The Problem

The Requirements

• Start with an explained, working example.
• Let the student modify the example with as little work on their part as possible so that they can improve their mental model of how things actually work.
• Link to other relevant documentation that explains what is going on, especially reference/API docs, without the user having to open a browser window and manually go search/cross-reference things for themselves.
• Let the student convert the modified example into something they can then use as the basis for an extension.

The In-Process Solution: Narscribblus

• Was built for static languages where your types need to be defined.  You can then document each component of the type by hanging doc-blocks off them.  In contrast, in JS if you have a complex Object/dictionary argument that you want to hang stuff of of, your best bet may be to just create a dummy object/type for documentation purposes.  JSDoc and friends do support a somewhat enriched syntax  like “@param arg.attr”, but run into the fact that the syntax…
• Is basically ad-hoc with limited extensibility.  I’m not talking about the ability to add additional doctags or declare specific regions of markup that should be passed through a plugin, which is pretty common.  In this case, I mean that it is very easy to hit a wall in the markup language that you can’t resolve without making an end-run around the existing markup language entirely.  As per the previous bullet point, if you want to nest rich type definitions, you can quickly run out of road.

• Steal as much as possible from Racket (formerly PLT Scheme)’s documentation tool, Scribble .  To get a quick understanding of the brilliance of Racket and Scribble, check out the quick introduction to racket .  For those of you who don’t click through, you are missing out on examples that automatically hyperlink to the documentation for invoked methods, plus pictures capturing the results of the output in the document.
  • We steal the syntax insofar as it is possible without implementing a scheme interpreter.  The syntax amounts to @command[s-expression stuff where whitespace does not matter]{text stuff which can have more @command stuff in it and whitespace generally does matter}.  The brilliance is that everything is executed and there are no heuristics you need to guess at and that fall down.
  • Our limitation is that while Racket is a prefix language and can use reader macros and have the entire documents be processed in the same fashion as source code and totally understood by the text editor, such purity is somewhat beyond us.  But we do what we can.
• Use narcissus, Brendan Eich /mozilla’s JS meta-circular interpreter thing, to handle parsing JavaScript.  Although we don’t have reader macros, we play at having them.  If you’ve ever tried to parse JavaScript, you know it’s a nightmare that requires the lexer to be aware of the parsing state thanks to the regexp syntax.  So in order for us to be able to parse JavaScript inline without depending on weird escaping syntaxes, when parsing our documents we use narcissus to make sure that we parse JavaScript as JavaScript; we just break out when we hit our closing squiggly brace.  No getting tricked by regular expressions, comments, etc.
• Use the abstract interpreter logic from Patrick Walton ‘s jsctags (and actually stole its CommonJS-ified narcissus as the basis for our hacked up one too) as the basis for abstract interpretation to facilitate being able to linkify all our JavaScript code.  The full narcissus stack is basically:
  • The narcissus lexer has been modified to optionally generate a log of all tokens it generates for the lowest level of syntax highlighting.
  • The narcissus parser has been modified to, when generating a token log, link syntax tokens to their AST parse nodes.
  • The abstract interpreter logic has been modified to annotate parse nodes with semantic links so that we can traverse the tokens to be able to say “hey, this is attribute ‘foo’ in an object that is argument index 1 of an invocation of function ‘bar’” where we were able to resolve bar to a documented node somewhere.  (We also can infer some object/class organization as a result of the limited abstract interpretation.)
  • We do not use any of the fancy static analysis stuff that is going on as of late with the DoctorJS stuff.  Automated stuff is sweet and would be nice to hook in, but the goal here is friendly documentation.
  • The abstract interpreter has been given an implementation of CommonJS require that causes it to load other source documents and recursively process them (including annotating documentation blocks onto them.)
• We use bespin as the text editor to let you interactively edit code and then see the changes.  Unfortunately, I did not hook bespin up to the syntaxy magic we get when we are not using bespin.  I punted because of CommonJS loader snafus.  I did, however, make the ‘apply changes’ button use narcissus to syntax check things (with surprisingly useful error messages in some cases).

• It’s all CommonJS code.  The web enabled version which I link to above and below runs using a slightly modified version of Gozala ‘s teleport loader.  It can also run privileged under Jetpack, but there are a few unimplemented sharp edges relating to Jetpack loader semantics.  (Teleport has been modified mainly to play more like jetpack, especially in cases where its aggressive regexes go looking for jetpack libs that aren’t needed on the web.)  For mindshare reasons, I will probably migrate off of teleport for web loading and may consider adding some degree of node.js support.  The interactive functionality currently reaches directly into the DOM, so some minor changes would be required for the server model, but that was all anticipated.  (And the non-interactive “manual” language already outputs plain HTML documents.)
• The web version uses a loader to generate the page which gets displayed in an iframe inside the page.  The jetpack version generates a page and then does horrible things using Atul ‘s custom-protocol mechanism to get the page displayed but defying normal browser navigation; it should either move to an encapsulated loader or implement a proper custom protocol.

Game On 2010 Competition

• Download Firefox 4 Beta
• Learn more about the features
• Submit your feedback
• Short, to the point FAQ
• Long, technical release notes

• Thunderbird 3.1.3: http://getthunderbird.com/
• Thunderbird 3.0.7: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all-older.html

• Thunderbird 3.1.3 release notes
• Thunderbird 3.0.7 release notes

1. Fragmentation is a Windows problem that Linux is immune to due to having awesomer filesystems.
2. Mac OSX automatically defragments files, so fragmentation isn’t a problem there.
3. Fragmentation isn’t a problem on SSDs

1. Linux might be good at avoiding fragmentation for server workloads. It sucks for desktop users.
2. OSX will defragment small files, but big ones hurt most.
3. Cheap SSDs suck at tiny reads caused by fragmentation resulting in spectacularly bad IO. More on this in a future post.

var property = 42; 

var obj = 

  { 

    property: 17, 

    method: function() { return this.property; } 

  }; 

 

var bound = obj.method.bind(obj); 

assertEq(bound(), 17); 

function multiply() 

{ 

  var product = 1; 

  for (var i = 0, sz = arguments.length; i < sz; i++) 

    product *= arguments[i]; 

  return product; 

} 

 

var productTimesFive = multiply.bind(null /* this */, 5); 

assertEq(productTimesFive(4, 3, 2, 1), 120); 

function Vector() 

{ 

  var args = arguments; 

  this.length = arguments.length; 

  this.get = function(i) { return args[i]; }; 

  this.set = function(i, v) { args[i] = v; }; 

} 

 

var PartialVector = Vector.bind(null /* this, ignored with new */, 3, 7); 

 

var threeSevenTen = new PartialVector(10); // new Vector(3, 7, 10) 

- The GML-based art / technology project Eyewriter won the prestigious Golden Nica in the Interactive Arts category at Ars Electronica .




Congratulations to Free Art and Technology (FAT ), OpenFrameworks and the Graffiti Research Lab : Tony Quan , Evan Roth , Chris Sugrue , Zach Lieberman ,Theo Watson and James Powderly , who celebrated accordingly in Linz



- The Eyewriter team is raising money for Tony Quan on Kickstarter. Please help support the project on Kickstarter:


- Mozilla’s Paul Rouget has released a GML-to-IMG converter, allowing GML files to be saved as images, uploading to image-hosting services etc. Nice one, Paul!

- Golan Levin & Jérôme Saint-Clair released the Obama GML Playa which features Obama playing your favorite GML-files from the #000000book library, using the new Processing GML Library GML4U .


———————————————————————————-

hg bzexport [REV] [BUG]

• Documented the NetUtils.jsm method readInputStreamToString().
• Documented the mozIStorageConnection method clone().
• Documented new notifications sent by Places.
• Documented the new timeout suspend and resume functions on the nsIDOMWindowUtils interface.
• Documented the new chrome-document-global-created and content-document-global-creatednotifications .
• Documented the DownloadLastDir.jsm code module.
• Documented changes to the Function.apply() method for ECMAScript 5 compliance.
• Added details about xpcnativewrappers=no going away to the XPCOM changes in Gecko 2.0 page.
• Documented the mozIStorageConnection method setGrowthIncrement() .
• Documented some changes to XPCOMUtils.jsm .
• Worked on documentation and sample code for the click() method on file input elements, but found and filed bug 592802 after finding an issue preventing sample code from working. Docs on hold until this bug is fixed.

The Internet Standards role involves liaison with various Internet and Web organisational and technical bodies to allow the BBC to influence and shape future standards, build prototypes to prove or disprove emerging research, and feed into new BBC products and services to create innovative new user experiences.

• Build Machines:
  I fixed the missing L10n nightlies by applying a trick the Firefox build engineers team told me about - all locales that build right now should have nightlies out for all platforms again.
  When I noticed that two machines were missing , I filed a bug and IT promptly got them back to work for us - thanks for that!
• Automated tests:
  While a few other people in our team are churning along to reduce our test failures, I only helped marginally with this effort this week - but when one fix landed and didn't have the wanted effect, I investigated that a bit , wrote a test specifically for the new issue we're seeing and found out what the actual problem there is - we're still discussing a solution.
  I did create a patch to only build Web Console for Firefox , which should make our test failures there go away - if it gets accepted.
• Places:
  I did one more patch for cleaning up the places library , reverting theming for some parts to ease getting it reviewed.
  The fast bookmarking button got some more review comments and finally got as far as being OKed for the Classic theme, so I updated it for mac and Modern as well. The star button nit backport got review, I requested approval to land.
  The Mac problem of bookmarks being broken when no windows are open is solved after some more teamwork between Stefan and me.
• Doorhanger notifications:
  While the main patch is still waiting for review, I updated the followup on add-on installation notifications following some more Firefox work. I also filed a bug for 'Learn more' on geolocation notifications , but I won't work on it while the rest is still in limbo.
• UA string:
  I did a patch for the somewhat controversial change of including a Firefox token by default in our UA string, after I realized the fight for this has been lost. There will be a UI pref in the advanced panels, and some don't believe this fight is over and want to prolong needless fighting, but I think this change needs to be done and the discussion ended if we don't want to continue losing users over this.
• Data Manager:
  From what I can see, the updates to the Data Manager patch and the review comments seem to get very close to final with respect to Neil's super-review. Now all I'm waiting for is the official marking of that and Ian's actual review.
• Site-specific zoom:
  I updated the patch for remembering zoom per site after I found out how to mitigate errors I had earlier and requested reviews now, but that might just be stalled for using a controversial event right now, which Neil just doesn't like to see at all in our code.
• OpenSearch:
  One thing that comes up time and again when users try to use it unsuccessfully and ask in our channels is OpenSearch support . This has been stalling for a long time basically just because we now have crufty, badly documented binary code around for search and a sidebar of which we don't know usage but which is crafted around a model that is far away from OpenSearch and not even fitting the current code.
  After we have decided some weeks ago that we'll set no priority on the sidebar working, I finally bit the bullet and tried to get our code to work with toolkit's OpenSearch module and so far, it has been easier than I thought - even though we are still missing a few things in my current WIP patch. I also did a very rough WIP for an optional search bar , but that needs a lot more work and isn't as high a priority as the main OpenSearch patch.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey Development Meeting, SeaMonkey build machines, visit to Bay Area and Mozilla HQ, building with libxul and/or 'fatlibxul', organizational future for SeaMonkey, etc.

Summary

Description

Attachments

Severity/Priority

Version

Product/Component

• the Firefox 3.6.8 home page recommended me recently to update my Flash plugin on my Mac OS X box (Snow Leopard)
• so I did...
• since that day, many web sites showing Flash-based videos freeze making the browser totally unusable with CPU usage > 95%. A good example is http://lci.tf1.fr/
• I originally thought a bad interaction between Flash and AntiBlockPlus was guilty but I removed ABP and the problem is still here ; the Flash plugin is almost certainly guilty here

Methodology

Results

• Mozilla 4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
• Mozilla 3.04 (WinNT; U)
• trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999)
• Lynx/2.8.5rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 GNUTLS/0.8.12
• MyBB

Future Work

I'm hoping a few people can point me to some nice freebie tools for applying patches in one repository to another repo's code, and keeping the patches up to date. Or for handling cross-repository (and for that matter, cross-repository-platform) patches in general.

From my brief research, Mercurial Queues seems perfect for this - within Mercurial repositories anyway.

> jcranmer: libmime and compose are pretty much the two areas that I refuse to do research in
> bwinton: jcranmer: That’s a pretty good policy

• editor is notoriously hard to grasp – this is a vast, ancient piece of software, that didn’t quite move on as the rest of the gecko core kept improving (although this has been changing recently, thanks to Ehsan’s work),
• the assembling and sending logic is all-C++, which makes it hard for extension authors to interact with us, and for would-be contributors to help us,
• the composition UI involves a lot of (very old) files, most of which we cannot maintain, because
• Mozilla Messaging is extremely low on resources.

• We’d be able to move to a more maintainable architecture. Having the compose code written in JS would certainly enable us to do much more, and be much more extensible.
• We’d pave the way for having a pluggable editor. Right now, the code is assuming that the only part that sends messages is the compose window. Other people might want to send messages too (Thunderbird Air is one of them).
• We’d defer the maintainance burden of the composition UI – the insert image dialog, for instance – to a third-party. This means more bugfixing, more active development, from a project that is Thunderbird-friendly to boot. We’re not doing any active development on these anyway…
• We’ll certainly introduce tons of bugs. However, fixing bugs in CKEditor certainly sounds more doable than fixing bugs in the C++ editor components.
• We’d be able to attract more contributors: unless you’re mentally insane, you don’t want to hack XUL and C++ components — however, fixing a whole bunch of Javascript sounds more reasonable.
• We’d finally introduce the much-wanted “compose in a tab” feature.

1. That extension actually requiresContacts for the autocomplete (a nice side-effect is that you can autocomplete more than two addresses for the same contact, ha!).
2. This extension is an experiment. There’s a huge list of things it doesn’t do. Right now, it barely allows you to reply, forward, and edit/save drafts. It doesn’t take your preferences into account, it only sends html, not mixed mime emails. It has bugs. Lots of them.
3. To make sure this works properly, you need to ensure in Tools > Accounts settings that for each of your accounts, in the “Composition and addressing” section, “Compose messages using HTML” is actually checked. Otherwise, you will send HTML markup as plain/text, which is usually a bad idea.
4. This release targets Thunderbird 3.1. Because patches that enhance interaction between this new editor and the Thunderbird core will have to wait for 3.2, you will see a lot of errors in the Error Console.
5. Support will be scarce. I am not a Mozilla Messaging employee, and I’m doing this on my spare time. So please be patient, check out the list of missing features on the GitHub Wiki, and don’t report a ton of bugs: I’m probably aware of them already .

Hackers, meet graffiti writers

“Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) is a universal, XML based, open file format designed to store graffiti motion data (x and y coordinates and time). The format is designed to maximize readability and ease of implementation, even for hobbyist programmers, artists and graffiti writers”.

Geo-coding reports from the ground using Ushahidi

“Plunge in and do things:” civil society and the web

CrisisCamp’s direct participation and collaboration represent civil society in action – “see a problem, do something. Form an association, virtual or formal. Build a tool — or a product. Reach out. Don’t wait for government to set up a special official organization — plunge in and do things.”

Order in chaos and “humane workflow”

One thing I noticed about the chaos surrounding the Internet-based efforts [at CrisisCamp] was that, like Mozilla, they were formed very organically. This meant that there were a plethora of activities going on which anyone could participate in, but the picture presented to a newcomer was confusing and messaging wasn’t always consistent. Tasks needed to be completed urgently; the changing landscape on the ground meant that problems and solutions were constantly changing, and assumptions were frequently challenged….

Combined with the distributed nature of the solution, acquainting newcomers with a reasonably humane workflow for contributing was non-trivial: just processing a report on pakreport.crowdflower.org, for instance, often meant switching between tabs containing getlatlon.com , OpenStreetMap, and a Google Docs page containing advice and other resources. There was a lot of copying and pasting involved.

How could Mozilla help?

Building a better (humanitarian) web

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• almost done with CSS 3 Backgrounds ! Linear gradients, radial gradients , multiple backgrounds ! Yay !
• windows and linux builds currently horked, some stylesheets for these platforms are missing. I need to finalize backgrounds first.
• the Image Insertion dialog will be drastically simplified in the next days/weeks

1. load the image inside an <html:img> element
2. wait until it's loaded
3. get its natural width and height
4. resize the image to make it fit nicely in its container box, whatever the width and height of the image

1. load the image as the background image of <xul:box> element

background-size: contain;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center;

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• And of course, please share your questions and suggestions in the Test Pilot discussion group or on Twitter .

var panels = require('panel');
var data = require('self').data;

var myPanel = panels.add(panels.Panel({
    contentURL: data.url('somepage.html')
}));

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• Graph Server post failures
• Slave disconnections
• Sendchange failures
• out of disk issues
• CVS checkout failures (yes, we still use CVS….)