The time has come for the developers of Firefox to start communicating with the developers of add-ons. As a case in point: Recently the classic.manifest file in fx3 has had a large number of override codes added to it that reassigned filenames from example.png to example-aero.png. Suddenly, all third-party themes in Vista are now missing buttons in a number of places - some of them not easy to spot (e.g. - the wrap icon that shows up only when you reach the bottom of a page in a page search). If one of the themers had not had a user using Vista who communicated with him, and if the themer had not communicated with the rest of us, the rest of us would never have known. And not too long ago one of you changed the ID of the url box in fx3 to force a refresh, all in support of the Home button appearing on the bookmarks toolbar. I would like to see the Firefox devs start to post announcements in Mozillazine about any changes that will affect extensions and themes. No, Google Groups will not do - there are plenty of casual theme- makers who have no clue this venue exists - and trust me, you don't want them here. You could even ask the Mozillazine people to make a new forum, specifically for your announcements so that you wouldn't have to choose between themes and extensions.
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> Recently the classic.manifest file in fx3 has had a large number of > override codes added to it that reassigned filenames from example.png > to example-aero.png. Suddenly, all third-party themes in Vista are now > missing buttons in a number of places - some of them not easy to spot > (e.g. - the wrap icon that shows up only when you reach the bottom of > a page in a page search). If one of the themers had not had a user > using Vista who communicated with him, and if the themer had not > communicated with the rest of us, the rest of us would never have > known. So, when did this change? I think we've been pretty good about including things in release notes when we release milestones. It's pretty unreasonable to expect all changes that *might* affect themers before they land. The signal to noise ratio would be pretty unusable. > And not too long ago one of you changed the ID of the url box in fx3 > to force a refresh, all in support of the Home button appearing on the > bookmarks toolbar. It wasn't just to move the home button - please do your research before taking up such an accusing tone. > I would like to see the Firefox devs start to post announcements in > Mozillazine about any changes that will affect extensions and themes. > No, Google Groups will not do - there are plenty of casual theme- > makers who have no clue this venue exists - and trust me, you don't > want them here. That sounds pretty unreasonable. As it is, things are placed in release notes, posted on the newsgroups, documented on devmo (before milestone releases), and documented in bugs. Adding yet another place sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Cheers, Shawn Wilsher
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>> Recently the classic.manifest file in fx3 has had a large number of >> override codes added to it that reassigned filenames from example.png >> to example-aero.png. Suddenly, all third-party themes in Vista are now >> missing buttons in a number of places - some of them not easy to spot >> (e.g. - the wrap icon that shows up only when you reach the bottom of >> a page in a page search). If one of the themers had not had a user >> using Vista who communicated with him, and if the themer had not >> communicated with the rest of us, the rest of us would never have >> known. Some bugs are darn hard to spot. Well its great the themers have a good network to communicate with each other. Maybe this this communications mechanism could be enhanced to ensure that release notes are communicated? >> And not too long ago one of you changed the ID of the url box in fx3 >> to force a refresh, all in support of the Home button appearing on the >> bookmarks toolbar. I'm not sure that was the goal of this change. >> I would like to see the Firefox devs start to post announcements in >> Mozillazine about any changes that will affect extensions and themes. >> No, Google Groups will not do - there are plenty of casual theme- >> makers who have no clue this venue exists - and trust me, you don't >> want them here. Yea, I can see the other channels might not work out. Following the moz.dev newgroups can be low signal for themers and who knows which bugs to follow. And finding the right devmo page is just dumb luck. Probably the most certain channel is the release notes, since they are edited and right with the updated exe. If Moziallazine is great channel, maybe someone from the themeing community can take the challenge of extracting the bits of the release notes that are critical for themers and posting it? Of course in the end, the Firefox devs don't know how some changes they make will affect themers. Only themers can try the stuff they do and find out. Luckily the beta is now stable and its the right time to give it a go.
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On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 12:01 AM, John J. Barton <johnjbarton@johnjbarton.com> wrote: > >> And not too long ago one of you changed the ID of the url box in fx3 > >> to force a refresh, all in support of the Home button appearing on the > >> bookmarks toolbar. > > I'm not sure that was the goal of this change. That change was reverted before b3 was released. See bug 415099. Gavin
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On 24-Feb-08, at 10:35 AM, Ed Hume wrote: > The time has come for the developers of Firefox to start communicating > with the developers of add-ons. As a case in point: > > Recently the classic.manifest file in fx3 has had a large number of > override codes added to it that reassigned filenames from example.png > to example-aero.png. Suddenly, all third-party themes in Vista are now > missing buttons in a number of places - some of them not easy to spot > (e.g. - the wrap icon that shows up only when you reach the bottom of > a page in a page search). If one of the themers had not had a user > using Vista who communicated with him, and if the themer had not > communicated with the rest of us, the rest of us would never have > known. For what its worth, it wasn't well known that this would have any effects at all outside of the default theme. If it was known, we'd have actually communicated and/or found a better solution. FWIW, we are actually going with a less efficient solution in order to avoid any work at all for themers. > And not too long ago one of you changed the ID of the url box in fx3 > to force a refresh, all in support of the Home button appearing on the > bookmarks toolbar. Yes, we did that. That was not the only reason, as has been repeatedly pointed out, but in any case we reverted the change, and other than people trying to keep up with nightlies there should have been very few issues. > I would like to see the Firefox devs start to post announcements in > Mozillazine about any changes that will affect extensions and themes. > No, Google Groups will not do - there are plenty of casual theme- > makers who have no clue this venue exists - and trust me, you don't > want them here. I think this is the wrong way of dealing with the problem, period. If you don't like Google Groups, use the mailing lists (dev-themes@lists.mozilla.org and dev-apps-firefox@lists.mozilla.org) and let it come as email. Forcing us to broadcast in more places feels like an undue burden vs. simply establishing a single reliable communications channel. I don't think we need to have any sort of elitist basis like "we don't want their kind around here" for keeping multiple channels open. We're trying to flag bugs that will affect compatibility with the late- compat keyword, so themers/addon authors trying to keep up with changes as they happen can keep an eye on those bugs. This is the same solution that 40+ localization teams use to great success, and creating a very different for extension/theme authors doesn't make a great deal of sense. -- MIke
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On Feb 29, 3:45 pm, Mike Connor <mcon...@mozilla.com> wrote: If > you don't like Google Groups, use the mailing lists (dev-the...@lists.mozilla.org > and dev-apps-fire...@lists.mozilla.org) and let it come as email. > Forcing us to broadcast in more places feels like an undue burden vs. > simply establishing a single reliable communications channel. I don't > think we need to have any sort of elitist basis like "we don't want > their kind around here" for keeping multiple channels open. > > We're trying to flag bugs that will affect compatibility with the late- > compat keyword, so themers/addon authors trying to keep up with > changes as they happen can keep an eye on those bugs. This is the > same solution that 40+ localization teams use to great success, and > creating a very different for extension/theme authors doesn't make a > great deal of sense. > > -- MIke I thank you all who have responded. If I had not checked back in to the Google Groups page, I would have missed all but Mike's reply. Which is the problem. Once upon a time I used to participate in newsgroups. But that was long ago, and I these days this Google interface is all I know. It's pretty bad, but many of the other themers don't even know about this venue. I am aware that you can communicate brilliantly well with other developers in a Usenet. But most themers - me included - are not as sophisticated as you. If you communicate through Usenet groups you will miss most themers. Most do read the Mozillazine forums, though. What to announce? Well, anything that will affect one platform and not others, for one. Most of use themers only have access to one platform. Unless we hear from users, we do not know how our themes look on other platforms. So, the Aero business would have been a perfect topic for an announcement. Then we get to ID changes. Just two nights ago I had to add the selectors #page-proxy-stack and #page-proxy-favicon, which replace #page-proxy-deck and #page-proxy-button in fx3. Not a problem, really. And since they show up on all four platforms - XP, Vista, OSX and Linux - we'll pick them up well enough. So, you could draw the line somewhere between the Aero business and mere ID changes. But please consider at least the occasional announcement.
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Ed Hume wrote: > On Feb 29, 3:45 pm, Mike Connor <mcon...@mozilla.com> wrote: > > If >> you don't like Google Groups, use the mailing lists (dev-the...@lists.mozilla.org >> and dev-apps-fire...@lists.mozilla.org) and let it come as email. >> Forcing us to broadcast in more places feels like an undue burden vs. >> simply establishing a single reliable communications channel. I don't >> think we need to have any sort of elitist basis like "we don't want >> their kind around here" for keeping multiple channels open. >> >> We're trying to flag bugs that will affect compatibility with the late- >> compat keyword, so themers/addon authors trying to keep up with >> changes as they happen can keep an eye on those bugs. This is the >> same solution that 40+ localization teams use to great success, and >> creating a very different for extension/theme authors doesn't make a >> great deal of sense. >> >> -- MIke > > I thank you all who have responded. If I had not checked back in to > the Google Groups page, I would have missed all but Mike's reply. > > Which is the problem. Once upon a time I used to participate in > newsgroups. But that was long ago, and I these days this Google > interface is all I know. It's pretty bad, but many of the other > themers don't even know about this venue. > > I am aware that you can communicate brilliantly well with other > developers in a Usenet. But most themers - me included - are not as > sophisticated as you. If you communicate through Usenet groups you > will miss most themers. Most do read the Mozillazine forums, though. > > What to announce? Well, anything that will affect one platform and not > others, for one. Most of use themers only have access to one platform. > Unless we hear from users, we do not know how our themes look on other > platforms. So, the Aero business would have been a perfect topic for > an announcement. > > Then we get to ID changes. Just two nights ago I had to add the > selectors #page-proxy-stack and #page-proxy-favicon, which replace > #page-proxy-deck and #page-proxy-button in fx3. Not a problem, really. > And since they show up on all four platforms - XP, Vista, OSX and > Linux - we'll pick them up well enough. > > So, you could draw the line somewhere between the Aero business and > mere ID changes. But please consider at least the occasional > announcement. Ed, I'm an user, not even an add-on developer, much less a Firefox dev, but let me make two remarks: 1. The Mozilla newsgroups are not exactly Usenet groups in the strict sense of the word, in the sense that they aren't mirrored by news servers all over the net. You can get them by means of the same "NNTP" protocol used by Usenet groups (that's how I get them, very easily, using Thunderbird: there's absolutely no magic to it) but only via the news.mozilla.org server, not via your own ISP's news server (if any). They're also distributed by mailing lists but I don't know the details. Personally I like newsgroups much better than HTTP-only forums, but of course that's my own preference, you don't have to share it. 2. My second remark will be blunt, please excuse the bluntness: if you aren't willing to stand where the devs are willing to post, you won't see what they have to say. It's not very hard to find the places where they _are_ willing to post, and I'll venture that it is -- or ought to be -- quite within the capabilities of any extension or theme developer, who, after all, is supposed to be "somewhat" savvier than the average Firefox user. The present newsgroup is one of these places; another one is under some "well-chosen" bugzilla.mozilla.org bugs and/or components (to be warned of new bugs for a given component, just watch its "QA contact" by changing your Bugzilla preferences). Best regards, Tony. -- Never eat more than you can lift. -- Miss Piggy
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On 29-Feb-08, at 9:10 PM, Ed Hume wrote: > On Feb 29, 3:45 pm, Mike Connor <mcon...@mozilla.com> wrote: > > I thank you all who have responded. If I had not checked back in to > the Google Groups page, I would have missed all but Mike's reply. > > Which is the problem. Once upon a time I used to participate in > newsgroups. But that was long ago, and I these days this Google > interface is all I know. It's pretty bad, but many of the other > themers don't even know about this venue. Then we should tell them about it, and tell them how to subscribe to the mailing list so they don't need to deal with newsgroups if they don't want to. dev-themes is pretty low traffic, so I don't think we're asking themers to walk on burning coals by subscribing. And NNTP is optional, which you nicely glossed over. https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo has what people need to subscribe via email. > What to announce? Well, anything that will affect one platform and not > others, for one. Most of use themers only have access to one platform. > Unless we hear from users, we do not know how our themes look on other > platforms. So, the Aero business would have been a perfect topic for > an announcement. To repeat: had we understood that what we were doing would have _any_ impact on other themes, we would have announced it, or even more likely, found a solution that didn't impact themers (as we did today). I'm going to assert, again, that had this been an understood consequence, it would have been a critical issue to notify themers about. -- Mike
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On 2/29/08 9:10 PM, _Ed Hume_ spoke thusly: > Which is the problem. Once upon a time I used to participate in > newsgroups. But that was long ago, and I these days this Google > interface is all I know. It's pretty bad, but many of the other > themers don't even know about this venue. FWIW...<http://ilias.ca/blog/2006/01/instructions-for-new-newsgroup-server/> :-) -- Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca> List-owner: support-firefox, support-thunderbird, test-multimedia
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from extension dev's perspective: It's not like the communication couldn't be improved. Mozilla really IS a platform, a platform that urges contributors to code/update extensions for future releases on a fluid codebase. DevMo is GREAT improvement over the earlier "state" of documentation. However there's still a huge amount of time one spends just trying to find out why something doesn't work as expected/documented. I would indeed wish there was something like a chrnological *log of changes* that affect APIs, methods, structure of XBL elements and the like. This would also allow contributors to update DevMo using that info... I'd love that! Just imagine how difficult it can be to get all that info required to build a good app on top off Mozilla, if you're "on the outside" of the process of building that platform. The platform is cool, good and sexy already. That kind of "info flow" would make it great, fabulous and invincible. Thanks. Marc -- Marc Diethelm - SMS Sidebar Creator
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