ארכיון פוסטים עם התג "mozilla"

mozip.NET 2.0 released

יום שבת, 4 באוגוסט, 2007

i haven't written about mozip.NET, my pet software project, in quite a while, even when i had what to write about. mozip.NET is a small program i wrote to help with the localization of SeaMonkey, the community continuation of Mozilla Suite. mozip.NET allows localizers build a localized installer of SeaMonkey for windows, without compiling the whole thing.

Version 2.0 is based on version 2.0 of the .NET Framework, and utilizes some of it's new controls. this makes it look very nice, with 3D toolbar and an Office 2003 style menus. in addition, it gives you an opportunity to give a file you extract from the installer a new name, if a file by the same name already exists at the target folder. it also remembers your last extract folder between sessions, and the last window size (this last feature actually gave me some trouble, and was eventually introduced in a minor update, i numbered 2.0.1). other than that, there are the features already present in previous versions, of adding files, testing the integrity, and deleting files.

If you find this interesting, you can download it here.

I would have attached an image here, but for some reason Yahoo! insists on jpeg images. I guess you'll have to download it to see it then…

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מלך מוזילה

יום חמישי, 9 בנובמבר, 2006
בכל פעם שאני צריך להגדיר את התפקיד שלי במוזילה, אני מתלבט. זאת משום שאף פעם לא הגדרנו תפקידים בצורה מדוייקת. כל אחד עושה כפי יכולתו ולפי רצונו. בתור בעל שם המתחם mozilla.org.il והבעלים של האתר, אני בדרך כלל מחליט מה יהיה שם, ומשתדל לתאם את המאמצים בתחומים השונים כדי למנוע כפילות עבודה. אבל איך קוראים לתפקיד הזה? מנהל קבוצת הלוקליזציה? מתאם לוקליזציה עברית? או אולי מרכז פעילות מוזילה ישראל, כפי שאני מופיע עכשיו ברשימות של הטוש?

היום קיבלתי דואל ממישהו שביקש ממני לעזור לו בבעיה טכנית עם Thunderbird. אני מקווה שאצליח לעזור לו, אבל הוא בינתיים פתר לי בעיה אחרת. הוא כותב:

כזכור לי אתה מלך מוזילה ולכן אני מעז להטרידך בעניין תקלה מוזרה שקרתה לי…

הבעיה נפתרה. אני מלך מוזילה. טוב להיות מלךImage

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Firefox 2.0 is out

יום חמישי, 26 באוקטובר, 2006

yesterday and the night before were crazy. i must have answered 10 support requests by email yesterday! it took me about 4 exhausting hours. i also had to update our web site about the new firefox 2.0 (and the fact that it's not available in hebrew yet) and answer some posts on our forum.

last week IE7 was also released. from the user interface perspective, they are pretty close. i can definitely feel their breath on our neck. it will be interesting to see if the no-menu-bar concept will catch on, because it definitely saved them some screen real estate. on the other hand, having buttons and the tabs in the same line doesn't leave enough room for the tabs, so although they are good looking, they  are too crupmed together.

i won't list all the differences between the two browsers, others have done that already. i will only say that generally, they have two or three nice things we don't, like page zoom and the print scaling (which i didn't try yet), but for all the rest, we either already have it, or do it better in some way.

i liked how they allow you to install any search engine you want, and don't put MSN as a default. on the other hand, they only have a limited list of engines, compared to what mozilla has (almost anything with a search capability, really).

i read on MSDN that the CSS support was improved. that's great, as compatibility between different browsers will grow. but it's not complete yet, and they are still lagging behind.

one last thing that bothers me with IE7 is that you can uninstall it. since windows can't live without  IE, this means IE6 is not replaced, but rather moved aside, taking up disk space somewere, space i could use for my own needs.

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trip to brussels

יום רביעי, 1 במרץ, 2006

last weekend (saturday-sunday) i was in brussels, for the FOSDEM 2006 open source conference. i wrote about the conference itself here (hebrew), but here i'd like to write about my experience as a visitor to brussels. i landed before dawn, so i thought i'll take the opportunity to look around the city. the information station at the central bus station wasn't open before 8 am, so i couldn't get a map. so i arrived at the hotel, put my bag down, and headed to town, hoping to find a map there. gurnisht, all i found was schematic maps on signs and pointers to all sorts of buildings. and they were all in french and flemish, not in english! i mean, tourists mostly come from other countries, don't they? so i called the tourist information center by a number i found on one of the signs, and asked where to find a map. the guy there directed me at the wrong way (could be a misunderstanding though) so i wasted an hour walking the wrong way. eventually i wasted all my time, gave up, and went to the conference i came for, hoping to have better luck the next day.

on sunday, i made a bad calculation of time and went to the city hall, where the tourist information point was, hoping to have a chance to look at some of what this city has to offer. it was of course closed, with dozens of tourists hanging around the square in front of it.

three years ago i was in rome. now this is a city brussels can learn from. there are dozens of tourist information points scattered around the city, with maps and other info, so there is no chance for a tourist to get lost there.

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Ben Goodger on Mozilla's history

יום שישי, 10 בפברואר, 2006

ben goodger , a key developer of Firefox , wrote an outragous post about the history of firefox and mozilla, since the old netscape 4 codebase was thrown out and the Next Generation Layout engine started development. here's my comment on it, for the record:

so, netscape is dead long enough for you to bash all over it?

FYI, when i first opened NS6 and saw the Modern them, the first thing i said was "WWWWOOOWWWW, that's BEAUTIFUL!!!!!" and i haven't changed my opinion since. the "classic" them is plain ugly IMO. because it was the default theme, and many people didn't notice it can be replaced, people thought it was NS4. one local reviewer wrote that "it remideds the happy old days of netscape".

today i use the Suite (and will use SeaMonkey once i finish the l10n work on it). i often find features missing in firefox, and the bookmarks manager is just annoying.

you talk about the lack of vision and direction. who was at the head of mozilla.org then? wasn't that the very same mitchel baker that stands there today? where was she? what did she do? it appears like she was one of the people responsible for all this. today she is your boss, isn't she? do you think she is a bad manager?

i didn't see anything in your writing against a browser+email client application as a concept. what made you support the browser-only firefox then?

and finally, what were your mistakes? were there any? or are you the genious that knows everything and never wrong?

you are a hipocrate, mr. goodger.

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חזרתי ממילואים

יום חמישי, 26 במאי, 2005
חזרתי היום ממילואים קצרים במיוחד יחסית לקו, חמישה ימים כולל אל״ל. בדרך כלל זה ארוך יותר עד שבוע וחצי או שבועיים, אבל הפעם ביקשתי קיצור בגלל קירבת תקופת המבחנים (אני סטודנט, אם עוד לא אמרתי).

במילואים האלה יצא לי בפעם הראשונה לדבר די הרבה עם אחרים על פרוייקט הלוקליזציה של מוזילה, למרות שאני מעורב בו כבר כמה שנים. חוץ מזה שהיה נחמד לספר שגם אני עושה משהו בחיים, אם אפשר לקרוא לזה כך, כשכל אחד מספר על עסקי הבניה או התוכנה שלו, או כל קריירה אחרת, היה מעניין לשמוע את התגובות. רוב האנשים הרימו גבה עד התפלצו כאשר שמעו שזה בהתנדבות. נושא הקוד הפתוח ותרומה לפרוייקטי תוכנה לא ברור ולא מוכר לרוב האנשים. אחד האנשים נתן לי את הרושם שהוא היה בטוח שפיירפוקס זה סוג של ממשק לגוגל, בגלל דף הבית שלו. לרוב מפתיע מהאנשים היה קשה להסביר מה דפדפן עושה. לא עלה על דעתם שאקספלורר זה תוכנה רגילה, שיש לה תחליפים, וכנ"ל עם אאוטלוק ות'אנדרבירד. הייתי צריך להדגיש שוב ושוב שזה "במקום האקספלורר".

אני מקווה שבמילואים הבאים אוכל לומר שאני ממש עובד במשהו, ולא עדיין סטודנט.

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