Short post time!
It’s already 2012 (in my time zone). Mozilla accomplished a lot in 2011, and I hope that they accomplish even more in 2012. Mozilla made the web more open, they protected user privacy, fought SOPA, and brought cuteness to the world.
Thank you Mozilla, make 2012 awesome! Have a great New Year’s celebration, party like it’s the last year on earth.
Chrome overtook Firefox in browser usage. Does this mean a whole lot? Probably not, it’s less than a 1% margin, but I suppose now is a good time to write what I’ve kept in mind for a few weeks now.
When you ask people “What is Mozilla” most will probably say something along the lines of “A web browser”. While it’s true that Firefox is a browser, Mozilla is much more than a browser. This holiday season, I’d like you to think of the web. Is your mom using Internet Explorer 6? Update her to IE9, or upgrade to Firefox. If you see someone using Chrome, you should ask them “Have you ever tried Firefox?”. If they have, ask why they don’t use it anymore, and explain how Mozilla, the creators of Firefox are dedicated to making the web more open, and how they’re a non-profit. You can even show them the Mozilla Manifesto video. Now, as someone (beltzner?) said at the summit, “We are Mozilla. Let’s get out there and change the world!”
As I’m sure most of you have already probably heard, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has passed away. Though I’m not a big fan of Apple, nor their products, I believe that without him, the world of technology wouldn’t be where it is now. Without him, the Macintosh probably wouldn’t have ever been invented, MP3 players would probably be an extra luxury that most wouldn’t consider buying. Phones wouldn’t be as smart as they are now, and tablets may not even be affordable to buy as they are.
Mr. Jobs, you were an innovator, and as a fellow Mozillian said, “A true visionary.”. The world of technology will miss you.
Firefox 6 was not released a few days early. Beta has been almost the exact release as Firefox 6 stable for a while now, I believe. Stop saying that it’s “leaked”, or “released”.
Fx-team: Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong
-Tanner
Whelp, it’s that time of year. Tomorrow, June 2, will be my last day of school. This obviously means that I’ll have more time for social stuff Mozilla stuff! I’ll be moving on to a different school, so if any of my IRL friends are reading this (Which I doubt they are), here are some parting words, and yes, I know this isn’t Mozilla related, but I think once in a while, something personal of mine can show up on PMO 
.
You guys have made the past three years of my life awesome. Thank you so much. Believe it or not, you’ve made a HUGE difference in my life. If you’re going to a different school than I am, I’ll miss you. If I don’t talk to you after tomorrow, good luck in life. I’m sure you’ll all succeed and do very well. Next, just be careful. I’d hate to see any of you guys go to jail, not get into college, or miss out on your dream job because of something you did when you’re this young. Finally, have a great summer. Once again, thank you so much for making these past 3 years some of the best years of my life. See you in August, or sometime later!
Okay, now for the Mozilla stuff.
This summer, to the Mozillians reading this, I’ll ask that once in a while you tell me to get off of my computer, and do something else. I’ve put together a small reading list for this summer. Normally, I don’t read in my spare time, but someone (You know who you are!) started suggesting books that I read, and sometimes the books are hard to put down.
My list:
“Just for Fun” – An autobiography by Linus Torvalds about how Linux turned into what it is today
“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” – Third time’s a charm! (Protip: Reading 2 books, one taking place in future, one in past does not turn out well)
“Dive into Python” – I’ve been trying to learn Python for a few years. I really would like to learn it better than I know it now, so that I can help with SuMo, AMO, and my own projects.
At that, I think that it’s about time for some music.
*cue Alice Cooper*
Have a great summer, everyone! I truly hope that it’s the best of your life.
Volunteering in support, you often hear people complain about Firefox crashing, freezing, or just “sucking”, according to the user. Some how, I find my self with an amount of tabs in excess of 150 and not a single problem on Minefield. Minefield has never crashed for me, but for some reason the stable version of Firefox does when i have 115 or so tabs open (Maybe because I actually have addons with stable version). So now I’m wondering to myself “Why don’t people use Minefield? It has better feature than the latest stable version.” and “Why is the stable version so crashy for some users, but when you TRY to make it crash, it just won’t?!” I’ve been trying to figure this out for the nearly 2 years that I”ve been with this wonderful community. I’ve come to the conclusion that some users absolutely refuse to update software such as Flash, Adobe Reader, Java, or Firefox itself when it says to. Why these users choose to ignore the dialogs saying that it’s an important security/stability update, and instead complain to us when it crashes, I have no idea. I’ve spent hours on users whose Firefox won’t open/crashes on startup because they refuse to update.
Anyway, this blog post was pretty jumpy from subject to subject… Just writing what comes to mind.
-T
This is going to be a fairly short post…
So, I’ve been helping with Mozilla for almost 2 years now, so I figured that it’s about time for this. To everyone in the Mozilla community, I thank you. I have learned so much from you guys. Mozilla is a great place, even if I’ve just met you guys over IRC, you’re great. I hope to be able to meet you sometime in the future, and I hope to be able to help even more with Mozilla and its projects.
-T
A bit about me
You may also be wondering “Who is Tanner?”. Well, I’m a geek. I’m a Mozillian. I’m a Wikipedian.I live in Iowa. No, I don’t live on a farm. This is one of the stereotypes that I hate. Not everyone in Iowa lives on a farm. There ARE farms, and farmers in Iowa. Not every Iowan lives on a farm, nor does every farmer live in Iowa.
What do I do with Mozilla?
So, you may be wondering what I do at Mozilla.
I do about anything! I mostly do support, but I also do QA once in a while. In 2010 (This year) I was invited to the summit, as the youngest person to be invited. I also help with Mozilla UK, even though I live in US. I host Bugzilla, Nagios, and an IRC bot for them. I lurk on Mozilla’s IRC network, as the nickname Tanner in #firefox, #sumo, and some others.
I hope to see you soon!
-T
