Project List

You can get involved with any of the projects below. Please see Assignment 2 for details. To join a project create a page for it, following the example of Sample Project below.

Active Projects

Generalization of Joga extension

We worked with partners to create an extension for delivering World Cup scoring updates as well as providing country-specific themes. We'd like someone to take it apart, remove or refactor the Joga-specific pieces so that it can be used for other such data sources (hello, hockey?), and write some basic documentation for how to create your own notification-and-theme extension from the toolkit that results.

Related tech and skills: XUL, JavaScript, documentation, web services

XULRunner Guide

The XULRunner project provides an "application runner" for building apps -- like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird -- atop the Mozilla toolkit framework. It needs a guide outlined, high-priority parts written, and examples created to help people get started.

Related tech and skills: XUL, documentation, cross-platform testing

Reference: http://cs.senecac.on.ca/fsoss/2006/workshop.html#XULRunner

Breakpad development and server operation

The Breakpad project is developing an open source crash reporting and analysis system, analogous to Talkback. There's lots of work to do on wiring it into the build system, operating servers for collecting and analyzing data, and extending Firefox's use of it to collect additional helpful information (like installed extensions, memory usage, etc.)

Reference: Bug 216827, here, and here

Calendar stuff

The Calendar project has lots of stuff for people to do, from Exchange connectors to off-line caching to bug fixes and minor features galore. A good place to start is the #calendar IRC channel on moznet.

OS X Keychain integration

It would be great to store Firefox's saved passwords in the OS X keychain, for consistency and ease of use.

Reference: Bug 106400

CSS guide

The Mozilla Developer Center would like to add a CSS guide to its set of major documents, covering at least the top 100 CSS properties in use on the web today. This data can be obtained through tools . It should include numerous examples, and a fair number of small tutorial/how-to sections for different common tasks or requests from web authors.

Reference: CSS Reference

Delta debugging framework

Delta debugging is an automated approach to debugging that isolates failures systematically. Given a failing test that can be mechanically verified (including a browser crash), delta debugging is a way of automatically isolating the change that introduced the failure. Having a framework in place to pull builds from CVS, bisect by date and change set (using bonsai data -- remember, CVS doesn't have changesets!), and report results would let computers make developers more productive.

D-Bus and other Linux desktop integration improvements

Various Linux distributors have patches in their Firefox packages that add bits and pieces of Linux integration, and we'd like to see even more available. One particular area of interest is controlling the browser via d-bus, and exposing dbus events to the application and extensions.

"Avoid loading the same page twice" Extension

Create an extension to Firefox so that when a bookmark is clicked, and that site is already open in any tab in any window, that tab/window is brought to the front rather than loading the page again.

Related tech and skills: XUL, JavaScript

APNG

APNG stands for Animated PNG, an extension to the PNG specification to allow for animated PNG images. Similar to how Animated GIF is an extension of GIF. Create such a thing.

Mozilla@Seneca Wiki Administration

This wonderful wiki needs attention too! Already there are configuration issues that need to get fixed, extensions we could be using, etc. As we push further with this, we'll come up with more things too. This work will require knowledge of PHP, server administration, knowledge of MediaWiki.

Buggy Bar - Bug Triage Extension

Mike Beltzner suggested this one after his talk. The idea is to make it trivial for testers to follow-through a bug's Steps To Reproduce (STR) so as to confirm it. A tester should be able to use this Extension to ask for a bug (i.e., one would be picked for him/her--no querying) and then a sidebar or similar would appear showing the steps to follow. Under that would need to be a way (e.g., buttons) to say that the bug is confirmed or not. Ideally the QA team could prioritize bugs so they appear in this list automatically, making it easier for testers to get the "right" bugs quickly.

Reference: talk to beltzner.

Extending the Buildbot

This project is a catch-all for Buildbot development done here. The Buildbot is an automated build system written in python. It is used on the Mozilla Seneca Cluster.

Related skills: Python

Distcc With MSVC

Speed up Mozilla's builds by letting them use MSVC with distcc on Windows.

Unit Testing

Programmatic testing of software. The participant will take a section of code and write unit tests for it, fully testing all aspects of the code. This may require the creation of a unit testing framework and interfacing with other developers who know a particular module or service. The programmer will be adept at finding boundary cases and creating tests that deliberately break the software through code. These may lead to the creation of bugs in bugzilla.

Reference: Work with Mozilla's Rob Campbell and Jay Patel from the QA Team.

DDE Bug Within The Address Bar

Currently there is a bug in Firefox such that when running 3 or more instances of the browser, the address bar loses focus when cutting and pasting a string. Regular typing works perfectly when the bug is present. The purpose of this project is to track down and attempt to fix this bug.

Reference: Bug 220900.

MDC Infrastructure

Integrate new features to MDC, work on existing bugs and fix compatibility issues for the upgrade of Mediawiki to 1.7. (Tentative description)

Firefox Performance Testing : A Python framework for Windows

Building new tests, improving on existing ones, strengthening the framework itself and porting it to other OS's

Related to the Performance Testing Project

Reference: alice

Note: Not the typical mundane black box testing

Vista Testing

Testing Firefox on the new Microsoft Vista operating system.

Mozilla@Seneca Cluster Administration

Administration of the Mozilla cluster at Seneca.

Source Code Indexing Service Analysis

Mozilla is evaluating Subversion for revision control, and at the same time wants to look at other source indexing services. This project will setup, document, and test other potential services (e.g., fisheye, opengrok, mxr) on one of the Seneca-Mozilla servers. In each case this requires configuration changes and some scripting to get the services to properly integrate with Mozilla’s other on-line tools. When the test services are installed and synched with the live source tree, Mozilla will point its developers to them and get feedback—-the students will help collect and synthesize this feedback.

Mozilla Based Accessibility

To work with the accessibility team on screen reader compatibility issues outside of Firefox, fixing bugs using XUL in Songbird or Thunderbird or Sunbird calendar etc.

Simple Citation

Create a Firefox extension that will allow citations to be easily generated.

Functional Testing

Testing performed from a user's perspective. Includes the running and writing of test cases in Litmus, filing and tracking bugs through [bugzilla.mozilla.org bugzilla], stress-testing and exploratory debugging. This project requires a dedication to breaking software in an organized and repeatable fashion. There is no such thing as "the wrong way" to use software and the functional tester is adept at abusing a system in previously-unknown ways.

Reference: Work with Mozilla's Rob Campbell and Jay Patel from the QA Team.

Performance Testing

Extending the performance toolkit and tinderbox reporting system. The project begins with a framework for testing page loads and startup times in Win32. The successful completion of this project will see this framework develop into a more robust system complete with processor-timing information and graphing. Memory analysis and samples during runs would also be beneficial. Further success or sub-projects could include porting the system Linux and OS X platforms.

Reference: Bug 346785. Work with Mozilla's Rob Campbell and Jay Patel from the QA Team.

XML 3D Project

This project is being built by Mark Paruzel and Yi (Eric) Shen for BTS530. It involves the incorporation of new HTML tags into a document that would correspond to a 3D interface. The successful completion of this project will yield an easy-to-use developer interface that takes advantage of cient size 3D hardware.

Mozilla Web Tools

While most people think only about the building of browsers, Mozilla also has substantial investment in server-side web tools. This project is a catch-all for activities related to PHP and other web development.

Testing Mozilla Linux/Runtime Requirements

Mozilla is in the process of finalizing a set of Linux library and runtime requirements for distributions wanting to ship Mozilla software. This project will test various bugs against two different sets of runtime setups, hoping to expose any issues with the new requirements.

Potential Projects -- You busy?

Sample Project

This is a sample project stub. You can use the template for Sample Project in order to create a project page for one of the stubs below. This is how you 'sign-up' for a project.

NOTE: if someone has already created the project page, speak to this person and see if you can join them. If so, simply add your name to the Project Leader(s) page. Otherwise, you can become a contributor later.

Improve Mozilla Application and Platform Documentation

Not enough is understood about the various communities and companies who develop with Mozilla, as opposed to those who work on the Mozilla code itself. A proper survey needs to be conducted in order to find out which APIs are being used and how, what is hard, what could be improved, etc. The Mozilla Platform Application Developers is interested in changing this. Their goal is to work with the Mozilla development community to survey, understand, and document the current state of the art. In this project you will work with the mozpad community to connect with projects/companies in orbit around Mozilla and do interviews with their developers. You will then document this information.

• References: http://www.mozpad.org/doku.php?id=actionitem:documentation_proposal
• See also: http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2007/06/xulrunner-wishlist/ and http://www.songbirdnest.com/node/1826
• Contacts: plasticmillion

Mozilla Developer Virtual Appliance

Create a Linux-based virtual machine with all the necessary build, development, and testing tools necessary for working on Mozilla. This virtual appliance would be targeted at developers not familiar with the Mozilla toolchain and wanted to get started.

Add support for more compilers to distcc

An earlier project added multi-compiler support to distcc, and then MSVC support. The framework is now in place to support even more compilers. Add support for another compiler, perhaps Java, C#, or something else.

Necessary Skills: C, Python, Makefile

Add password managers for various platforms

Previous work was done on adding OS X Keychain integration to Firefox. This work was focused on tightly binding C++ and Mac API calls. Since then more work has been done to modularize the password manager in Firefox. Various platform "keychains" need to be integrated with the new system. See bugs 309807, 106400, and 371000.

Add Offline Support to an open source web app

Firefox 3 will support offline abilities, such that web developers can write their apps so they work even when no network is present. Good headway has been made already porting Zimbra. Pick another web app and add offline support, for example: Moodle.

Add SMTP Failover Support to Thunderbird

When sending mail in Thunderbird, if the default SMTP server fails, the error dialog shown to the user should prompt with the choice of using another SMTP server--assuming one is present in the Account Settings. This is similar to, and perhaps the same as, the Thunderbird SMTP Auto-Sensing project idea.

Thunderbird SMTP Auto-Sensing

Modify Thunderbird so that it uses the correct SMTP server for your current network and IP. In other words, if you are at home, use your home ISP's SMTP, but if you use a school wireless network, switch to the school's SMTP. These various SMTP configurations should be manually controlled by the user, that is, you don't have to try and figure out which SMTP to use. Rather, it should be configurable in an options dialog.

Firefox Session Saver Extension

Write a simple (i.e., nothing more than a simple "save session") extension to leverage the existing Session Store API in order to allow the user to save his/her currently open tabs and restore them. This is similar to what Firefox does when it unexpectedly crashes and gives the user the option to restore a previous session. NOTE: there are extensions that do this already, but many of them are more feature rich than need be. See also this blog post.

Thunderbird Picture Preview

Write an extension for Thunderbird that allows the user to start a slideshow preview of all images in the current message. The feature would work like this: when a mail arrives with pictures attached, a button or some other UI is added to the message that allows the slideshow to begin. When clicked, the images are shown one after the other, properly scaled to fit in the window. Consider using Canvas to do the custom graphics, and take a look at this existing Thunderbird extension for ideas.

Thunderbird Email Notification Enhancement

Make Thunderbird report the folder into which a message was delivered in the New Mail notification area. See http://glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?2007/03/29/3398-thunderbird-rfe

Cross-Platform Mozilla Build Farm

Using the accumulated knowledge of the buildbot and distcc projects, and using the physical resources of Hera, create a cross-platform distributed build system suitable for testing patches to Mozilla.

Mozilla Source and Symbol Server

This project aims to make it possible to do full debugs of nightly release builds with access to remote symbols and source code.

Moving to a non-recursive build system

The Mozilla build system currently recurses through thousands of invocations of "make" for a single build. New techniques allow many makefiles to be read by a single make process, which will speed up builds and allow for more correct dependency evaluation.

Related tech and skills: makefiles

Developing the Tamarin build system

The new Tamarin project is developing a cross-platform build system based on a python replacement for GNU autoconf. Assistance is needed to develop, test, and document this new build system. Note: access to virtual machines of various operating systems such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenSolaris would be very useful for testing purposes.

SVN access control via LDAP

We have a tool called "Despot" which gives us fine-grained control over access to the Mozilla CVS repository. As we start to have development hosted in Subversion (SVN), with account information maintained in LDAP, we'd like to have a tool to enforce and manage such controls there as well.

Related tech and skills: server config, LDAP, scripting, web interface/app development

Reference: See https://despot.mozilla.org/help.html and http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/webtools/despot/README. Also, please speak with Reed Loden (reed) about this project.

Updating JS guide and JS reference

The current JavaScript guide and reference are valuable, but in serious need of updating in both structure and content (new language features, more relevant compatibility information, improved examples).

Related tech and skills: documentation, JavaScript

Bugzilla component-watching

It's common for a developer to want to "watch" all the bugs that are filed in a certain Bugzilla component. Mozilla uses a convoluted and painful system of synthetic accounts to simulate this capability, and we'd all really prefer to be able to do it more directly and with less opportunity for error.

Reference: Bug 76794

Updating and migrating of MDC content

The Mozilla Developer Center has rights to a bunch of content that's still hosted on various strange corners of http://www.mozilla.org and the old DevEdge archives. There are some gems in there that need dusting off and updating to reflect the realities of the modern web.

Related tech and skills: web authoring, documentation, scripting, technology domains of chosen articles.

Test framework development

We have a number of promising prototype or proof-of-concept test frameworks for exercising Mozilla code from different directions. They need varying amounts of work to make them more robust and general, document them, and integrate them into different kinds of automation.

Related tech and skills: Python, Perl, Makefiles, shell scripting, JavaScript

OpenDarwin tinderbox image

We would love to have a Tinderbox image (e.g., VM) for testing and building on the Mac, based on the freely-available OS X source. Also, we'd like to get it wired into Ben Hearsum's (bhearsum) buildbot system.

Related tech and skills: system configuration, scripting, light C/C++, Makefile

FAQ mining for extension developers

Literally every day, there are informal exchanges on IRC (e.g., #extdev, #developers, #firefox, #seneca, etc.) and newsgroups that are fantastic fodder for small, focused documents. Collect these exchanges and fleshing them out as recipes for extension authors that include sample code.

Automated Testing

Programmatically driving the browser to perform human-like tasks repeatedly. The programmer will have to create a framework for driving browser components in JavaScript or other scripting language to repeatedly test various pieces of the application. Ideally, the successful completion of this task will see a test or suite of tests that can be invoked by command line to start the browser, run the test suites and then exit and record the results for display or analysis.

Reference: Work with Mozilla's Rob Campbell and Jay Patel from the QA Team.

AppleScript support for Firefox

Lots of people would like to script Firefox from AppleScript (or, more generally, from the OSA), and extension authors would like to be able to call out to AppleScript/OSA from their code as well.

Reference: Bug 125419

Data Mining of Hendrix Data

This project involves the creation of reports using Hendrix data of user feedback, to better understand major issues being reported and converting them into new bugs or finding and updating existing ones.

Talkback Report Challenge 1

Reference: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_QA_Community:Talkback_Report_Challenge_1

Litmus Extension

We wanted to have an extension that would be able to serve users testcases to try and allow them to submit results to http://litmus.mozilla.org. We could expand the feature set of the extension to do a lot of other cool things with Bugzilla and Website Reporter integration. So we need some ideas there. If you're interested, you could collaborate with David Hamp-Gonsalves to work on this together.

QMO Help

Help is needed in getting QMO together. If anyone is interested in website design, php hacking, or general graphics work, we can use some help getting QMO into better shape.

Reference: http://quality.mozilla.org/?p=5

Help Ship Firefox

If you're interested in testing, you can run test cases through http://litmus.mozilla.org.