A day out with mozilla...

This post is to be read only in FIREFOX. If you dont have it, dont browse the web.
Synopsis : My meeting with Seth and Chris, two employees of mozilla, on their visit to India.

I was just browsing about, when i found this post stating mozilla is visiting India. Seth Bindernagel, also stated in his blog, he wished to meet some people in India. I being an voracious mozilla user and fan, that i even uninstalled IE from my system, dropped a mail to Seth. It was a great surprise to me,that Seth responded "yes", since i found that Seth had to meet people at Google later that day. Firstly, a great thanks to Seth and his team to spare some time to meet me individually for a couple of hours. After a string of e mails, i was at the hotel where Seth and his team were put up. Seth works at Mozilla, California. I was there with a couple of my friends, whom i never seen using IE.

I rang Seth's room and he was down in a minute, we shook hands, introduced ourselves. He is a smiling jolly to go guy, typical American. Also he had the I PHONE, with him. He offered me to take a look at it. YUP! I HAVE LAID MY HANDS ON THE I PHONE, and its amazing....! I love that picture pinch and the way i moved back in my browser. It is really GREAT. Getting back to the visit, we were joined by Chris. Seth is more of an evangelist, who helps mozilla in creating user communities. Chris is the first employee of MOZILLA.

Seth was just asking us, if we were using mozilla. We all told him, we are voracious users of mozilla firefox. I added that i had used flock also, and i had written a couple of extensions in mozilla firefox. He was very happy to hear that and he explained the purpose of mozilla's visit to India. Mozilla is very much interested in creating user groups of developers and more. They are offering hardware, software and other support. Such communities are already in place in japan and other countries. I told him, soon there will be a mozilla user community in INDIA. [[[read the full article... ]]]

I have seen a lot of mozilla users of late, meaning the people are realizing firefox is a better browser than its counterpart. If you want justifications, i can give you why mozilla is better and even why one of its counterparts is the worst browser in the world. What i have not seen is that internauts (google this) are not using mozilla to the fullest, by means of extensions. Whats more, you can even write your own. Here is the stop - the mind block. It is not rocket science. I have written extensions in under half an hour and it is pure java script and XUL.

To write a good extension, you must think of a good problem. That is, the usage. Give or come out with a nice idea and there are people (yours truly included), who can write the code. If the audience is very wide, and they use this extension everyday, then it gets launched at mozilla add on center. So, the basic point is - the problem.

So,the idea is to build a mozilla user community and share ideas and build code. Write extensions, arrange a camp or a workshop, celebrate!!

I was hungry and all five of us (me, vivek, sharad, Seth and chris), soon hit the breakfast table. Here i had a long chat with Chris. Chris is a typical developer, and is the first employee of mozilla. When the mozilla project was first started, he was the first person and he is a hardcore developer. Yes, hardcore developer, he was wearing shorts, had long hair. He was telling about himself, which i have compiled here. May be i should have done a podcast.

Mozilla was previously under a different browser name, and they decided to start a separate unit, of which Chris headed. He got ten more members in to his team and they built the first browser - firefox. I asked him a lot of questions. too much questions i should say. He added that there were two interfaces in the firefox. One is the back layout (gecko) and is written in c++. The external user interface is written in XUL. I learned XUL at MDC. (MDC - Mozilla developer Center), and i told him i liked it very much. He then asked me about my extension - i told him what i did. I also added up with a few more ideas, which he thought were worth writing them as extensions. I asked him a couple of questions, those cannot be said here, coz of privacy issues to mozilla corp.

Then we talked more on extensions, firefox, thunderbird, flock, greasemonkey and more. It was a typical developer talk. Imagine, a hardcore mozilla developer, the first employee too. I have nicked him "The father of mozilla". We also discussed about how to spread the word, and i told him of some events like blogcamp, wikicamp, barcamp. I hinted him an idea of having a mozicamp (Well, we can have some other name too..). But Seth thought, that day is a little far off, i must say.

It was a special and rare opportunity for me, and they were happy to meet us too. Seth said, he learned more in meeting an individual firefox user than in meeting a company. He was happy and i was extremely happy.(Seth, if you are reading this, i am thanking you for the opportunity given, and the time spent.)

With a few bucks in my paypal account, last week , i was in the mozilla store and i checked out a nice t-shirt, but i thought, i can buy it later. It seemed like Seth had seen me.. He gave me and my friends, a mozilla t-shirt and a mouse pad and a few stickers and a poster. For somebody, this can seem like just a ordinary t-shirt, it means more to me. It has the firefox logo on it. (Thanks Seth)

When i read Seth's blog, it was expressive. But in person, he was more involved in the discussion and we enjoyed the conversation with him. He seemed to impress me more in speech, than in his blog. We then took a few snaps, one in the I-PHONE too. I know it will take another six months to see i phone in india

When i walked out, i was full of smiles. I was flying - i met the mozilla team.

A few hours later, one fellow saw my stickers and he was no where near impressed. In fact he thought, i was a kid to collect those stickers. How do u tell him? What must i tell him? He could not recognize the logo, and he is a senior software developer. I really did not know what to do. Perhaps, i should have said - my cousin brother in kinder garden, loves stickers. I proudly pasted one on my desktop.

If you are still using IE - mail me, i ll show you, why you must switch to mozilla, especially when you are working with software. I can stand people using opera. It is the fastest and the safest browser, but certainly not IE. Drop me a mail at barbi[dot]bruce[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks lord, for this opportunity. Seth and Chris, Thanks for spending your time.