Whoah, what's this?

Since I haven't received any updates since the last status report and contributions of updates has been falling off over the years, I've decided to try something different with the status section. Instead of relying solely on contributions, I'll attempt to summarize what's been going on in mozilla land.

The format for this will probably take a few updates to settle down - please bear with me. Suggestions and/or update items appreciated. This report is covering over two weeks of progress, so items are going to be a bit briefer than usual.

Mozilla releases

mozilla.org has pushed out two releases since the last report. Off of the stable 1.0.x branch on September 10th came mozilla 1.0.1. The following day mozilla 1.2alpha was released based on the current development trunk.

Phoenix

The Phoenix developers have been blazing ahead, releasing 0.1 on September 23rd and rapidly following up with 0.2 on October 2nd, and planning for a 0.3 release on October 8th. In case you haven't seen any of the publicity Phoenix has been getting, it's a gecko/XUL browser-only product. Due to the redesigned XUL it performs better than stock mozilla, and the UI designers have been been coding up creative solutions to some of mozilla's ui problems.

Spellchecker

Everyone's favorite missing feature looks to be coming to the mozilla tree from its current refuge at spellchecker.mozdev.org. It's been broken recently due to the AVLTree being moved from xpcom to htmlparser (mozdevbug 2034). The current plan is to add a copy of AVLTree to the spellchecker, then the IBM team will review the code with the goal of getting it into mozilla in the very near future.

OS/2

IBM has released IBM Web Browser 2.0 based on mozilla 1.0.1. They are currently in the process of switching the OS/2 builds to use a new installer.

dll/so cleanup

alecf has been going through the forest of dlls that form mozilla and combining small libraries that are often used together (bug 163737).

Wanted: footprint reduction ideas

alecf posted a request for comments regarding wasteful coding practices in the mozilla tree.

New popup window management

danm has checked in a new popup window management system. (bug 166442)

Spam/Junk mail filtering

Lots of code is being checked in for a spam/junk mail system, not currently in the default build. (bug 169638)

Typeahead

Typeahead has been checked in and turned on. It's a great feature that's well worth taking a minute to learn how to use. (bug 30088)

Mozilla book

O'Reilly has published Creating Applications with Mozilla, a book describing how to use Mozilla as an applications framework. It describes how to make use of the standard mozilla technologies (XUL, JS, CSS, XBL, XPCOM, RDF, ...). The book is also available under the Open Publication Licence at books.mozdev.org.

Xft/fontconfig support

Work on xft/fontconfig support for mozilla is reaching completion, so hopefully unix users will be able to enjoy anti-aliased mozilla goodness in the not too distant future. (bug 126919)