status update

maintained by Chris Nelson <chrisn@statecollege.com>

Last Updated Sunday, January 24th, 1999

This status update page is updated every Friday evening or Saturday morning (but check back, because I may add in late updates on the weekend). To get updates and news throughout the week , I invite you to check out mozillaZine, a site I maintain devoted to Mozilla advocacy.

Previous Updates

Module Updates
NGLayout
January 22nd
Submitted by Troy Chevalier <troy@netscape.com>

Troy writes in with this update:

Not much status to report, other than bug fixing. A couple of interesting notes:

  • Chris is working on scrollable table row group frames
  • it looks we we're going to add support for the CSS2 'fixed' property
Build/Release
January22nd
Submitted by Chris Yeh <cyeh@netscape.com>

Just one thing that might be of interest to other people:

Added a build option to the Win32 build system. If you unset MOZ_DEBUG and set MOZ_DEBUGOPT=1, you can generate optimized binaries with debugging information. This is insanely useful if you're trying to track down a compiler optimization bug.

Editor
January 22nd
Submitted by Akkana Peck <akkana@netscape.com>

Here's Akkana's update on the status of the editor (composer):

The editor has made great strides this week.

Selection is working much better -- it crosses frame boundaries, it highlights on all platforms (though on Linux you have to force a repaint to see the highlighting), and there's some cut-and-paste code in place though that's not fully implemented yet. Of course, there's plenty left to do to get selection working solidly.

Better yet, editor mode works now! You can type in, and it inserts the new characters approximately where the selection was. (There are still some glitches in exactly where the new text gets inserted, but those will be ironed out soon.) And deletion is working now, too -- backspace or delete will delete the current selection from the document. There are also some temporary shortcut keys hooked up to test other editor transactions besides Insert and Delete, e.g. TAB widens the columns of the first table in the document, INSERT inserts an HR at the beginning of the document, etc. We'll try to document these in a page on the mozilla editor web site, but they're subject to frequent change so don't count on up-to-date documentation on shortcut keys.

The editor UI team has also been hard at work working on some initial designs for editor dialogs and xpfe requirements, to be posted for public comment and discussion to our site at http://www.mozilla.org/editor/ as soon as the author works out some glitches in the Windows document checkin procedure. Watch the web site for them, or watch netscape.public.mozilla.editor for updates when these documents get checked in.

Netlib
January 23rd
Submitted by Suresh Duddi <dp@netscape.com>, Gagan Saksena <gagan@netscape.com>

Suresh Duddi and Gagan Saksena have this Netlib update:

Pluggable protocols:

Stage 1 of pluggable protocols is complete. Mail folks have plugged in a sample IMAP protocol hander to netlib using the ITransport Interfaces. A big first step. http://www.mozilla.org/docs/netlib/pluggable_api.html

Project N2:

Announcing the start of project N2: an effort to cleanup netlib. We are still defining goals and objectives for this effort. Most like we will be cleaning up Protocol pluggability, Streams, Converters/Decoders, removing dead/old code. Look for more details here:

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/netlib/n2-kickoff-notes.html under http://www.mozilla.org/docs/netlib/ .

XPToolkit
January 23rd
Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com>

Highlights

  • An initial version of the XUL loader is checked in, lives in the Layout DLL, and understands the rudiments of XUL syntax. You can load and instantiate some forms controls and nsIWidgets, including checkboxes andtoolbox/ toolbar frames, with throbber.
Lowlights
  • Rod's work on nsListControlframe and the nsComboboxControlFrame is still blocked, which puts support for frame-based Form widgets at risk for Gecko 1.0, depending on how far out that release slips. The dependencies are well documented, the responsible parties and their managers are aware of the situation, and are tracking it.
Accomplishments
  • Got the XUL loader off the ground.
  • Got the code for arbitrary nsIWidget instantiation (using the OBJECT frame) in and working.
  • Checked in the beginnings of the tree frame construction code.
  • Added cut/copy/paste to Mac text area and text widgets.
  • Updated Menu Spec, D&D Spec and Tree/Toolbar spec.

  • Added requirements for Progress Bar and Image Button/Menu Button (buttons that execute commands or show menus/trees when clicked).

  • Made good headway on toolbars displaying, laying out children, and looking pretty as a blockFrame.
  • Worked with Browser team to create a Browser Milestones plan with enough details to feel good about our hitting the first two milestones, a minimal browser, and everyday dogfood.
Issues
  • We are still hitting pockets of resistance to implementation and checkins based on decisions made last week or earlier. We all have to stop playing with dead snakes, or the project as a whole won't be able to make progress. The time to get involved and influence a decision is before it is made, not after someone has spent a week working on the code and wants to check it in. Please, let's all try to keep everyone informed and involved, so that we can make the right decisions the first time.
People
  • Scott Collins will be extending his stay until the middle of February, in order to help get the XPToolkit team firing on all cylinders.

Previous Updates