Category Archives: Mozilla

Outreach Program For Women a year later

It’s passed a year and a new Summer will begin…a new summer for the women that will be chosen and that will start soon the GNOME’s Outreach Program for Women.

This summer Mozilla will participate with three different projects listed here and among them the Mozilla Bug Wrangler for Desktop QA that is the one I applied for last year. It has been a great experience for me and I want to wish good luck to everyone who submitted the application.

I hope you’ll have a wonderful and productive summer 🙂

OPW at the end…

After three months has arrived the end of my internship period in Mozilla for the OPW. I’ve outlined in my mind a better idea of what is Mozilla and open source. I’ve experienced this movement of people that is really passionate about what it does; a new working way, an open and smart world. I’m really thankful for this opportunity.
This internship has meant a lot to me from both professional and personal point of view. I’ve had a great chance for improving my professional skills working with a large open source project and I’ve learnt or try to 🙂  :

  • Don’t be shy!
  • Be patience!
  • Have an open mind!
  • Read a lot of documentation and….ask questions!

I’ve started working with Bugmasters community, talking, helping triagers, developers and community members and I want to thanks my Mozilla mentor Liz Henry and everyone has made this possible for the help, the support and the work done.
During this period:

  • I’ve created a tutorial to help learning how to triage (1)
  • I’ve helped improving documentation on wiki.mozilla.org , I took part in Bugmasters Bug Days (Sumo Bugs days, Mentored and good first bus triage days, weekly triage events) and the sum of all the bugs I’ve worked on during my triage until now is in my user profile (2) and in the specific period June 17 – Sept 23 (3)
  • I’ve explored what has begun a new bugmasters project to triaging Middleage bugs (4)
  • I’ve created a Firefox add-on, a tool for bug wranglers to triage bugs on bugzilla.mozilla.org that has been preliminary reviewed (5)
  • I’ve fixed my good first bug on firefox (6) that will be in the Firefox 25 release.
  • I’ve started working on other existing coding projects on github related to bugzilla report as for example (7)

it’s the end of the summer but it’s not and and at all! 🙂 In the future I’ll keep on helping and profuse my efforts and my time to help Mozilla community and live open source everyday! 🙂
See you all around the web!

One month to go…

One month and my OPW experience will finish. I was reading a blog post of Gabriela Salvador Thumé, an OPW intern involved in a Mozilla Crash Stats project named Socorro.

This week closed a cycle of 2 months in this amazing OPW experience. I am so glad to be part of an incredible team like Socorro. I was reflecting about our hopes and expectations, sometimes we feel that we don’t have to dream huge because the risk of the dream come true is little, but if we always dream at the lower limit, we never are going to experience the happiness of doing something that really challenges you. I know that doing challenging things all the time can be frustrating, but the gratification is so much higher than the fear of do not getting whatever you want.
I am digressing into this because I have just one month till the end of the OPW and I am enjoying so much that I don’t want it to end. But I am sure that because of this awesome experience I am rethinking a lot of thoughts that I have about myself, like my capability of doing what I really want (maybe sometimes I feel a little about getting into the impostor syndrome).

She was reflecting about this internship and I’ve started thinking about these two months that have passed; about all the expectations, feelings, experiences…
It seems to me to have lived two months of challenges, professional and personal challenges. It’s like when you go to a game shop and you see a shelf full of puzzles. You decide to buy a puzzle game because you like it, you feel that you can finish it and that it will fits good in your home.  Then, each day you look at the puzzle and you add a new piece.
The same way each day of this internship has been a new challenge, a new peace to add to complete the puzzle. Sometimes you find the pieces that perfectly match to the others and you feel like you are doing well but, there are days when you discover that a piece is not in the right place and you need to remove it and start working on it again.

This internship is spurring me on keep on working, it is spurring me on be confronted with others, to let the fears go away, not to be too much worried about mistakes that can always happen, and to hardly work to reach my goals and improve myself. You could sometimes feel like have chosen a puzzle too great for your abilities but maybe you should only need more time, or more studies, more efforts and I’m sure it will be ok…you’ll finish the puzzle!

Every new experience is a challenge, you’ll never feel like everything is clear at the beginning but the gratification at the end will be the reward!

 

[good first bug] FIXED

One of the projects I’m working on during my OPW internship is triaging mentored and good first bugs. [good first bug] is the tag used in the whiteboard in bugzilla.mozilla.org to signal that a bug could be a good first step to work on for newcomers to Mozilla. A [mentor=x] tag is also added in the whiteboard if that bug has a mentor assigned to it who can help developers working on it.

Triaging good first bugs and mentored bugs means running through those and making sure that they are current and still valid (Most of that bugs are a little stale but valid, other are not valid anymore). Another goal is unassigning inactive bugs and let them free for a new person to work on it. One of the bug days organized by Bugmasters is that of Mentored Bugs. Even if there is no active Bug Day it is possible to work on that in any moment. During this activity I’ve noticed this one bug 854952 and I’ve decided to try to work on it :).

  • I’ve started reading about how to contribute to the Mozilla codebase,
  • I’ve contacted the mentor assigned to that bug. I’ve spoken with him trying to understand the work to do.
  • The bug has been assigned to me and I’ve started to work!…my [good first bug]!.

After the bug has been assigned to me

  • I’ve downloaded the Firefox source code and built it.
  • I’ve started exploring the source code for understanding which part I needed to take under control;
  • I’ve implemented the changes needed. I’ve submitted my patch asking for needinfo before having a definitive patch to submit.

My patch has been approved and added to mozilla-central repository and it will be available in Firefox 25 even if it is still visible from the Nightly 26.0a1 (2013-08-06). It involves changes in the fullscreen permission prompt and the changes have been required css and XUL knowledge other than a minimal understanding of Mercurial and Javascript. I’ve worked on Mac OS but during the development process I’ve tested it on Windows, too. So I’ve learned how to build Firefox on other platform,too. (and with my Windows machine with only 4 GM RAM it’s not so quick 😉 )
This is the result of my work 🙂

Fullscreen Permission Prompt

Current Fullscreen Permission Prompt

While this was the previous prompt.

Previuous Fullscrren Permission Prompt

I’ve changed text and buttons’ order on UNIX systems, added a background image and halved the border-radius to make the prompt prettier 🙂 . I need to thanks my mentor Jared Wein and all the developers’ community, that can be reached on #introduction channel of irc.mozilla.org, if my good first bug has been RESOLVED FIXED in a short period of time and now I’ve learned a little bit more 🙂

Weekly Update.

Here we are..it’s passed almost a month from the beginning of my OPW internship and this week we have had our first OPW meeting on GNOME #opw channel on IRC. We have had the chance to introduce ourself to the community and to the other women. Each of us has reported the efforts, the goals and the work made until now :). It has been a useful way to connect each other and write about our experience. I wanna really thanks all the moderators that are making this possible 🙂

Now coming back to my weekly work…

QA Activity

This weeks I’ve worked on bug triaging, I took part at

  • Testday and Triaging: Firefox 23 Beta 7 testday and Unconfimed bug Triage. This week I’ve also started collecting all the info and useful links to triage on Windows, that is not my mainly platform. I’ve noticed that my experience on windows triaging is in inverse proportion to the percentage of bug filled for Firefox on Window. So this week I’ve started collecting info and useful links to triage on Windows,too. On our bugmasters mailing list I’ve created a post ad hoc to collect opinions, suggestions and info about that. Feel free to take part in the topic. This week there has been the SUMO Bug Day. I’ve looked at Question component of bug of support.mozilla.org product.
    readme_triaging
  • Triaging Training Montage: Keeping on working on the idea of One bugzilla per child this week I’ve created a content mission for bug triage. My mentor told me about a useful tool created by Josh Matthews and using his project as starting point I’ve created one for bugmasters and other community members,too. The source code is available on github while an initial deployed version is on my site reachable at this address. A linear and simplified diagram of the triaging process is the  one on the right side.

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done during last week.

Developer Activity

This week I’ve implemented some queries in my Bugmasters Extension based on the projects listed in the Bugmasters Project Page. I’ve added some queries with the number of bugs  for each one. Some screenshots of the addon is here built until now. The select drop down menu contains other useful option to search for specific bugs based on the mail user

Select options

Bugmaster Addon

Weekly Update

My OPW internship with Mozilla is going on. I’ve started my weekly meetings with my mentor, and I  hope I’ll improve my English communication skills, as well. 😀

QA Activity

This weeks I’ve worked on bug triaging, I took part at the

I’ve also decided to learn more about Bugzilla and bug’s lifecycle. As for what I think the first important thing to do when approaching Bugzilla and Triaging and, goal of my  work as bug wrangler as well, is understand:

  1. the tool you are using and how you can improve other to better and quickly learn it;I’ve started learning more about Bugzilla, reading docs, wiki, asking for info on IRC :). Under the idea of my mentor I’ve begun by sketching some ideas for One bugzilla per Child project, a project to set up training missions for new bugzilla.mozilla.org users. I’ve started exploring technologies and contents to add for some training missions about basic bugzilla use, and bug triage.
  2. how you can improve triaging work and let other approach to do the same. I’ve started exploring bugzilla query searches, reporters and developers activities; I’ve looked at a lot of bugs and read comments, whiteboard flags, looked at bug’s reporting dates, bug’s modification dates, time within which reporters are available to answer and add more info to the bugs, and I’ve estimated that there is a range of bugs, Middle-aged Bugs, that haven’t been changed recently, but were reported within the last 6 months. Triaging them may find good, relevant bugs. It can also help clear out invalid bugs! During these weeks I’ve focused my attentions on these bugs, starting from an initial set of bugs around 405, and I’ve started triaging them. I’ve also worked on how to generalize some simple steps to follow for triaging these bugs and help other approaching this Bugmaster Project and the result is here. After two weeks the number of bugs is decreased to 380 ( some of them are now resolved as INVALID,INCOMPLETE or WORKSFORME, other bugs are now NEW and a lot of others bugs are still waiting for replay from the reporter of needs-replication).

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done during last week.

Developer Activity

This week I’ve started implementing some initial queries for my Bugmater extension:

  • I’ve created an online version of the addon that can be quickly test and installed,
  • I’ve set up initial Bugzilla queries to search for user created bugs, user assigned bugs and bugs where a user is qa contact and user info.
  • I’ve explored other possible queries for better supporting bugmasters works.

Where it has begun…quality assurance testing

Everyone who has surfed Mozilla website perhaps has seen a link that says: Get Involved. This is the simplest way to start helping, to get all the info and the opportunity to find out what you want to help with. This has been my starting point,too. I choose Quality Assurance and, in particular, Desktop Firefox Team. This team is focused on desktop Firefox testing for upcoming major releases and maintenance releases.

Anyway, the first steps to follow starting with Quality Assurance are:

  • Set up a Bugzilla account
  • Visit the mozilla wiki for how to help, work on some community tasks listed here
  • Join IRC on #qa on irc.mozilla.org or other relevant channels. You’ll find other community members, people who will be happy to answer your question and help you.

Some of the first activity to do are :

  • Come out to a Testday  joining IRC channel at #testday. More information can be found on the QMO Calendar
  • Running developmental builds of Firefox or one of the Firefox channels builds
  • Try to Confirm Unconfirmed bugs or Confirm bugs that are marked as fixed and comment the bug to say they are verified. More info are available in the Bugmasters Projects wiki page.  When you have already confirmed 3 or 4 bugs ask for canconfirm or editbug privileges on IRC or follow the indications listed here.
  • File bugs to help us improve the product (Some guideline to learn how to file bugs are available here).

More info are available in the doc section Here there are all the info about Events, TestDays, Bugzilla…every thing can help you starting.

First Week in OPW

Last week I’ve started my internship for the OPW with Mozilla. My main goal for the internship is to work as Bug Wrangler; What I need to do is helping the Bugmasters community with bug management and triaging under the supervision of Liz Henry, my mentor. Another of my goals is developing a Firefox Addon addressed to QA people, an instrument for helping users of Bugzilla and Mozilla through simple and immediate searches.

QA Activity

This week I’ve focused on bug triaging, I took part at the

  • Unconfirmed Bugs Triage Testday : I have explored the last week filed bugs, tried  to understand them, I’ve completed them with the required info and details, asked questions to the reporter, added testcase, reproduced and assigned them to the right component/product;
  • Partially worked on the mentored bug as explained in Mentored Bugs; I’ve tried to understand if old [good first bug] were still valid or under work of their assignee.
  • WebRTC in Firefox for Android and Firefox for desktop Testday: a testday aimed to support testing the new developer-release versions of Firefox for Android and Firefox on Desktop focusing on the process of discovering, using and testing WebRTC using demo pages and exploratory tests as listed in the testday etherpad

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done, a new filed bug after a crash report, new mentors assigned to old [good first bugs].

Developer Activity

This week I’ve started creating a small sets of functional requirements for my extension. It’s an integration between Bugzilla and Mozilla and so I’ve started exploring

  • Firefox addon-sdk I’ve chosen to develop my Firefox extension
  • Bugzilla WebService and methods exposed to interact with
  • setted up a githup repository with an initial commit of my work until now with a small, initial and test sets of features

During all the week I’ve been on IRC trying to help during and off the testdays to help people approaching QA activities, hoping to be of help for other people like when I started and this work makes me very proud. 🙂

OPW…what is this?

I’ve started this blog talking abut the OPW, Mozilla and the internship I’ll begin soon. But…OPW…What is this?
OPW Poster
OPW stands for Outreach Program For Women and, as the name may imply, it’s a program aimed to provide tech internships to women organized by GNOME Foundation and inspired by Google Summer of Code. This program aims to encourage women to take part in FOSS projects guiding them through their first contributions. It first started with a round in 2006 with the GNOME Foundation, and then resumed in 2010 with editions organized every half a year. Now many other FOSS organizations have joined the program.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. There are many Free and Open Source Software licenses under which software can be released with these freedoms. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people. FOSS contributors do various things: software development, system administration, user interface design, graphic design, documentation, community management, marketing, identifying issues and reporting bugs, helping users, event organization, and translations.[source]

Among the participating organizazions of this round there is Mozilla and this is the organization I’ve applied for.
I’ve always thought that FOSS projects were something for an elite of people: a closed world, difficult to approach. It’s nice to see that OPW has already proved me wrong: I come closer and closer to a community of triagers, developers and users spread throughout the world. I can be part of something, and this will certainly make me a better person on both the personal and professional side.

This world needs human beings, all gender of human beings not only men 🙂