There are 2 ways to install AdBlock Extension:

1) .XPI Installation with extension manager: Click here to download XPI extension

Open Bookmark view, and open "Menu"- "Open File"

Select downloaded extension in Open File dialog.

Click "Install Now"

Wait until downloading and installation is finished:

Tap on "Restart MicroB" button and wait until browser not restarted.

After restart you will see this:

Press on "Preferences" button in "Adblock Plus 1.1.1" row.

Unfortunately XUL Popup menus does not work in MicroB, and we cannot get "Filters->Add Filter Subscription" menu Item. I hope someone can fix this problem in future, or write Mobile version of AdBlockPlus extension (with big buttons, and tabs).

Right now we can subscribe to some filters in this way: Press "CTRL+N" shortcut or open "New window" via Application Menu.

Type in URLBar next url: "chrome://adblockplus/content/ui/tip_subscriptions.xul"

When page is loaded, you will see:

Select some filter list and Tap "Subscribe" button: Window should be closed automatically, and you will see again "Preferences" window with added filter:

Wait until subscription list is fully downloaded:

Press "Ok" button. Now you can open some page and see results:

Let's open "http://fishki.net" page:

Here is the page example without AdBlock Plus extension:

You see ad-banner right-top, ad-links "<<XXX>>, ***XXX...****, also big game advertising banner right-bottom:

And here is the same page with AdBlock Plus extension installed:

No banners, links, only user friendly topics ;)

23 0

MicroB Engine supports for Firefox themes instalation. Let me show how to do it step by step:

Go first to google search page, and type "firefox theme nasa"

Select first link in google search results:

In addons.mozilla.org "Nasa Night Launch" theme page, tap on "Add to Firefox" button:

In opened window, read license agreement and click "Accept and Install":

Click "Install Now" button in "Software Installation dialog":

Wait until theme is downloading:

When theme downloaded and installed, tap on "Restart MicroB" button, and wait until

extensions window not reloaded with new theme

Here we can see result of our theme installation:

Let's check how looks our "Certificate error page"

Fonts looks a bit small, but buttons are much better:

Let's tap on "Add Exception" button:

And check certificate details:

10 1

The port is fully compatible with the official Qt 4.4 release. It is also ready to run Firefox3.x and the TestQEmbed reference UI:

Qt Firefox3.x

TestQEmbed

You can download and try this X86 build

Sources are available for checkout and building from: hg:mozilla-qt branch.

Build instructions available in the Mozilla Wiki.

This port is not official yet, but we are working on it, see: bug 448989.

Additional information is available on Vlad's blog.

Feel free to build and test; if you have problems, please report them in Bugzilla.

Patches are welcome.

18 1

I'd like to say this is a win for open source. MicroB is the engine used by /usr/bin/browser on IT OS and it is based on Mozilla Gecko.

There are some high points and some low points for this release.

Good news

1. The default start page is now useful. Many thanks to Kevin Zhang, Tuukka Tolvanen, disq, and TPC for helping with the page. Thanks to Alicia Patterson, John Lilly, and others at mozilla.org for the art work. Thanks to Erkko Anttila and again to Jorma Virkkunen for letting us fix up the page.
2. The Browser default plug-in has been renamed to Default plug-in, RealPlayer, Windows Media and the description has been changed to Default plug-in. Supports RealPlayer and Windows Media. Because of this, you can now load BBC News Video, Radio, and French TV stations, e.g., France2. Thanks to Marc-Andre Lureau for complaining about this. Thanks also to Jens Wilke who has been helping us investigate web compatibility and get fixes to Nokia properties for MicroB.
3. There is a project to help enhance MicroB, called browser-extras which is busy porting and packaging content and extensions to improve your browsing experience as well as reduce the pressure on our in house developers. Thanks to their contributors there for settings it up and working on it.

Bad news

1. If you like Yahoo! Music (which includes Music Videos), or many Internet Radio stations (e.g., ABC Radio affiliate WMAL630 in Washington, D.C.), you will unfortunately get an error from Media player when you try to use it. Yahoo's content supports at last Windows Media and Flash plug-ins. Yahoo's content also properly favors Windows Media. Unfortunately the Media player does not properly support ASF playlist files unless their file extension is .asf. In order to listen to Yahoo content, you will have to disable the Default Plug-in. To do that:
   1. Open the application menu > View > Show toolbar. Make sure the toolbar is visible for the mode you're in (Full screen / Normal screen). -- Yes, I just noticed that "Normal screen" appears in the user interface. This is the least of my language worries, I am quite embarrassed by the quality of the text.
   2. Click the bottom right button in the toolbar (it looks like a magnifying glass, but it's really an overloaded kitchen sink button) > Components > Default plug-in, RealPlayer, Windows Media.
   3. Try loading your Yahoo media property again. You should now get Flash-based media delivery.
2. We're now using Nokia-sponsored text for all languages, including English US and English GB. In the betas we shipped Mozilla's text for English. This is a very mixed bag. Unfortunately it meant that we didn't get very good testing coverage of the text we're shipping. And it really shows in a number of places. I take the blame for this. It meant that our beta testers could test the engine as the localizations we were given were generally so broken that you, e.g. got a famous yellow/red error indicating Gecko couldn't render the error page when you could not reach your proxy. Unfortunately the localizers are not familiar with localizing XML text and consistently generated text which was invalid, and until the very end we didn't have any tools to help them recognize this problem. Next time, they'll hopefully do better. There are two main places where you will notice this, again, I'm sorry. We will try to ship a beta release which fixes the text shortly. I haven't decided if we'll release back ports for the other platforms in sync with this fix or before we fix this.
   1. The HTTPS authentication dialogs repeat the server and message in both the server and message fields (oops). This was not present in any of our betas, so I didn't notice it while I was traveling with my devices last month.
   2. The netError messages don't fit Nokia style, specifically the line below the title should really show just the site/path, and not text.

What's coming?

We have a number of long term projects;

• Upgrading Gecko to a more current version, which will probably include switching to using Cairo throughout Gecko instead of just for <canvas>.
• Betas and backports. Hopefully within a week of the IT OS 2008 image being posted I'll be able to announce packaged versions for all the other platforms for which we've shipped betas, as well as OS2007HE. There is a package available, but I felt that its quality was not up to snuff (yes, I know the package I'm announcing here isn't perfect, but what I saw when I first opened it was more glaring and it wasn't the current version at the time). We'll try to keep all of our releases in sync so that we don't have to deal with people complaining about bugs in one system and having people with a different system say that they don't see the bug (when the reason would have been because one of the versions was newer).

Changes

This is a list of changes since 4, to the best of my ability. Please remember that there have been occasional updates since that announcement, and as I have not had time to review or publish the announcements, there is no specific changelog for them, which means you may not remember some of these bugs. Note that I'm only reviewing changelogs for browser related packages, it's possible that bugs affecting browser have been fixed in packages upon which the browser depends. There's no easy way for me to learn about such things.

I'm assuming that changes happened after August 9, 2007.

User reported bugs

• Selecting part of the url field while VKB is hidden triggers VKB which selects the entire string. making a selection in url field while VKB is hidden triggers VKB which selects the entire string
• The VKB should be usable when the toolbar is hidden. Keyboard will not stay open/up with toolbar hidden
• Link navigation should be triggered by key-up not key-down and only if scrolling isn't triggered
• As always, we encourage people to file detailed bug reports! Your bug could be listed in this section next time.

Multimedia

• Default plug-in now includes mime type when it sends content to handlers, this fixes problems with RealPlayer audio samples from amazon.com. Note: This requires the Media player to register the content types
• Content of type application/x-mplayer2 should be supported (editor believes this is fixed in IT OS 2008 on the Media player side, people trying to take advantage of this fix with MicroB on older releases will probably need to hack a .desktop file).
• Links to mp3 contents should open Media player (again because we're passing along the mime type?)
• Links to WVX (and presumably anything else) with query parameters should be properly sent to Media player
• Loading an mms:// url should work
• Add support for application/vnd.rn-realsystem-rmj; treat it video/x-real, and audio/x-real as streamable urls (instead of saving to disk before launching Media player)
• Browser default plug-in "Description" field is now very short, useless and incorrect.
• Added support for WMODE plug-ins (thanks to karlt for the work) Windowless plug-in support for X (WMODE)
• We should no longer be violating NPAPI to talk to Flash.
• Some possible plug-in crash should be fixed
• It's possible to re-enable plug-ins after they are disabled due to low memory conditions.
• Mime types were added to the default plug-in to try to fix wave file support.
• Plug-ins should not be deleted (!?) if they're disabled and the browser quits unexpectedly (crash/kill/battery removed)
• Browser shouldn't crash when quit if there are no plug-ins....

Zooming

• Each page in back/forward history should remember its zoom level
• Pages with HasUnloadListeners will now have their zoom state preserved if the page is scrolled. (Editor's note: Otherwise it isn't. These are edge cases, if you care, you're welcome to learn Gecko or write your own layout engine.)
• Removed code to add extra scrollbars (this code doesn't exist in CVS)
• When you visit an image directly in the web browser, if it's bigger than the available window size, you can tap it to shrink it to fit. If you had zoomed it before tapping, when you tap again, the zoom level will be restored. This zoom out will try to ensure the area you clicked on is visible close to where you clicked.
  1. If the image at 100% would fit in the window, and you zoom it to e.g., 240% so that it no longer fits in the window, you can't click to zoom out -- This seems reasonable.
  2. In testing it seems that if your window is zoomed and you then load an image without a webpage and you want to use tap to zoom, you will first have to change your zoom.
  3. On the N810 with the toolbar visible and shrink to fit active, opening the keyboard tray will result in the image shrinking again. The keyboard indicator is awful and needs to be redesigned, this is one of many ways that it breaks the web browser.

User interface

• Settings dialog title text is now properly distinct from the menu item that opens it. See footnotes.
• Plug-ins has been renamed to Components to reflect the fact that it should include both Plug-ins and Extensions.
• New windows will now appear last in the window list (before they would return to their previous position if there was one, otherwise they were added to the top)
• Toolbar "Connecting" indicator will no longer accelerate with each successive load attempt
• Tapping link should always update toolbar address (note to self: figure out if this was a regression)
• Rapidly clicking the address bar quickly immediately after opening the first web browser window will result in the default url showing when it loads, instead of leaving a blank field. (editor's note: it's unclear that this change makes sense or is an improvement. the internal bug gives a slightly different actual result which is indeed slightly strange, however the required shipping result does appear to be a regression from beta. If someone feels that the new behavior is bad, please file a bug .)
• Windows menu should not be misplaced after loading a page with a very long title
• The toolbar buttons are no longer focusable (it used to be possible to move focus into them after interacting with the completion widget, this was surprising. As it isn't seen to be a useful behavior, it was removed).
• The Windows submenu should be properly positioned when web pages have long titles.
• The RSS button is now to the left of the urlbar.
• Restoring a backup from MicroB in OS2007 into an OS2008 device will result in a browser that crashes instead of just looping infinitely (please don't ask why this is considered a feature).
• You can now save the contents of links using the Context Menu.
• about: now has localized text for the about:config link. make description for about:config localizable
• Set Preference in about:config now works with boolean types
• Deleting an item from history should leave focus at the next item instead of lost in the void.
• Pressing hardware right should not scroll the components list of the components dialog.
• Focus for popup windows is properly tracked so trying to load a url in the window will not go to the window that had triggered the popup.
• Save target as (using Browser) is now available to all libmime consumers (well, at least Chat)
• UI should be more responsive while the browser engine loads
• Automatic is no longer included as an encoding in the Details dialog. In Gecko, we will always let Gecko detect an encoding, and the encoding shown in the dialog should be the encoding Gecko has detected, the user can choose any alternate encoding but it doesn't make sense to select automatic since that's always used first.
• Trying to save a page after asking the browser to quit with lots of windows open shouldn't crash.
• History list should no longer truncate Cyrillic entries (no one explained if this would affect other non Latin encodings, the bug reports losing 1 character at the end of titles)
• The password saving dialog was re-implemented.
• Application Switcher now shows favicons with size 64x54 from gtk_window_set_icon. How this affects the browser on older platforms is uncertain as it seems we barely got testing for IT OS 2008. I also have no idea what happens when the only favicon for a site is 64x64, presumably the icon won't look great.... People are encouraged to file a bug complaining about this behavior (only file one bug, everyone else should just vote for it).
• Find toolbar will remember search string during the session even if you close and reopen it.
• Opening the find drop down will now highlight the most recently searched for item (i.e., the one closest to the find bar. hildon-find-toolbar-example.c
• OK in settings dialog should really save the settings....
• Switching to full-screen mode while a page is loading will stick, instead of restoring normal view.
• Launching the browser with a url should load it directly without first loading about:blank.
• Focus should move to the web page when loading a page from the location bar.
• Selecting text in an <input> should have a better chance of working instead of being treated as a thumb-panning action.
• It should still be possible to trigger the VKB and FKB from <input>s.
• VKB should be able to open on places like www.hotmail.com because we now process the mouse up instead of the click event (which sites can choose to swallow).
• Tapping an input field that would appear below the VKB might properly scroll the field into view after showing the VKB (or it might not, an extra fix got posted around the time of this announcement and it looks like it wasn't accepted for the release).
• Frame details page size should show the size of page in the frame, and not the frameset containing it.
• Page load should succeed even if interrupted to save a new connection if you picked one in response to a select connection dialog.
• RSS content should be indicated when pages finish loading
• Unrequested pop-up windows should now trigger an information banner when Enable pop-up windows: is set to Only requested.
• Found and fixed some instances of using freed memory relating to opening and closing browser windows.
• Loading an image directly will result in a scaled down version if it's bigger than the window. browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing
• Start page should be shown with a url of Home.html
• Tabbing will now focus links because using accessibility.tabfocus = 7 meant that hardware navigation would not work on pages without textareas.
• Native theming for <select> widgets is mostly implemented.
• Native theming for <input type=checkbox> and <input type=radio>
• Height of <input type=file> should be reasonable
• RSS channel items should not be duplicated
• Pages that serve RSS content with XSLT (i.e., BBC) should trigger the RSS toolbar button.
• Trying to get a context menu on an automatically resized image should not result in continuous swaps between resized and normal image states. Similarly, it should be possible to pan non resized images, instead of just having them toggle between states.
• Note that you shouldn't use more than 4 browser windows (Editor recommends 3), unfortunately a related preference browser.sessionhistory.max_entries was tuned from 50 (desktop value) to 31 (random value). People are advised to tune it to 8.
• CSM shouldn't be triggered when you simply click on an element in a page that uses mouse event handlers
• Undid a change to improve the contrast for text in disabled <textareas>s: see the unreadable textarea

Hardware Keys

• Pressing hardware select while the focussed element is offscreen will blur the object instead of triggering it
• Holding hardware arrows to trigger scrolling should result in fairly continuous scrolling (no link navigation, and focus should be cleared)
• Focus shouldn't leave a <select> element prematurely while navigating using the hardware navigation keys.
• Pressing a hardware arrow key when there is no focus on the screen should result in focus being inserted according to cardinal locations (up = top of screen, etc.)
• Documents in designMode will suppress the ability to open the FKB, you will need to configure the select button to activate the thumb keyboard.
• Enter key in FKB should not be detected by web sites, e.g. www.hotmail.com
• You can disable spatial navigation by setting snav.enabled to false
• Using spatial navigation on yahoo.com might not crash
• You might be able to use the hardware navigation keys in docs.google.com
• Hardware keys will trigger mouse move events, and those coordinates will probably relate to the center of the selected element.

Fit width to view

• Toggling Fit Width to View (and starting the Browser?) will now show an Updating banner
• Fit width to view is disabled by default
• Fit width to view should work slightly better
• Fit width to view will try harder to avoid a horizontal scrollbar
• Opening a new window shouldn't affect the ability to activate/deactivate Fit width to view in the original window.
• Back/Forward should remember vertical position even when Fit width to view is enabled

Networking

• Entering multiple words into the location bar will now trigger Google's "I'm feeling lucky" search.
• Clicking mailto: links will no longer leave the toolbar stuck in the connecting state.
• Loading an unrecognized protocol should result in some "friendly" error.
• Saved pages (with long filenames/url parameters?) should include an html file extension so that File manager will know to use Browser to open the file.
• Save as with images (for html pages) is now part of the normal File save as dialog (available as a type field, and only visible for html documents).
• Save as should work from the frame CSM submenu.
• Save as web page, complete should now include a proper charset a least as much as in mozilla Incorrect meta tag is used by Save As "Web, page complete" (character encoding specified incorrectly)
• Interrupting a load from Bluetooth will now generate a very annoying and poorly worded error dialog instead of a standard gecko error page
• Deleting an unnamed download should no longer crash
• One of an infinite number of potential crashes in the download manager should no longer trigger a crash
• Resuming downloads should not crash
• Delete confirmation dialog should now appear in front of the downloads window.
• Completing a download should be handled better
• One potential crash involving an incremental download test over https should not happen
• Network error pages will not show horizontal scrollbars (inner content will probably have such scrollbars, but that's different)
• Network errors should be properly skinned (including an exclamation mark)
• It should be possible to load a web page saved with images but which requires some other network resources without going back online. It will almost certainly require you to select cancel once for each resource which is not stored locally.
• Restored support for PAC (nsProxyAutoConfig.js was not packaged)
• Restored global-region properties
• Rephrased error messages for:
  1. malformedURI
  2. fileNotFound
  3. dnsNotFound
  4. connectionFailure
  5. netTimeOut
  6. proxyResolveFailure
  7. proxyConnectFailure
  8. redirectLoop
  9. deniedPortAccess

Packaging and Building

• Browser is no longer built against maemo launcher, this seems to result in the best launch times.
• tablet-browser-controls now lists a dependency to microb-eal-dev
• microb-eal-dev now lists a dependency to depend on microb-eal microb-eal-dev should depend on microb-eal
• microb-refui now lists a dependency to depend on libgtkmozembed microb-refui should depend on libgtkmozembed
• Should build in gregale
• OS 2006 uses a different plug-in directory
• Browser UI is prelinked with microb engine
• Browser is now compiled with -fPIC (thanks to the toolchain sucking less and to no using maemo-launcher, although in theory they fixed maemo-launcher).
• EAL should launch without system DBUS
• At some point in time it built on HILDON2006 (If it doesn't, we'll try to fix it shortly....)
• MicroB uses system cairo (for canvas only!)
• We now include/package/use libsqlite and nssdbm libraries
• mozilla-config symlink is included in system directory
• mozstorage is enabled and built- but probably not very useful (no places)
• microb-refui now lists dependencies
• xulrunner package is available
• Added option to build microb-engine with an SVG backport
• SVG is not enabled in this release
• Gecko engine is probably approximately equivalent to a pull from 2007-09-29, this is done via the Debian style of adding lots of patches on top of a base instead of actually updating the base.
• Imported fix for Hang with display: table-caption, large padding and left float inside it
• Uninitialized value used in nsTypedSelection::AddRange()
• Added libnspr package which adds some part of gecko to the ld.so.conf library search path
• Enabled support for XBM image format
• Disabled indirect threading in spidermonkey because it seems to cause frequent random crashes at various sites.

Bookmarks

• Trying to paste with an empty clipboard in Browser and Bookmarks should now use the standard system global "Nothing to paste" message instead of "Unable to paste".
• Requests from an external application (Bookmarks) to "Open" an item in the "current" window after having closed a recently opened new window.
• Task navigator list for bookmarks should have reasonable widths and if items are too long they should be truncated with ellipsis. (This is fallout from some API work core did)
• Control-B will open the bookmarks menu ... at the same location as if you had tapped the toolbar button.
• Pressing <escape> will dismiss the bookmarks toolbar menu.

Known Issues

• Opening the VKB for a <textarea> will probably ignore autocapitalization mode and just use lowercase. (Editor's note: this seems to be rocket science, and the APIs involved don't seem to be particularly useful/workable.)
• Due to X or the touch driver or something being oversensitive, it is basically impossible to tap on a single pixel and expect an application not to hear mouse move events. (Editor's note: I'm sorry, but there's really nothing anyone can do. If you think this problem is hard, imagine having at least five dimensions (That's the problem here), anyway, here's what the one dimensional problem looks like:

• CSM animation doesn't always go away (Editor's note: the bug report sucks, it talks about a "dialog", but it probably means a web application emulated dialog. The problem probably relates to imperfect accounting of click targets.)

Footnotes

For people wondering about User Interface style, the general rule is:

• A menu item to perform a given task should have ellipsis (...) only if there is a need to ask the user for additional information in order to complete the task.
• The Nokia style unfortunately differs and basically says all menus that trigger dialogs should have ellipsis (...). (See also Apple's rules)

• Never use the same identifier for terms that appear in different contexts.
• If you're going to give localizers text to translate, make certain that the text is not grammatically incorrect in the original language. It should also use the clearest and most common/popular words to describe terms and concepts, unless you have explicitly defined terms for your localizers.

15 0

So what changed?

• Categorization of components is no longer done according to Nokia hardware products (Nokia 770, Nokia N800)
• Components for complaints about hardware were removed
• IT OS versions were replaced by maemo SDK versions
• Products were added based on general categories for maemo software, and components were added for most user facing applications

Why move away from categorization based on hardware products?

maemo.org is a software platform, and while its sponsor thinks about hardware, we don't. Software tends to outlive hardware and bugs in one version of a product tend to continue to future versions.

• Note: I'm using we because I was given administration rights to bugs.maemo.org, but I'm not an official representative of maemo.org (see below for the official contact). I'm trying to become more involved with the maemo community, just as I want you to become involved with it. This is a form of eating one's own dogfood or at least practicing what one preaches.

How do I report a problem with hardware?

You have a couple of options:

1. Contact Nokia Care services
   1. visit www.nokia.com
   2. browse to Nokia 770 or Nokia N800
   3. Support and Software
   4. Under Nokia Care services, select Repair and recycling
   5. Select your Nokia Care point
   6. Select Repair or Warranty
2. Contact the company who sold you the product

• Note: maemo.org is not one of the options.

Why change versioning schemes?

maemo.org is hosting this bug tracker and the SDK versions are what they ship, it's unfair to force maemo.org to deal with numbers they don't really understand.

Why not use the SDK names?

Because I can't find anyone with a working secret decoder ring for them, and they don't sort well.

Would you give an approximate mapping?

This information is collected from Nokia 770 flash downloads, Nokia N800 flash downloads, and repository.maemo.org:

1. 1.x / IT OS 2005
   • 1.0 - 3.2005.51-13 maemo
   • 1.1 - 5.2006.13-7 maemo
2. 2.x / IT OS 2006
   • 2.0 - 1.2006.26-8 mistral
   • 2.1 - 2.2006.39-14 scirocco
   • 2.2 - 3.2006.49-2 gregale
3. 3.x / IT OS 2007
   • 3.0 - 2.2006.51-6 bora
   • 3.1 - 3.2007.10-7 bora
   • 3.2 - 4.2007.26-8 bora

How do I find my device's software version?

• Nokia 770
  1. The left edge of the screen typically has an area called the Task navigator.
     1. If you don't see that, you might want to turn your device (off and) on, or
     2. press the full screen hardware key (left button at the edge of the device, close to the speaker)
  2. Tap the center item ("others menu")
  3. If you see Control panel
     1. You have IT OS 2005 (unless you reorganized...)
     2. Tap Control panel
     3. Double tap Device
     4. Tap About product
     5. Read the Version: field
  4. If not, you are probably using 2006 (unless you're using 2007 Hacker Edition)
  5. Tap Tools
  6. Tap Control panel
  7. Double tap Device
  8. Tap About product
  9. Read the Version: field
• Nokia N800
  1. The Task navigator is still on the left edge of the screen
     1. If you don't see that, you might want to turn your device (off and) on, or
     2. press the full screen hardware key (raised middle button at edge of the device, close to the directional pad)
  2. Tap the center item ("others menu")
  3. Tap Tools
  4. Tap Control panel
  5. Double tap About product
  6. Read the Version: field

Where did all the programs go?

Products are used to describe categories of applications, and programs are organized according to those categories. I've also created more components to match programs you actually see.

• Browser (Opera, MicroB, Flash, Bookmarks, and the User Interface)
• Connectivity (Bluetooth, WiFi, ...)
• Communication (IM/Chat, Presence, Video Call, ...)
• Desktop (Home, Task navigator) - anything related to the home screen
• System management (Control panel, Backup, Application manager, File manager)
• Multimedia (Media player, Media framework - including GStreamer)
• Games (Blocks, Chess, Marbles, Mahjong)

What if I don't know where to file a bug?

We ask that you try your best to pick the right component. qa@maemo.org still exists (it's really more of a person than an account, more on that later), but as of this morning it will get mail for most new bugs (just like it used to).

You should also try using the search form, not just to see if your bug is filed, but to get an idea about where similar bugs have already been filed. If you browse through the components list, you will see that there are components for the Virtual keyboard (vkb) and Finger keyboard (fkb) hidden under System software.

Why did I hide the keyboards (vkb, fkb) under system software?

I couldn't come up with a better place according to the metaphor we were using, if you think there's a better place for it, tell Quim Gil, as this is his show (i.e., he does speak for maemo.org, and I will make changes as he requests them).

How can I help (qa@maemo.org)?

There are a number of ways, but one way is to pick a couple of components that interest you, or which you know about, or are willing to learn, or happen to use and set up user watching. Once you've done that, look through the bugs in each of those components, try to figure ouf if they belong there or should be moved somewhere else. This is especially true with e.g., Media player, one of the last components I moved, many of the bugs probably belong in Multimedia framework. One bug is about metalayer-crawler, which probably needs its own home.

If you can, please try to reproduce the problem. If you think the problem is not reproducable, write a comment indicating the version you tested, the steps you took, the results you got, and why you think the bug WORKSFORME.

If you think a bug isn't clear (many bugs aren't), and can offer more detailed steps, please add a comment with them. In many cases a url or attachment will help. You should be able to create attachments or fill in the URL field. If you need help making changes to bug fields (see editbugs below), just comment describing what changes you want made or ask for help from #maemo. I'll try to have a couple of people there who can help out.

If you think a bug isn't clear and you can't figure out what the reporter is asking or describing, please leave a polite comment in the bug explaining what is unclear and ask for clarification. Please be civil, we're trying to grow a community, not start wars.

What is user watching?

User watching lets you have the same chances to get mail as another user according to the role and relation that user has to a bug.

What are these QA contacts for the new components?

New components will generally have a default assignee of mailto:nobody@maemo.org and a QA contact something like: mailto:microb-engine-bugs@maemo.org. I personally watch this account. This means that I can get mail for all bugs filed in the Browser:MicroB engine component.

How can I help?

While I tried my best to find an appropriate home for each bug, I moved nearly 1900 of them, and everyone makes mistakes. If a bug is open and you choose to move it, if you have editbugs, then please be sure to select (*) Reassign bug to default assignee and QA contact. If you don't have this bit set in permissions, then you won't see that option. In which case someone else will have to fix it later. Hopefully someone watching the old component will notice the move mail and reassign.

Why can't I see all the bugs?

There are just over 1900 bugs in bugs.maemo.org, about 50 of them are not public. I've personally burried one because it was spam for an adult site. Most relate to various SDKs which are being beta tested for release.

What if I think a bug should be public?

Contact qa@maemo.org and give a reason why you think it should be public or why you think you should be able to see it. If QA agrees that you should be able to see it, QA can add you to the CC list and you will then be able to review the bug yourself. A number of the hidden bugs are filed about old SDKs, so one of the other tasks on my ever growing to-do list is to try to get them declassified. Most bugs are not secrets, nor are they even interesting. Believe me, I had one secret bug filed about me this month, and like you, I was not able to see it. But once I read it, I was amazed at how bland it was.

What other changes are coming?

• Hopefully more developers will be able to come and play
• Product and component descriptions will be updated (if you have suggestions, contact me on #maemo)
• Bug entry will transition for most users to use Guided by default, probably tomorrow. People familiar with browser bug links have probably already seen the guided form, as that's the only one I want people to use.

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The browser team and maemo.org would like to encourage contributions. To that end, I am happy to announce that I've sent George Kibardin a maemo.org t-shirt, in appreciation for the good bugs he has filed. And with the hope and expectation that we will continue to receive good reports from him.

I can't guarantee that we'll send shirts monthly, but I hope to be able to. Note that we also would like to encourage people to make patches, and code contributions, it's quite likely that the next shirt will be sent to someone for contributing a patch or two that improves our code.

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What's special about it?

Not much, it's basically the same MicroB as you would get on OS 2007.

How does it work?

The same way it works in 2007, it integrates with the system /usr/bin/browser, you can still switch back to Opera (8.0 in the case of 2006, instead of 8.5 on 2007) at any time.

What's the catch?

• Plug-ins. The plug-ins MicroB uses are basically standard NPAPI plug-ins. For 4.2007, updated plug-ins were shipped that were compatible with MicroB. Unfortunately, we don't think we can get a license to ship the 2007 plug-ins for the 770. So officially, if you want Flash 9, you'll need to buy an N800 and install 4.2007.

What does it take to get Flash 9 working?

Flash 9 requires:

1. the actual Flash plug-in
2. a library (libplayback) that provides support for cooperatively sharing the sound device. It's sort of a bug-fix response to problems involving Flash and Media player.
3. a symlink so that it can be found by consumers (Flash).

How do I install it?

• Use this install file
• As usual, you'll be prompted to add a repository if you don't have it
• As with OS 2007, if some of your repositories are unavailable, the installation won't work. If that happens, you'll need to select microb-browser from the installable applications section of Application manager.

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What does it take to make a product?

1. Managers! (lots of them, the more the merrier)
2. An Architect (one is a good number)
3. User Interface Designers (the fewer the better)
4. Engineers
   1. Release Engineers (one is usually sufficient)
   2. UI Engineers (a couple will do)
   3. Core Developers (a handful is best)
5. Testers (the more the merrier)
6. Localizers (perhaps a couple dozen, but you'll never meet them)
7. More Testers (to complain about the same things that the other testers were testing, but claim that they're problems with the localized versions)
8. Webmaster
9. Add-ons (OK, these are optional, and aren't really part of the product)
10. Platform developers (these are an external resource who if you're lucky might be around to ask for features when you don't have time to talk to them)
11. Triagers (you can never get enough)

So who can you actually meet?

Some of our managers have introduced themselves publicly, so I suppose they're fair game:

• Ari Jaaksi
• Leonid Zolotarev

Who's the architect?

• That's me, timeless

Who is the User Interface Designer?

• Sorry, he doesn't seem to have a presence.
• So all I will say is that it isn't tigert, but he's a public figure, and I think he'll occasionally answer questions. So, I suppose you can ask him. :)

Who works on the User Interface?

Well, our team is actually quite small, so most of us do double or even triple duty. So I'll list someone here:

• Anton Rogaynis

Who is a core Developer?

• Oleg Romashin

Who are the Testers?

• timeless
• This is where you come in, please join us :). We can always use more testers.

Why do you have a web designer?

We were just lucky, I guess.

• Markus Berg, a summer intern helped us out

What Add-ons?

• Adobe Flash, it's not made by our group. Yes people work on it. But they're not in my group, so I can't say.
• Mozilla Add-ons. Definitely not really a part of our group. And to use these, you'll need someone to repackage them.

Who triages browser bugs?

• Kevin Zhang
• timeless
• You could join me

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This article is summary based on debian change logs. Ideally I would have been able to just paste the entire changelog here, or point to a bugs.maemo.org query showing all of our fixes, and people would be able to read svn to see exactly what we've done and the changes would make sense. We're of course working on improving the process, and each update shows us additional things we need to improve.

User reported bugs

• Fixed proxy error in localizations (everything except en-US and en-GB is affected) fr-FR and es_ES undefined entity proxyResolveFailure.longDesc / Invalid syntax error when connection is lost
• Changed microb-engine, libgtkmozembed, microb-eal section name (user/libs to libs) installing browser-eal or tablet-browser-controls (which depends on browser-eal) without installing tablet-browser-ui and friends breaks the browser
• Fixed about:config about:config search button is broken and setting preferences doesn't work either
• Included entirely inappropriate hack to work around Internet Connectivity Daemon APIs aren't usable. This is reported as Browser will not open HTML files or localhost server when offline/unconnected (microb-eal requires an Internet connection for accessing localhost)
• Change code to only trigger vkb/fkb for hardware select key up instead of any key up (from any source, including bluetooth, random hardware keys, terminals in emulators, ...) when focus ends on an text input. Also make sure not to randomly close the vkb if you press a key on a bluetooth keyboard pressing any key will trigger vkb if at keyup the focus is a text input
• Fix browser ui to allow the vkb to remain open if the toolbars are hidden vkb Keyboard will not stay open/up with toolbar hidden

Crashes

• Avoid crash in GetRootScrollFrame
• Fixed crash triggered by accessing frame specific context sensitive menu (CSM)
• Fixed crash relating to zooming pages with framesets
• Fixed some startup crashes in browser ui

Bookmarks

• Add bookmark dialog should initially focus the Name field
• After trying to add a bookmark without a url, the url field should now be focussed.

Web Applications

• Fixed CSS3 opacity spreadsheets.google.com
• Improved support for zooming out
• Fixed Authentication dialog to stored password corrections. EmbedPasswordMgr::AddUser didn't call WritePasswords
• Trying to select all in an empty field should now display a localized error message
• Web pages without title tags will have their URL shown in the window title, note that the page details should say Untitled (or some localized equivalent)
• Untitled in page details should really use the localized equivalent
• Moved the Feed indicator between the bookmarks widget and lock widget on the toolbar

Theming

• Fixed broken rendering of styled button with empty title (background-image + value = "") this can be seen at imdb.com
• Fix alignment for radio/check widgets
• Small fix to improve drawing of gtk toggle buttons
• Switching back from css style focus rules (which sometimes resulted in zero or two focus rings) to gecko's default focus rings

Spatial Naviation

• Fixed bug with complicated links with no width (<a><div>...)
• Fixed Scroll and setup first focus
• Fixed some problems with spatial direction
• Fixed eal to hide vkb when loading a new page

Networking

• Resuming paused downloads should now work
• Fixed handling of external/unsupported protocol (e.g. foopy:). It used to get stuck in "Connecting"
• File upload start/finished implemented -> - microb-eal part
• Stop waiting for a connection When connectivity indicates it has connected
• Only show connecting status when a connection is initiated if the browser is waiting for a load
• Download manager should appear even if download is triggered by opening a new window and then closing it.
• Deleting an item from download manager should focus the first download item if there is one
• Browser should close imperceptibly faster because we no longer call gnome_vfs_shutdown.

Packaging and Building

• Corrected libnss3-dev package to place headers in /usr/include/microb-engine/nss and list that as the pkgconfig include directory
• Add support for building Mozilla trunk with thebes GFX: use DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=config=thebestrunk dpkg-buildpackages -us -uc ....)
• Improved support for building in different configurations
• Added thebestrunk, and clean xulrunner configuration
• Added helper script for preparing mozilla build tree in NON debian env
• Adding support for non microb consumers
• Build spellcheck extension by default (it is not packaged)
• Added compatibility with microb ~ mozilla depends
• Made start page logo bigger (bigger is better, right?)
• Hildon finger include not available in hildon2006 environment

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Yes.

It's funny, everyone thinks that open sourcing just makes sense. I've been contributing to open source software for nearly a decade (which is nothing, I know). I've never been opposed to open sourcing, and in fact, I don't think I've ever really met anyone who was. But I decided to spend some time to write this article and point out some things that people might not have considered. So this blog is an interview with some of my coworkers who also work on the browser. Some of them should be blogging here eventually, for the time being, most articles will probably be mine. As with most blogs, the opinions expressed herein are not that of my employer. Unlike most blogs, I can't even guarantee that they represent my own views, or those of anyone else.

Why Open Source?

The first reaction was: well, why not? OK, fair enough.

Why Not [Open Source]?

1. It costs money. (It's true, everything costs money. Even writing for blogs costs money.)
2. It costs time. Time anyone spends open sourcing is time they aren't spending writing new features, looking for bugs, improving performance, etc.
3. It requires dealing with lawyers. Don't laugh, this is generally a big part of any open sourcing initiative. While the lawyers are actually very reasonable, it's still a time consuming process and most people don't understand enough about licenses, licensing, packaging and runtime interactions.
4. It exposes ugly code to the world.
5. It exposes engineers to customers. Sometimes it's bad enough that engineers can be reached by upper management. They have more than enough tasks to on their plate and getting additional demands adds stress and frustration.
6. It increases customer expectations. Engineers don't magically get better just because the code is open. They still are limited resources.
7. Lose the ability to make wow announcements.

OK, so I answered my engineers' question. Now so, I asked them again:

Why Open Source?

1. It aligns with upstream, reduces deltas and simplifies integrating changes from upstream.
2. It lets us talk about what we're doing instead of being shrouded in secrecy.
3. It highlights things that need to be improved in the long run so that we can fix them before they become problematic.
4. People can choose to participate in improving our code.
5. Allows people to make tweaks without waiting for us.
6. It makes the community happy (we hope).
7. It allows for faster adoption of new features. In closed processes, it can take somewhere between 18 and 30 months to get new features added. If a product life cycle is a year long and you miss it, it'll easily take the shorter number (18), and if the feature isn't valued highly enough, it can easily miss the first release cycle and have to wait for a second.

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After many years of work, we're happy to announce a developer release of this developer preview.

What's different?

The N800 shipped with Opera 8.5 which is a web browser from 2005. It was already out of date in mid 2006. The Mozilla based browser for maemo (microb) is a current (well, one month old) build of Gecko. This is slightly bleeding edge, as Firefox 2.0 is based on a nearly 2 year old Gecko, and Firefox 3.0 will not be available for many months.

What's new in the UI?

The user interface will now show an RSS button occasionally, and the lock icon in the toolbar is now a button. [Both of these features are only supported for microb.] There should be a menu item at the bottom of the application menu that enables you to switch between engines.

What does Gecko offer?

1. Support for web applications built after 2005.
   1. Google Maps
   2. Google Docs and Spreadsheets
   3. Google Reader
2. Support for RSS
3. Support for XSLT
4. Third party addons
   1. wml

What's missing?

MicroB is configured without XUL and SVG. Cairo is included for use with <canvas>.

How can I play with these things?

1. /usr/bin/browser --url www.google.com will let you run the browser and start with a specific page.
2. /usr/bin/browser --engine=opera will let you switch to opera.
3. /usr/bin/browser --engine=microb will let you switch to microb.

Why can't I simply write browser in the command-line?

That's actually a bug/feature of maemo-summoner/maemo-invoker. You can patch them if you like.

How can I help?

1. Detailed bug reports are appreciated. Please use the guided template to report bugs.
2. Help triage bugs, search through our bug reports, suggest duplicates, attach testcases, compare with other browsers.
3. Check to see if the problem is reported in bugzilla.mozilla.org.

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Sharing the same key components than Firefox, this new browser engine has the capability to deliver advanced web technologies inside a pocketable form factor. The newest internet services will function on the Nokia N800, thanks to best-of-breed open standards support including full-AJAX, and integrated Adobe Flash 9. This also allows the creation of add-on's to personalize the browsing experience.

How can I download and give feedback?

Feedback is very helpful for the ongoing development and testing work. The application is ready for end users: just install the browser engine in one-click and start using it!

After installation the Mozilla based browser engine will be set as default. The user interface of the open browser engine and the official Opera browser is the same, you will notice the difference in the functionality and behavior. Users can switch back to the official Opera browser through the Advanced option in the browser application menu. You can also deinstall the open browser from Application Manager at any time, without loosing bookmarks or other settings made for Opera.

How can I send feedback?

You can submit bug reports (not suggestions) to bugs.maemo.org. Advanced users, developers and potential contributors can find more details at maemo.org/browser.

How can I extend the browser?

Thanks to the open standards support and a code base shared with Firefox, developers are able to easily port add-ons and extensions available from addons.mozilla.org. Firefox extensions can not be installed directly. More detailed information on add-on development can be found on maemo.org/browser and mozilla.org.

What are the possibilities for future development?

Extending the use of web technologies outside the basic browser environment, e.g. by enabling widgets and even application development.

Contributors welcome

We encourage other parties to join the development of this browser engine or use it in their products. Testers and developers are welcome to bring this beta to a final release and improve this browser engine through add-on's, extensions and new functionality. You can either directly get involved upstream at the mozilla.org projects or join the browser development project at maemo.org/browser.

The browser development is being done with active synchronization with the Mozilla browser engine code-base. Nokia is also contributing the modifications and improvements back to the Mozilla Foundation to evolve Mozilla in a totally new frontier, pocketable browsing. In the future, we will continue to work on our browser solutions in active co-operation with the Mozilla browser work.

To avoid any confusion, note that this browser engine does not come from the Minimo project. The Minimo project targets mobile devices with a reduced set of features, but is built on the same Mozilla components as the new browser for tablets.

Specifications

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML): HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0/1.1
• JavaScript 1.7, based on ECMA-262, revision 3: ECMA-262
• Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): CSS Level 1, CSS Level 2 and parts of CSS Level 3
• Document Object Model (DOM): DOM Level 1, DOM Level 2 and parts of DOM Level 3
• Extensible Markup Language (XML): XML 1.0, Namespaces in XML, Associating Style Sheets with XML
• Documents 1.0, Fragment Identifier for XML
• XSL Transformations (XSLT): XSLT 1.0
• XML Path Language (XPath): XPath 1.0

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