0! It's a great release.

Me :Thanks for helping and taking the time to do this. Next Time I'm in Mountain View we'll go for a drink !

What is the best bleeding edge

2010-02-09T08:01:38Z

At the moment If you want to run a bleeding edge version of Thunderbird, you need to choose between running 3.2x and 3.1x builds. In fact, it appears that most people willing to run bleeding edge are now running 3.2x builds.

Whilst our most dedicated testers are running 3.2x builds, the engineering team is working on bringing features and bug fixes to the 3.1x branch. There's a discrepancy here. This means that the issues that might exist in 3.1x have a greater chance to be discovered after releases rather than before. It's easy to fix that, instead of running 3.2x builds, we would like our bleeding edge user to use the 3.1x builds (you can find them at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.2/). By doing this simple switch you'll help to make the 3.1 series a great series.

Thunderbird Quality Weekly Event

2010-01-20T08:11:09Z

The people in charge of the quality of Thunderbird , are organizing on a weekly basis a quality team event. These event cover most of the area where quality is involved. This means testing new feature, testing pre-release version of the software, and maintaining the known bug database. If you come to think about it, none of these activities require to be done on a given date, so why bother with an "event" ?

First of All the event is virtual, it happens online - this is for practical reasons, it would be very difficult to have people living in Singapore, the US east coast or The Netherlands to meet and work in the same physical place. We do bother to have an event because sometimes when looking at a problem or at something new being able to ask other if they see the same thing is valuable, because they might know something you don't or might have encountered the same issue earlier etc ... The value of the event is communicating with other people doing the same thing as you do, but with a different perspective. This is specially true for people who want to join. Asking the people that have been doing quality for quite some time will be available to help new comers.

We are using a distributed chat system called IRC, which is available with dedicated clients or through a web interface. As all the people available for a chat are not always in front of the chat window, you might not get an immediate answer. Typing a name a person being in the chat room will help you get noticed and get a faster answer. And don't be afraid to ask or participate , it's not that difficult.

Now that you know how those events take place, you might be interested in figuring out the subject that is going to be going on during the event. We publish a wiki page for each event that take place, and we have an other page referencing all past and future events (well most of the future events are being announced on a weekly basis). This week for example will be focused on duplicate events. I'm also announcing the events on Thunderbird dev mailing list.

If you are upgrading to Thundebird 3.0rc1 ...

2009-11-26T08:35:44Z

And are a Enigmail user - please update to the latest enigmail nightly. As previous versions or some previous nightlies (from a few weeks to a few month) , might crash Thunderbird. Actually we believe that our top crashers is due to incompatible versions of enigmail being installed.