Peter Evanoff's Weblog

Firefox universal v0.3

peterevanoff — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:44:58 +0000

Our v0.3 release is done. Our release plan for .3 was a little vague, in that we wanted and needed to do a lot of things towards building a solid 1.0, but the next step from 0.2 was not so clear. We manged to get the MacOS to read the profile properly, more of a proof of concept really, since we had very limited knowledge of the MAC, as well as limited time. We copied the Firefox libraries from the mini mac in ORI onto our stick, and managed to fire-up firefox with the correct profile. Our goal for a v1.0, which we Peters plan to continue working toward, is a nice, clean and easy to use Universal Firefox. We plan on using 2 scripts, 1 for windows and 1 for both Linux and Mac. We have investigated windows batch programming, and it is very similar in power to Linux shell scripting(goto’s instead of functions). We have been working on the need to isolate the specific Windows platform, and adjust for any differences that might cause problems. Currently we have a script that basically greps the windows platform from the ‘ver’ (version) command, and then use goto statements to jump to the appropriate function. Another goal is to understand and implement a fail-safe method for dealing with any dependencies that our Firefox may need, that are not installed on the host machine. This will entail setting up a path that first searches the host machine, then falls through to our stick libraries. As Chris has suggested, an Auto load feature might also me desirable, but we are going to leave that for later.

This has been a great experience for me, and I am a little disappointed that I am not coming back for the next course to carry on OFFICIALLY through to v1.0, but will blog on any success I have unofficially!

Thanks again Chris and Dave, for an excellent program!

Some more thoughts…

peterevanoff — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:31:58 +0000

The classes for the semester are now officially over. We have to finalize our v0.3 releases and post them to our Wiki page, as well as clean up a few loose ends, then we are done. Our V 0.3 is functional, not at all polished, but I can carry my personal profile around we me now! It was really a pleasure having Chris Tyler open up the world of Open Source to us. Dave Humphries and Chris make a fine dynamic duo, Chris was very relaxed and patient with us, while Dave dove in head first, demanding we do more, faster and better (often times before we even knew what we were doing!). It really was the best of both worlds, and made the learning experience that much more rewarding and enjoyable. Chris has told us of the expanding role Seneca will be taking in the Open Source field, with Open Office and Fedora joining Mozilla. Sounds like a lot fun, just watch out for any MS hostile takeovers.

As we approach the finish line

peterevanoff — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:40:26 +0000

We are approaching the end of the semester at Seneca, and are scrambling to complete our assignments and prepare for mid-term and final exams. There is a touch of frustration regarding our projects, especially for those of us graduating. Completing a project to v0.3 DOESN’T feel like a success in of itself, but rather a stepping stone to a v1.0. I keep reminding myself that this is OPEN SOURCE, and unlike other courses at Seneca, we can continue on with this if we choose. So its not over unless WE want to end it. Having the power to choose is sweet!

Universal Firefox – shared library update

peterevanoff — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:09:28 +0000

Ben Hearsum delivers! As noted in my previous blog, we were having problems with the libstdc++5 dependancy, and Ben has provided some answers…

To paraphrase Ben (which actually means to copy/paste his answer) :

Firefox 2 build machines are pretty old — Redhat EL/AS3 (Taroon) — which was apparently released in October of 2003. So, that’s the reason. We won’t be changing our build machines for Fx2, so it will continue to be that way.

However, Firefox 3 uses CentOS5 — which is much more recent. ldd on that shows that it’s using libstdc++.so.6, so, yay.

So although we still have some work to do on the “how” to fix the problem, its nice to know the “why”. Thanks again Ben.

Ben Hearsum’s visit to Seneca

peterevanoff — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:09:32 +0000

Ben came to visit us at Seneca last Thursday. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a real person has gotta be worth at least 1MB. Ben was very open with us, and gave us a little overview of what life is like at Mozilla. From a students perspective, it is really encouraging to see success stories in person, rather than than just hearing about them. I asked Ben about the problem I am having with the libstc++5 shared libraries, and he said he would look into it, and promptly got back to me for more details via email. It is very refreshing to have someone follow-up questions on their own, without having to push/prod them for answers. Keep up the good work Ben, and if you can help solve my problem, I will write another blog complementing you even more!

Universal Firefox on a USB key v0.2

peterevanoff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:59:33 +0000

We Peters have a functioning Linux script/setup that allows us to run Universal Firefox from our stick, but not without some wrinkles. We anticipated a few more problems with the Linux v0.2 release than with the XP 0.1, if only for the fact the once the script was working for XP, our job there was complete. On Linux, we encountered a problem with some shared libraries, in particular libstdc++5, which the Firefox binary from Mozilla depends on. When we tried to run Firefox, we were getting dependency errors for the library, which stopped us in our tracks. Doing an apt-get or yum solved the problem, but this wasn’t an optimum solution. As a quick fix, we added the library to our stick and Firefox is working well. We still have to investigate the root cause, and as Chris Tyler suggested, maybe set up a path that will search our stick as a last resort. Our goal remains to have a “Grandma” implementation ( in my family it would be a Grandpa , since Grandma was a wizard with new electronic gadgets) which is to say that you can just plug it in and it works without fuss. I will stop now and leave it to the other Peter to fill in the rest of the details.

Extending the Browser – Lab review

peterevanoff — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:29:44 +0000

I have completed the Create an Extension lab, and I must say it was quite a pleasure! I prefer learning with the bottom-up approach, rather than the top-down, and this lab was perfect. We created our “hello world” extension by adding a simple “titled” panel to the statusbar, and were exposed to many of the concepts in building an extension without getting bogged down in the details a more complicated extension would require.(Although Chris Tyler did review the “Tabs Open Relative” add-on, which did some funky search and replace of JS.) The beauty of the KISS principle is that it allowed us to use the extra memory(in my brain, not the computer!) to think about other ideas. Peter Chan and I have thought that it would be a good idea to create an extension that displays a web pages “last updated” date in the status bar, since we have both suffered from reading a web page for a couple minutes only to find that it was last updated some time in the late 1940′s(ENIAC?). If we find the time, we will share….

Universal Firefox Update

peterevanoff — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:15:11 +0000

We Peters have managed to get Firefox to run from the stick(tentatively!) on Linux(Fedora 8 vmare) . We seem to have the basic Linux script working fine, but are getting an error from the Firefox binary about LIBSTDC++ 5, which is the Standard C++ library. We haven’t figured out the WHY yet, but have managed to install the package and get Firefox running from the stick, using the Universal profile . The Fedora8 vware image I have at home has LIBSTDC++6 installed, which is apparently good enough for the base Firefox to use, but not for the stick version, so we have to figure out what is going on. The same problem happened at Seneca on Friday, and the YUM update worked, but our script was not working then, so we couldn’t get confirmation. Hopefully, more good news to follow…

Firefox Portable – Contribution from Others – No Offer Refused!

peterevanoff — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:03:49 +0000

Part of our the learning experience for the course is about contributing to other people and their projects. Our project can benefit from others trying out the 0.2 version with their own profiles, on their own systems. We plan on setting up a little zip package (soon?) that can be installed on the flash drive. Details to follow.

Mike Shaver at Seneca

peterevanoff — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:40:05 +0000

Mike came for a chat yesterday, and gave an us an opportunity to ask him some questions. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was very open and honest , and encouraged us to ask him anything we wanted to. He came across as very intelligent and articulate (the silver-tongued (fire) fox?) and gave us all a boost of confidence. It’s nice to finally put a face to a name, and to reinforce the sense of community the Mozilla project represents. Thanks Mike.