Beltzner said we can take a nap, but I think he’s just addled from lack of sleep. Those of us on the engineering side are already playing with the pieces that will become Firefox 3, since we’ve been mostly code-complete for a month or so. We’ve pointed this out before, but we’re always open to ideas.
Yesterday I took time to reflect on what we did in the last year, from the first cut at features, written down by Beltzner at Salad King in Toronto, to the plan formed by the team, to the long grind to finally shipping yesterday. There has been a great deal of change this year, and a great deal of maturation as an organization. It is still, after a year and a half “on the inside,” constantly amazing to see the people inside and outside of MoCo who make such a substantial contribution to what we’re doing here.

Since we shipped, a number of people have congratulated me on the release, but as much as I’m personally happy with what I did to help, this project is bigger than any one person, and I consider it a great piece of luck that I am able to work with a truly amazing group and work on such an awesome product. I would be remiss were I not to point them out, since they seem to be the type of people who take the “aw shucks” route more often than not. Thus, in no particular order, The List:

Mike Beltzner – The Man Who Couldn’t Say No, Mike wore a hat shop’s worth of hats, playing driver, product manager, project manager, release coordinator, visual design consultant, wordsmith, and user experience monster. I am continually amazed by his perception, creativity, and judgement, and working with him is one of the best parts of my job. Hopefully, he is able to obtain a wibble soon, so that he may rest and enjoy the fruits of his indispensible labours.
Mike Schroepfer – I have to give schrep credit for bringing pragmatism and informed decision-making to the forefront of everything we do on the engineering side. His continued influence meant that our original target from last October of a Q3 release was missed by mere weeks, an oddity in the context of the modern software world. Practicing the little-known art of Conference Call Ninjitsu, he has helped us make meetings a productive exercise, instead of a timesink. All of us have learned a great deal from him, and it seems a rare opportunity to work so closely with someone who can influence so much.
Chris Beard – A driving force behind marketing and product development efforts, Chris tends to work behind the scenes, but has a massive impact on everything we do. My hope for 2007 is that he finally gets credit for what he does outside of MoCo, instead of being seen as a quiet and shadowy suit.
Gavin Sharp – Often mistaken for a bot, or an AI script, or a cover for an outsourcing team of 12 in India, Gavin wrote the new search service, which became the platform for search suggestions and OpenSearch support, both key pieces in moving search in the browser forward. He was also tireless in fixing large numbers of bugs, and for his efforts was given the traditional Mozilla reward of more work and responsibility.

Asaf Romano – The go-anywhere, fix-anything, Mac/RTL/find/feeds/theme generalist, Asaf has been around the project for years, and is now hanging out working for us out of Tel Aviv.

Dietrich Ayala – Dietrich came on board in early February, and was handed the entirely underspecified “Session Saver” to-do from the requirements doc. Three months later, we had session restore support for crashes, application restarts, and general use. It is now one of the most talked about improvements in Firefox 2.

Seth Spitzer – Seth returned to Mozilla after his time in the wilderness, in time to handle the tabbed browsing improvements, including the fine-tuning hooked into the visual refresh. He also found time to toss in major update support in the client, for both 1.5.0.8 and 2.0, which will be put on display soon enough.

Myk Melez – Creator of Live Titles (aka Microsummaries), Myk solved a very real problem in a very cool way, and I’m looking forward to what he and Justin have cooking for the next rev.

Ben Goodger – The new Feed Preview and subscription UI was born out of his skills and intuition, his insight and his presence are greatly missed now that he has stepped away from the project.

Robert Sayrer – Now working for us full time, and dragging us kicking and screaming (or perhaps murmuring assent) towards more unit testing in the project, Robert built the new feed parsing backend that enabled the Feed Preview changes, and will allow us to build more on RSS over the next year.

Reed Loden – resident web wunderkind, Reed is everywhere, and simply made a lot of successful launches possible with his tireless efforts.

Rob Strong – Like Atlas, but with an extra planet he swaps in and out just for the variety, Rob built both the new installer and the Addons Manager for Firefox 2, and somehow found time to get plans together for Vista support, coming very soon to a Firefox near you.

There are others, but when these posts get too long, people tend to skim, and that’s not the point, so I’ll pick this up later. These are the people who really bring Firefox to the world, and I think we all should be thankful they care this much.