Mozilla: May 2006 Archives
We are having some problem with the nightly builds for the XForms extension for Mac. bug 339198 fixed the trunk builds. So we are now producing nightly builds for Minefield again.
bug 339568 is tracking 1.8.0 and 1.8.
I think it is time for a little status update on “where I am heading” :)
Past
After Novell closing the lab. in Copenhagen (and me aparently getting laid :-) ), I moved to Gijón on the northern coast of Spain. I’ve worked as an XForms consultant for Fundación CTIC, which also allowed me to keep working on the Mozilla XForms Extension.
It has been some very good four months here! I have liked the workplace, the people, the food, the countryside, the general ambience, etc. It has been an enriching experience, to again live for an extended period in another country here in Europe (I’ve also lived in France for a year, many years ago). So I feel rather sad about leaving. But it will probably not be the last time I will be in Spain :-)
Present
For now, I am still in Spain though — putting the final touches on the 0.6 version of the XForms extension, which will be available in a week or two. We’ve taken yet another big step towards XForms 1.0 compliance and reaching a stable product. Another good effort by the entire team!
I’m also trying to finish unfinished samples, put the final touches on my XForms test harness/suite, etc, etc. So much to do, so little time, as I only have one week left to do it all in. Because …
Future
When I finish the contract down here, my original plan was to retract to good old Denmark. I will leave Spain around June 11th, and then go on two weeks of vacation: Driving (slowly) from Gijón to Copenhagen (around 2500 km). Or rather, Copenhagen was the original plan. Still the same vacation, but I’ll stop a few kilometers before that: in Leiden, The Netherlands. Because that’s where my new job is. So much for returning to Denmark, but I am getting closer :-)
I cannot really reveal much about the new job, as it is all very hush hush at this point. But I’ll stay connected to both Mozilla and XForms. To what degree, and how “public”, my involvement will be in these, is a bit unknown for now. I will also keep hanging out in the W3C XForms working group though.
I cannot keep my current level of involvement in the Mozilla XForms Extension though. At least for the first many months, I suspect I will be very little involved. I’ll still hang out on IRC, and try to do a review now and then though.
But now the workday is ending. It’s Friday. The sun is shining. I am in Spain. Beach time maybe? :-) Have a nice weekend!
Just so you know, we’ve changed the default XForms bug owner in Bugzilla to be xforms@core.bugs. That means that if you are interested in following bug activity for XForms, that’s the email adress to watch.
That means if you go to your “Email Preferences” in Bugzilla you can add xforms@core.bugs to your User Watching list and receive emails when a new XForms bug are created. If you want to watch continued activity, you probably also want to watch spride@gmail.com which is the QA contact.
The Mozilla XForms Project seriously needs some styling help. Just take a look at our samples… so if there’s anybody out there interested in helping us with designing a better look, at least for some of our samples I would be very happy. Looks and eye-candy sells.
It will give anyone interested a look into XForms, and styling credits of course. That’s all I can offer :)
We also need some more samples and possibly a step-by-step description of some of them, or at least some good inline comments. I’m working on that part.
Please contact me if you are interested.
To my surprise the XForms Buddy window was aparently not resizable in Windows. That should be fixed now.
http://beaufour.dk/xforms/xformsbuddy_0.5.6.xpi
I do not have massive amount of time to hack on XForms Buddy, but please feel free to comment or email me if there are bugs or feature requests. Patches are welcome too :-)
Good news: Mozilla Foundation have just given a grant to improve accessibility of the Firefox XForms Extension. It will be done by Alexander Surkov, who has already done a lot of good work on the extension.
Accessibility grants. The Mozilla Foundation will be making two more accessibility-related grants. The first to improve the accessibility of the optional XForms extension; Alexander Surkov will be doing the work for this. Although XForms is not part of the default Firefox build, XForms technology is of interest to corporate and government users, and corporations and governments typically have rather stringent requirements for accessibility (e.g., the U.S. government’s Section 508 requirements). Improving XForms accessibility is therefore (among other things) an investment in promoting future adoption of Firefox in enterprise environments. — Frank Hecker’s blog
