The thing, you know… that does… the stuff!

There’s currently a debate going on in the Firefox support planning newsgroup about what to call the “Import” article.

The issue is that we’re trying to come up with an explanatory term to describe the profile data. We think “data” is too vague, but are having a heck of a time coming up with something shorter than “bookmarks, settings and add-ons” to describe bookmarks, settings and add-ons. “Personal Information” has been tossed about, but I think too many novice users will think that means things like their credit card numbers and address etc.

So I’m curious about two things:

  1. Do most novice users think we mean all the profile information when we say settings?
  2. What term would you use to describe all that good stuff that someone would want to keep from browser to browser or profile to profile?

FWIW this isn’t a vote for a new term or anything. I’m just curious. If we get something good maybe we’ll use it.


I know I need glasses, but do I lack vision?

Mitchell Baker finally blogged about the Mozilla Foundation and the “Thunderbird situation.” I replied to her blog, but it’s pretty lengthy, figure anyone that cares about my opinion will more likely see it here than there, so here is what I posted there (mostly, I had the full thing in my clipboard, but replaced it without pasting over the copy I’d made in progreess).

I agree that things are going to get really interesting with the web and what it can do. I think we might be missing the boat if we think it’s all going to happen within the browser. All the talk I hear about “the web is the future!” sounds like Firefox as OS, and maybe it’s my lack of vision, but I just can’t see that working out well. If everything is going to be “on the web” then where does a browser separate from the operating system fit in? Will it be like PowerDesktop, an alternative file exlorer?

I think there is a serious underestimation of how much people want their data *off* the web as much as possible, especially in North America. What will happen for those users? I guess Firefox would save their data to the HD and tell the server to delete it, and then the web interface would be able to read the mail again? Or Firefox would display it without sending it back to the server? Isn’t that another suite?

I think my biggest problem with all this is I don’t know how far in the future all this is, maybe it’s next year, and so it’s *Really* happening, but is it really? What’s the timeframe for this? Are we really somewhere with standards that it can happen so soon? 5 years maybe?

So while everyone’s really excited about what’s coming down the tubes, I’m sitting at home wanting to use an email client, and a calendar manager, and I like not having to go online to check stuff (*my* internet is up pretty much 24/7 and I have unlimited bandwidth, but pretty sure that’s still the minority). Especially on my laptop. Yeah there’s mobile phones, too, but seriously what is the security like? Hackers are just beginning to get into the market and will phone providers and manufacturers really have the experience to close the holes quick enough to keep people’s data safe in the near future?

All this R&D is great, but I’m a user and I exist *right now* and my data could use managing *right now* and *right now* I don’t care how many apps I have to use to do that, that’s what my operating system is for. I care that things like Thunderbird, and Sunbird (which is an alpha I might add, it’s amazing) work. really. well.

If the technologies are going to converge, then fine. But why so much bet hedging? Why not let it happen organically? Innovate the current products and UI. I mean web based or standalone the UI that people like is going to be the same. Isn’t that what the foundation is supposed to be doing anway? Nurturing things that are good for people *now* and seeing where they can go?


Unreachable Stars

It’s a dream that takes years of hard work, devotion, rejection and ultimately one that many of the talented will have to walk away from unrealized. One I never really considered a possibility for myself even when it was still “the dream.” One I hesitated to dream for my children, but couldn’t help myself; hoping it was their dream, trying to prepare myself for the day that they, too, might walk away from it. Even after all that hoping, and knowing that they were in a better position than many to catch that dream, I still find myself completely floored that one of them has.

Gryphon will be performing 5 nights with the world renowned National Ballet of Canada in one of the first stagings of Balanchine’s Don Quixote since his death. Balanchine left the rights to the production to his Dulcinea, Suzanne Farrell, who revived the ballet in 2005 for her own company. Ms Farrell is staging this production and so not only does Gryphon have the wonderful opportunity of being in this ballet, he will also be spending some time with a legend.

This is a ballet that I’m not familiar with apart from general knowledge of Don Quixote (tipping at windmills etc.) and so I can’t tell you more than what Gryphon’s roles will be. In a fantasy scene he will be a sword-fighting crusader-rat, and in another scene, which I can only assume happens in a church, he will be an altar boy.

There are 10 performances in total, with two groups of children performing in 5 shows each. Here are the nights Gryphon and his group are performing:


    Friday, June 15th (Opening night)
    Saturday, June 16th (eve)
    Wednesday, June 20th
    Thursday, June 21st
    Saturday, June 23rd (eve)

All performances begin at 7:30, with a special “Ballet Talks” session about the ballet 45 minutes before show time in the theatre’s lobby.

Tickets can be purchased online or by phone. Prices range from $40 to $155 depending on where you want to sit. Additionally, 10 or more tickets qualifies as a group and is eligible for 20% off, reduced service charges, and a complimentary ticket, so if everyone wants to go on the same night, please let us know ASAP and we can try and get a group together. I’d like to go opening night (Friday), and I already have tickets for the 23rd (Saturday) so I’ll propose those dates for the group and see what happens.


Myspace is sinking and I don’t want to swim?

We’ve been getting a fair number of people in #firefox the past two days who are having issues logging in to Myspace. Myspace is sending out broken cookies causing affected users to see the Firefox error:

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
cookies.

IE users are just seeing a could not load page error. The problem is NOT with Firefox, nor is it with your computer.

Only some accounts are affected. People who are seeing this error with their own accounts are able to log in to a friend’s account on the same machine. Your account isn’t disabled. It’s still there and other users can view it. You’re simply being sent malformed cookies when you try to log in.

Myspace hasn’t made any sort of bulletin about this issue so we can only guess that they’re having issues with one or more of their servers. Some of the people that were seeing the problem have also said it resolved, so it seems it’s a problem on multiple servers and is being fixed.

If you can’t log in but still wish to browse Myspace:

Delete the Myspace cookies in your browser of choice. You can browse any page as long as you don’t try to log in to your account.

If you need to log in to your account, or don’t want to wait for the problem to resolve:

Users have reported being able to log in to their accounts through Myspace’s IM program.

Install and run http://imupdate.myspace.com/nsis/MySpaceIM_Setup.exe

Once you’ve logged in to the service, click on the “MySpace” button at the top and then “Home.”

If you require further assistance:

Please contact Myspace directly. If I come across more information I’ll post it here, but there’s nothing else anyone can do to solve the issue, except have everyone who is experiencing it contact Myspace support, and hopefully that’ll get them on it.


w00t! It’s almost my birthday!

29 days and counting! I always forget to plan early enough since it comes so quickly after the holidays, but this year I’m going to stay in Toronto for a long weekend and if anyone wants to join, they’re welcome to. It’s the weekend of the 17th even though my birthday is the 9th. I’m going to get a room at a nice hotel with room service and probably just go bar hopping/clubbing. If you’re interested in tagging along, get a hold of me.

In light of that, if anyone was wondering what to get me – and this isn’t a solicitation of any kind, just a few people every year always ask me what I want, so if you were already planning on getting me something, here it is – I would love Starpoints to put towards my spree. You don’t have to be a member to buy them as a gift, the person just has to be a member to use them – Starpoint gifts. My points number is 720626286. A free night is 7000 points, but I can get a discount on a night with as little as 1000 points. Oh, and Victoria’s Secret gift certificates are welcome, as always!


T-shirts!

Ok, so that’s not one of my usual clever titles, but I used up all my creativity designing the things. A group of us from #foxymonkies decided we should have t-shirts for the summit, so I got to work and actually got a cafepress shop going! I got it up a little late though so what we’re doing is we’re having them shipped to the office c/o Mike Connor so we definitely have them in time. We’re also going to just place one order and save a bundle on shipping, so if you want a shirt here’s what to do.

1. Go to http://cafepress.com/foxymonkies and find out what style and size you would like (and colour if applicable). There are also #developers shirts at http://cafepress.com/foxydevs, see the end of this post for more info.

2. Make sure the shirt will ship in time.Please note that the dark t-shirts are in beta and will ship in no less than 5 business days. This is not enough time to get there for the summit. Other than that, as long as the item page lists it as in stock, it should be ok. If you really want a dark shirt, you can go ahead and order it yourself, they’re cool shirts anyway you don’t have to be at the summit to wear them.

3. Email me at majken@gmail.com with a subject line of “foxymonkies shirts” by Friday morning with the details on the shirt you want and I’ll order it for you. I plan on placing an order by Thursday morning for 2 day shipping. Any later than that will require overnight shipping which is about twice as expensive. If you don’t email me by Friday you’ll have to order it yourself, also if you’re not actually going to be at the summit you’ll have to order it yourself.

4. Pay me back at the summit. Payment form is negotiable, and may take the form of cash, paypal, alcohol, ponies, or other shiny presents.

Also, we didn’t want to be *completely* elitist so I also made a #developers shirt for the non-monkies who still wanted to show off some IRC pride: http://cafepress.com/foxydevs. I’ll also include these in my group order if I get the orders in time. For those of you that don’t get the joke, do a youtube search on balmer or developers, it should turn up.


Your bookmarks are still there, I promise!

Note: anyone finding this post now, I’m probably not going to see your response if you ask for help here. If the fixes below don’t work for you, or you need help applying them, please see http://mozilla.com/support for help options including forums and live chat (IRC).

I understand how scary and angering it can be to install a new app and then bam, important info is gone. Fortunately this time, they’re not actually gone! Take a deep breath (I’d need one about now if this happened to me) and I’ll explain how to get them back.

Bookmarks missing after installing Firefox 2

Quite a number of people are reporting that after installing Firefox 2 their bookmarks are missing. This is a different issue and much easier to fix than the usual crash issue. The bookmarks are also NOT lost. In some cases the installer isn’t exiting existing Firefox processes properly and not updating some of the old files. This causes several odd issues including tabs not working properly, and for bookmarks to not show up. A bug has been filed, a permanent fix will be available ASAP. Bug 357922

The fix

There are two ways to fix this:
* Uninstall Firefox, delete the install folder (C:Program FilesMozilla Firefox by default) and install Firefox 2 again. Everything will be back to normal, including the bookmarks. This will not cause any loss of any other personal data. That data along with bookmarks are kept in the profile folder in Application Data.

* Install Firefox again using the custom install option and chose to install it to a new folder. Again, no loss of personal data as this installation will still detect and use your existing profiles.

Everyone has reported both of this fixes clear the issue right up and that no other issues are encountered.

Update: You shouldn’t have to delete the install folder for a reinstall to be effective. Uninstall Firefox 2, then make sure firefox.exe isn’t running in the task manager (be sure to check other users) and then install again. The files causing the problem should be overwritten.

To avoid this issue on installation

Until the bug is fixed you can absolutely avoid this problem by closing firefox before running the installer (check the processes tab in task manager), or by using the custom install and installing Firefox 2 to a new folder.

We are still working to narrow down exactly why this is happening to some users and not others. So far we’ve had several people install Firefox 2 with 1.5.0.7 running and they’re not hitting the issue. This might be caused by another issue that is preventing the firefox process from exiting, for example some extensions do this on occasion. I’ll be sure to update this blog, and the bug as more information becomes available. If you have experienced this issue yourself and would like to help narrow it down, comment here, or on the bug or come find us in #firefox on irc.mozilla.org


But is it made of chocolate?

The more astute of you have caught on to an ulterior motive I had in posting about my recent Firefox accomplishment. While I am very proud of myself, and would have blogged about it anyway, I included the screenshot because it also contains the Firefox easter egg. If you didn’t catch it the first time around, go back and take another look. If you found it, but weren’t sure, you were right. There is no other reference to it in lxr, which there would be if it were there legitimately. Still can’t find it? You’ll just have to wait for someone to digg it, I guess.


We could be heroes…

Ok so maybe that’s a lofty title for the content of this post, but hey, I’m exited. As unreal as it feels that what I’ve been doing with my spare time is worth the recognition, it’s really cool to be included as a valuable contributor to such an awesome project. Alright, so it’s not a “One point Oh” but getting in on the 2.0 ain’t too shabby either.

Here I am in what will be the Firefox 2 credits – I’m under Mary Colvig and on top of Mike Connor.

Bon Echo credits with me in them!


Dance, Dance!

So You Think You Can Dance?

It’s so awesome to see dance as a mainsteam form of entertainment. I suppose it’s always been that way in music videos, and as the music video generation grows up, it makes sense that it would somehow resurface in the form of family entertainment. There’s something incredible and magic about dancing, and maybe it’s just because I love dancing myself, but the most magical part is watching how the dancers transform when they’re doing what they love.

This season especially there is one particular girl, and several guys that are nothing spectacular just standing there, they all have their charms, but when they get out there dancing these skinny little boys and awkward young women just change and out there on the floor is a sensual sexy confident dancer that of course disappears again the moment the music stops. Heidi and Ivan in particular, but Ben and Benji as well. Benji especially cuz he’s such a goof every other moment. If you haven’t watched yet, try and catch it once. It’s a lot of fun, and they do all ranges of dancing, lots of hip hop and even krump, not just ballroom like Dancing With the Stars.

The Envelope, Please…

While we’re talking about dancing, those of you that know us know that both the kids picked up the dancing bug from me (which is one of the greatest joys of my life, being able to share that with them). This year they both took ballet exams in their respective grades with the Royal Academy of Dance and both passed with flying colours! There are 3 ways to pass – a simple pass – 40-54%, a pass with merit – 55-74%, and a pass with distinction – 75-100%.

Gryphon passed Grade 2 with merit (66) and Gwen passed Primary with distinction (83)!

And for their encore…

In April, not long after taking their exams, they also auditioned for the National Ballet School’s Junior Associates program. It’s not the full time professional program, which starts for children entering Grade 6 in the regular school system. It’s still a prestigious program, and would mean exposure to other children to who love dancing as much as they do – something especially important for Gryphon.

I was able to watch the audtions (which is probably the only reason I survived not knowing this whole time) so I had some idea of how they did. Gwen’s been a better technical dancer so far and did very well in her audition. Gryphon is just as good in other ways, and being a boy has an advantage there. He didn’t dance as well technically as I know he can, but he remembered all the set work and just really showed how much he loves dancing. So this whole time we were trying to guess who stood a better chance of getting in, and if we’d be lucky enough that they’d both be accepted.

Once again, they both did marvelously and they were both accepted!

Gwen was also accepted into the competitive track in her gymnastics club (which isn’t a surprise, she was invited to do it this past year, but couldn’t because of conflicts) and Gryphon is very excited to be doing a week long dance camp with another dance school this summer. Although I think his favorite part is going to be the family he’ll be staying with. He’ll be staying with another boy who is a student of the school, and they took to each other like glue when they met.

All in all it’s going to be a very expensive summer and next year, but I can’t think of a better way to spend our money.