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about:mozilla - Labs meetup, AMO dev tools, SVG and HTML, CSS, color profiles, L10N, Mozdev, and more…

In this issue…

Labs Meetup this Thursday in Mountain View
Mozilla Labs is holding its monthly meetup this Thursday, Sept 25, at Mozilla HQ in Mountain View (1981 Landings Drive, Bldg K). This month the conversation will focus on the future of the Web — “We want to hear from you! What is your big idea for the future of the Web? Do you have thoughts to add to the Concept Series? We are anxious to hear what inspires you!” Everyone is welcome to drop by and participate in the meetup, so if you’re in the Bay Area you should take the time to stop by and join the conversation. If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP in the comments over at the Mozilla Labs Meetup post.

AMO developer tools ready for testing
Justin Scott has been writing about the development of new tools for addons.mozilla.org, and has now announced that those tools are ready for testing. “On the en-US Developer Tools index, you should now see an invitation to try out the new tools, which will take you to the new ‘Developer Dashboard’. Using the old index will continue using the old tools until the next update when we intend to make the tools the default and only tools.” There’s also a test site available, where you can play around with the new tools without causing changes on the live AMO database. For details about the various new tools, you should read Justin’s previous posts, all of which are linked in his blog post.

SVG effects for HTML content
Robert O’Callahan has been working on adding features to Firefox that allow SVG effects to be applied to HTML content. He originally posted about this work back in June, discussing his experiments with making SVG’s “clip-path”, “mask”, and “filter” properties work when applied to HTML content. Last week Robert announced that this work has been added to the main Mozilla code base, and further that he has submitted his proposal to the SVG working group for standardization. For more information about these new features, including screenshots of them in action and working demos, see Robert’s post on the Web Tech weblog.

CSS transforms
The folks over at the Web Tech weblog have posted that Gecko (Mozilla’s layout engine) nightly builds now support a new “-moz-transform” CSS property. This property — a version of which is similarly supported by WebKit — is described as a “CSS property that accepts a list of transform functions (generic affine linear transforms) and then applies those transforms, in order, to the HTML elements the property is applied to.” Several examples of how to use the property and descriptions of what it does are available in the Web Tech post. “It will be interesting to see what uses developers find for CSS transforms. Much of the functionality once reserved for plugins can now be directly integrated into CSS and JavaScript.” More information and code samples are available in the Web Tech article.

Color profile support changes
Bobby Holley has been refining Mozilla’s color management backend, working to improve performance and polish the feature so it’s ready for “prime time”. These efforts have clearly paid off, as color profile support has now been turned on by default for tagged images in the latest Firefox nightly builds. In this context, “tagged images” are any images displayed in the web browser that have an embedded ICC color profile — in other words, images that contain the information needed to do a specific and accurate color transformation. Bobby’s post goes into all the technical aspects of these changes in detail, and also discusses why color management hasn’t been enabled for everything at this time. Percy Cabello has also posted about these changes over at Mozilla Links.

nsITraceableChannel, intercept HTTP traffic
Jan Odvarko writes, “Since bug 430155 (’new nsHttpChannel interface to allow examination of HTTP data before it is passed to the channel’s creator’) is now fixed, it’s possible to intercept HTTP traffic from within a Firefox extension!” Jan estimates that this fix will be part of Firefox 3.0.3, and points out that this feature is crucial for Firebug as one of that add-on’s features is the ability to display the response of any HTTP request made by a page. To this point, Firebug has been making use of the Firefox cache and XHR monitoring to implement this feature, but there are several issues with this approach that make it suboptimal. For more information about this new feature, including examples of how to make use of it in Firefox add-ons, read Jan’s article at his Software is hard weblog.

Localization Drivers visibility
Seth Bindernagel, Mozilla’s Director of Localization, recently blogged about some steps the Localization Drivers team is taking to increase the visibility of localization activities and improve project communications. The two primary tools they’re using are the Localization Dashboard and the team’s new weekly triage meetings where they ensure that high priority issues are dealt with quickly. Additionally, the team has created a new Firefox 3 l10n release trackers bug, and are working to make it easier for new localization teams to navigate through the early stages of our process. The results of some of these efforts are clear, as Seth announces that there are likely to be 13 more languages added to Firefox in the 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 releases, which is a huge accomplishment in the span of two minor updates. For more about Mozilla’s localization work, see Seth’s full blog post.

New Mozilla Foundation t-shirt
David Boswell writes, “I’d like to let people know that there is a new Mozilla shirt available in the Mozilla store. This new design is heavily influenced by the old school Hack shirts.” As with all Mozilla Store purchases, proceeds directly benefit the Mozilla Foundation. You can check out (and order!) the t-shirts at the Mozilla Store.

Mozdev turns eight
The Mozdev team writes, “In September 2000 mozdev.org was launched as a site dedicated to supporting Mozilla application and extension developers. Over the last year we have continued to provide hosting for hundreds of active projects and there are now add-ons for over a dozen Mozilla-based applications. There are also new features and more updates coming that will make developing projects even easier. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed time, energy or money over the past 8 years and we look forward to another year of serving the Mozilla community.”

Latest about:addons newsletter
The Mozilla Add-ons team has published the latest issue of the monthly about:addons newsletter, bringing you the latest and greatest news and information from the world of Mozilla Add-on development. You can read the full newsletter at the Mozilla Developer Center and sign up to have future issues sent directly to your mailbox using the handy subscription form.

Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

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Original Article from Mozilla

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