Chat with Mike Schroepfer (September 1, 2006)

<schrep>

Howdy everyone

<reed>

:)

<stuart>

omgitisschrep!

<ispiked>

man, I'm so excited.

<reed>

lol

* sheppy

calls out big security dudes to keep the groupies at bay.

<schrep>

so ...

now that we are all here

<reed>

ispiked: It's not like you spent an entire summer only several yards away from schrep :)

<ispiked>

we definitely needed to have this in #chatwithmikeschroepferon20060901.

because #mozillazine is not specific enough, obviously.

<schrep>

what are people curious about?

<Mossop>

Perhaps you could begin by saying who you are and what you do for Mozilla?

<schrep>

Sure

I'm Mike Schroepfer

also known as schrep

<tH>

somebody slap docbot and remove the channel user limit :/

<reed>

haha

<schrep>

my title is officially "VP of Engineering for Mozilla Corporation"

I'm also know affectionally I think as "Administrative Overhead"

<stuart>

schrep: might wait a sec while people join

channel was full

<ispiked>

schrep: maybe you should wait...

<schrep>

I'll wait a min or so

can we break 100?

<gavin>

yeah

<tH>

I have a question: Will there be beer?

<stuart>

if i keep spamming people, sure!

<Lightkey>

omfsm! is that really you Mnyromyr? can I have an autograph?

<Mossop>

tH: I have beer :)

<Mnyromyr>

Lightkey: Government denies knowledge ;-)

<ispiked>

schrep is a dev?

<tH>

is that a channel topic or an order?

<reed>

tH: order, of course.

<TheDeathArt>

hmm, both I think

<justdave>

heh, I was just thinking of doing a global notice to everyone on the irc server and I see stuart beat me to it :)

<schrep>

ok

I'm gonna dive in...

restart the intro:

howdy everyone

I'm Mike Schroepfer - also known as schrep

my title is officially "VP of Engineering for Mozilla Corporation"

but I'm also known, affectionally I think, as "Administrative Overhead"

My job here is to help grow and manage the engineering teams that work full time at Mozilla Corporation

and to work with everyone in the project to help us continue to ship great software

I've meet or chatted with many of the folks I see in the channel here

but I just wanted to spend some time today to see what folks are curious about

at MoCo or in the projects in general

<stuart>

is it true that you used to call your grandfather "grampa radiso?"

<schrep>

stuart is here to heckle me in case this gets too boring :-)

<dria>

heh

<ispiked>

stuart: lol

<TheDeathArt>

schrep but what do you accualy do ? :) just talk to people, or what

<schrep>

TheDeathArt ha :-)

<stephend|study>

will there be a concerted effort to fix printing and designmode, two of the biggest ills which plague firefox and seamonkey?

<schrep>

I currently spend lots of time working on FF2/1.8

<NSA>

why in the world would mozilla be bundled with malware like realplayer? was somebody trunk one night at the MoCo

<ispiked>

NSA: haha.

<schrep>

doing bug triage/working with everyone to make sure everything gets done

stephend|study: there is already

a concerted effort to work on designmode

<stephend|study>

besides martijn, I mean

<schrep>

we'd like to fix printing but don't yet have someone who's stepped up to work on that

<stephend|study>

afaict, martijn seems to be the only one working on designmode

<mwu>

mark was working on some aspects of printing

<stephend|study>

oh, I forgot pkasting

<ispiked>

I nominate mark for printing.

<The_Hunter>

xul printing would also be good

<crowder>

Seconded.

<reed>

which mark is this?

<ispiked>

steele.

<crowder>

That mark ------> mark

<reed>

ah, msteele

<ispiked>

(mark on irc)

<reed>

k

<stuart>

he's doing some linux printing stuff wrt cairo stuff

* tH

thinks people have to be careful asking questions here, for fear of volunteering

<schrep>

Peterv is working on contenteditable which will help as well..

<ispiked>

is NSA's question going to be addressed?

<stephend|study>

excellent! great news, schrep, thanks for that.

<GrandNagel>

Just to keep it interesting, I'm a dedicated long time Firefox/thunderbird user, as well as a developer by trade. I'm having diffuculty getting News servers added into Thunderbird, and I can not locate anything relevant in my hunt for the answer... When I add a NG to TB, it accepts my config, but when displaying it in the main window, the name is blank, and the subscription process hangs...

...without loading anything at all... Theres no local or server file reference in the config screen either. I've telnetted into the two servers I've tried to add and I can obtain lists of groups that way so I know they are up... Where should I turn for info / help on this?

<stephend|study>

GrandNagel, trunk? known bug.

<ispiked>

GrandNagel: ask in #thunderbird.

<schrep>

NSA: keep in mind that we are not bundling realplayer

<GrandNagel>

I did... it' appears to be dead.

<schrep>

they are bundling us

<NSA>

i know, but real player is bundling you, and the connection some dumb users might make

<schrep>

and it introduces FF to a group of users who we normally don't see as much of

<Mossop>

schrep: But it brings up the interesting question. Who decides who can bundle us and what does that decision involve?

<biesi>

er, I wouldn't call realplayer "malware"

<GrandNagel>

I would

<mwu>

it's not as bad as it used to be

<NSA>

biesi:have you tried uninstalling it?

<crowder>

schrep: A quick websearch reveals that you were a "Distinguished Engineer" at Sun. What does that mean and how did it happen? I'm genuinely curious, so feel free to brag ;)

<biesi>

no, why?

<NSA>

its immpossible

<schrep>

Mossop: thats a good question

<mwu>

for example, I think recent ones are actually uninstallable

<NSA>

a format is the only way to truly remove it

<biesi>

I actually use it now and then

so I don't want to uninstall it

<schrep>

The Mozilla Foundation/Corp is the one making the decisions

around who can bundle us

in general we are in favor of getting in front of as many people as possible

with the caveat of not being bundled with clearly bad stuff

<The_Hunter>

seems like a good idea to me

<AlexB>

Did any money change hands as part of the RealPlayer bundling deal?

<NSA>

if you want users, get myspace and youtube to advertise you

you will get an instal million users

<schrep>

AlexB that's an area, unfortunately, I can't answer

<cf_afk>

NSA: not very clever ones

<Mossop>

schrep: Is there not a danger of firefox getting a bad rep for just being offered with every other product. I know certain google apps and yahoo ones are starting to get this?

<NSA>

*insant, and my next question was abuot all the secretive money raising deals mozilla is making

<schrep>

crowder: a DE is technical title at sun

<crowder>

schrep: This one article calls it an "accolade"

<schrep>

crowder: there are about ~70 at Sun (out of 35k employees) - it requires peer review to be nominated

it's the second highest technical title there below Sun Fellow - of which there are 6 or so

<TheDeathArt>

hmm, only question I could think of: Firefox is considered "slow" by many, is there any focus on improving load XULs speed ?

<ispiked>

schrep: what sort of work did you do at Sun?

<schrep>

Mossop: that is a concern of course

Mossop: so far I don't think we've been bundled with too much - but obviously we want to not harm FF/Mozilla rep

TheDeathArt: there is actually a fairly big focus on performance

TheDeathArt: Memory usage, in particular, thanks much to Dbaron, Graydon, Jesse, and a few other folks

is much improved in 1.8/FF2 and on the trunk/1.9

<mkanat>

Yay. :-) I think perf has generally been getting better since post-1.0.

<schrep>

Startup time (Ts) and Pageload time (Tp) are both being looked at as well

1.8 in general is slightly faster and definitely better with memory usage

<stephend|study>

after the reflow branch, what's the next largest architectural change in the works?

<lissyx>

It seems that Firefox leaks many memory. I know that it's partly due to Gecko, but I've been told that plugins such as Java or Flash may be involved also. I'm no familiar with firefox's plugin API they use, but I'd like to know two things : is this true ? And if yes, is there non way to track and report them to the plugin's developers ?

<TheDeathArt>

ok, I think the startup time is what makes most people skip firefox after trying, so would be nice if it's improved

<ispiked>

I *think* that startup time might be better on 1.8, too, since bryner landed some sort of fastload patch.

<schrep>

stephend|study: there are a few big things in progress for 1.9/the trunk

ipsiked: it is - js fastload was improved in FF2

stephend|study: reflow is one

<NSA>

why were some places features/ui removed from trunk?

<whimboo>

ispiked: you mean the precompiled js?

<schrep>

roc/bz are doing a bunch of other layout changes

stephend|study: the port to cairo is well underway

<Mossop>

NSA: Like what?

<ispiked>

whimboo: I'm not totally sure how fastload works, other than that it does soem sort of caching of JS things.

<schrep>

and graydon is working on the cycle-collector

to allow for cross XPCOM memory reclamation

<NSA>

mossop: the calender and filtering options

<schrep>

that will probably do us for 1.9 :-)

<ispiked>

e.g. making us not leak as much memory. :)

<schrep>

but there is always 1.10 - which folks are just thinking of

oh - and brendan will kill me if I forget JS2

<NSA>

will python bindings ever be enabled by default for 1.9?

<The_Hunter>

what is the long term plan for remote XUL, will it be something that fades out and disappears, or something that will get better and better?

<schrep>

NSA: the challenge with python

is we are not likely to ship the runtime

<NSA>

i know

<schrep>

but most of the language-agnostic dom stuff has already landed on 1.9

<NSA>

but so that if they do have python installed or install it through some secial xpi, that it would work

i meant being built by default

<schrep>

NSA: that's the hope

lissyx: plugins and addons can inadvertently hold references to objects (like something in the dom)

and thus cause memory leaks

<NSA>

does amo stuff count as part of the questions i can ask you?

<schrep>

Shaver and some others are looking at ways of taking our automated memory testing tools

and opening them up to addons developers

we've also reached out to developers whenever we've noticed a problem in an add-on or plug-in

from leakguage or other tooks - those have worked really well for folks

NSA: sure anyone can ask anything but I might not know the answer :-)

<lissyx>

sounds great :)

<NSA>

there has been a lot of arguing/discussion about all the shit/spyware/crap extensions on amo. are there any plans to change the acceptnce policy from "it installs" to "it is not crap"

<schrep>

NSA: we count on peer review in many aspects of the project

NSA: from how code lands into the main tree

<NSA>

the extensijons get tons of 0 ratings

<schrep>

to AMO

Shaver is focused right now full time on the add-ons space

<NSA>

yet they remain

<schrep>

to make it easier for people to find the best extensions

<NSA>

that would be helpful

<schrep>

there is a project called "AMOv3" or remora that they are working on

for later this year to make it easier for novice user to find extensions

part of that is a higher bar of what is featured/offered

<NSA>

right now 80% of users just install the top 20 extensions and no one ever finds the rest under all the spyware ones

<schrep>

to makes sure they are good

other questions? don't be shy!

<NSA>

i think something like digg's rating stuff might be good

<Mossop>

On the AMO subject, when is AMO ever going to get out of beta? ;)

<schrep>

NSA: yeah - that's a great idea

<stuart>

what does "bone cho" mean?

<The_Hunter>

what is the long term plan for remote XUL? will it be something that fades out and disappears, or something that will get better and better?

<crowder>

lol

<dria>

a digg system for extensions could be really cool

<schrep>

The_Hunter: don't actually have a good answer for that one

I don't think there a specific plan to do anything more with remote XUL at this point

<TheDeathArt>

any plans for the final release of Firefox 2.0 ? I couldn't find anything in the calender

<schrep>

NSA: check out: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora for the new AMO stuff

<NSA>

yeah i already read the wiki about remora

<schrep>

TheDeathArt: next step is RC1 - which would be feature complete

TheDeathArt: and done pending any additional feedback

<TheDeathArt>

I meant in terms of time/date

someone said 26th september

<schrep>

TheDeathArt: one step at a time :-). RC1, we hope,

is coming out later this month

but we just released B2 and haven't yet been able to

get a good sense of the feedback

we want to ship asap

but are more interested in making sure FF2 is of high quality

<Colin>

the feedback i've seen from a few people is the theme is not liked

<schrep>

as a whole its a really strong release

Colin: I've seen both positive and negative feedback

<NSA>

you need to ship before ie7 otherwise compared to ei7, ff is not so amazing

<The_Hunter>

i've been running beta 2 for 1 hour without any problems :D

<schrep>

Colin: as with styling on new cars you have to let in sink in a little before

you make a final judgement :-)

<The_Hunter>

i'm looking forward to the spell checker thing in textboxes.

<stephend|study>

here's just a dumb q: why is that theme not on trunk?

<schrep>

NSA: I've love to beat them out as well

<Colin>

Having been running the beta's I think I'm settled that I don't like it ;)

<schrep>

NSA: but as I said we want this release to be very solid

<reed>

stephend|study: It's much easier to just fix all the bugs on the branch first and then port to trunk

<Mossop>

schrep: I've seen a little bit of info about metrics coming onto the trunk and Firefox reporting stuff back to Mozilla. Care to give a quick idea of what sort of things will be gathered and what it will be used for?

<reed>

server seems to be hiccupping again

<The_Hunter>

indeed

<stuart>

eh

guess we lost schrep too

<schrep>

Do people want to do this with other folks from Mozilla?

I'm curious - how do people think the Mozilla project

has or has not changed over the last few years?

<ispiked>

schrep: for a while, asa was doing itnerviews with some devs and posting them on his blog.

schrep: I'd really love to see more of htat.

<stephend>

it certainly has matured

<whimboo>

schrep: why we don't ship talkback for thunderbird2 nightly builds anymore?

<stephend>

in terms of not only infrastructure, but human resources, both internal (paid) and others

<schrep>

ipsiked: who would you like to see interviewed first

whimboo: don't know offhand

<ispiked>

schrep: hrm... bz.

* reed

wants the rest of the Toronto web diaries posted

<bc-afk>

whimboo, i send in talkback on thunderbird 2 all the time

<Mossop>

schrep: I've seen a little bit of info about metrics coming onto the trunk and Firefox reporting stuff back to Mozilla. Care to give a quick idea of what sort of things will be gathered and what it will be used for?

<NSA>

anyone have a screenshot of the new theme? i only have minefield

<schrep>

Mossop: what things are you referring to?

Mossop: the only thing that reports back is the update check (to see if there is a new nightly or new version)

<ispiked>

schrep: the metrics extension that bryner and marria are working on.

I think that's what mossop is talking about.

<schrep>

ispiked: yeah - ok

<Ragnaar>

schrep, why "install" button has been removed from addons manager? And I think if you first time install extension from site, after authorize this site, installation must start automatic without second click on link.

<whimboo>

bc-afk: after i install the xpi manually which is located on the ftp, i also have talkback but I asked why its not shipped with the installer

<Mossop>

There is a component in bugzilla - data collection and metrics or something

<schrep>

Mossop: yeah - that was intended for us to collect more "real-world"

usage data - specifically around performance - both speed and memory

and usability (i.e. do people ever click on button x)

it is being built as an extension so it is clearly op-in

(opt-in)

<Mossop>

Well it also send back info about extensions people have installed, and if so is that data likely to be available to say extension developers?

<schrep>

as being good about privacy is important to us

Mossop: yeah - this would be shared widely just

like we did with the uninstall survey data, etc.

<Mossop>

ok cool

<schrep>

Ragnaar: not sure which button you are talking about..

<reed>

schrep: It was never meant to be there.

er

<ispiked>

Ragnaar: so...

<reed>

Ragnaar: It was never meant to be there.

It wasn't in 1.5

<whimboo>

schrep: new users which came from IE still press the main x instead of that ones for tabs. Thats a good experience due to they will learn how tabs are working ;)

<reed>

nor will it be in 2.0

<ispiked>

Ragnaar: since it is a browser, users are expected to install extensions from web pages, so you wouldn't need a button.

Ragnaar: thunderbird has it because it's the only way (sans drag and drop) to install extensions.

<reed>

If you want it, you can set the extensions.hideInstallButton pref to false.

<tH>

schrep: I'm curious, do you personally use any Mozilla-based apps other than Firefox and Thunderbird? (Sunbird, SeaMonkey, Minimo, ChatZilla, Camino, etc.)

<Mossop>

Do yuo even use firefox and thunderbird regularly? ;)

<schrep>

Mossop: yes :-)

<sp3000>

Do you like goats?

<Mossop>

Not as much as beltzner

<schrep>

goat cheese - yes

<reed>

Mossop: no, ben loves goats.

<schrep>

tH: I've used ChatZilla in the past - but don't currently

<reed>

I dunno why mconnor thought that was beltzner.

* tH

gets the feeling goats are company policy

<reed>

:)

<sp3000>

reed, who doesn't?

<Ragnaar>

ispiked: You think users install extensions ONLY from web? :)

<reed>

lol

<schrep>

I've certainly played with them all - but only use FF/TBird regularly

I'm excited about Calendar though - and may switch to that fulltime

<Mossop>

Calendar or Lightning?

<schrep>

Sunbird

<ispiked>

schrep: so going back to developer interviews, asa had a post a while back where he asked who people wanted to see next, and dbaron and bz were the most popular requests.

<Cedric>

Calendar is dead

<NSA>

Ragnaar: yes, atleast the users too stupid to know how to do it without a button in the ext manager

<mwu>

Ragnaar: you can also drop your extensions into the right folder to get them to install, or package them together so they install w/ firefox, or package all your extensions into a single xpi

<schrep>

ispiked: ok I'll talk to asa about starting it up again - dbaron and bz would both be great

<stuart>

schrep: aside from Beer oclock, what is your favorite extension?

<schrep>

stuart: geeze- well if you are comparing to Beer O Clock it gets hard :-)

<reed>

schrep: How is Seth Bindernagel's Community Giving project progressing?

<schrep>

livehttpheaders actually is one of my favorites

as lame as that sounds

nightly tester tools extensions clearly are great

reed: really well - Seth's been doing a great job

<pascalc>

The Mozilla and Openofice projects both use the same dictionnaries and both face the same licensing issues, are they talks with the Oo folks about it? Wouldn't it be possible to have an option in FF/TB and OO to propose crossintstallation of dictionnaries ? like When a user installs a greek dictionnary for Oo, the installer checks if it is installed for Firefox and proposes this option, and...

...viceversa.

<Mossop>

Woo :)

<Ragnaar>

NSA, mwu I know about this, but beginner need BUTTON :)

<crowder>

My favorite extension is the resizable textarea extension

<schrep>

pascalc: yeah that's a great idea

<mwu>

Ragnaar: I really wonder what beginner wants to install an extension from the hard drive..

<schrep>

it is really unfortunate how much a pita getting good dictionaries for all locales

is

Ok well - coming up on the end of this

thanks for taking part of your friday to come and hang out

<NSA>

Ragnaar: like mwu said, if they don't know how to install without a button, they probab;ly don't need it

<schrep>

I'm around on IRC if people didn't get their question answered

<ispiked>

thanks schrep!

<Mossop>

Ragnaar: You may want to read through bug 342656 where the install button was removed

<firebot>

Mossop: Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=342656 nor, --, Firefox 2 beta1, robert.bugzilla@gmail.com, VERI FIXED, Remove "Install" button from Add-ons manager

<schrep>

and let me know if you want to do this again ...

<stephend>

thanks for the enlightenment

I felt it was productive, I hope others did, too

and it's nice to have the open discussions

<schrep>

yeah - if anyone has any suggestions on ideas on other stuff they'd like to see similar to this I'm all ears

<Ragnaar>

mwu , NSA Many people ask about this on our forum

<tH>

similar chats with other people would definitely be worth it

<schrep>

see everyone around!

<NSA>

Ragnaar: then simply tell them to drag the xpi or enabl;e that hidden pref

<mwu>

Ragnaar: or file>open file