On the blink

The new beta in the Firefox 3.1 development cycle has been published.

New features are:

• Private browsing
• Firefox 3.0 tab-switch behaviour
• Tracemonkey is on by default
• more and more bits of awesome features.

Check it our while it’s hot! Obviously, it’s available in es-ES and es-AR!

First of all, I use Mercurial because of the change of many Mozilla products to this VCS. But I think that for localizers is enought to have CVS. Why? Because usually we are one or two different people with CVS access and more usually localizers only touch a part of his l10n. For example, in the es-ES team we are two members with access to Mozilla’s repository: Ricardo and me.

Well, since I saw a post of sethb about translating and localizing Firefox, I’m trying to do some post about my experience with that case, but with exams, some work and more things, I will post this today

My experience (it’s a person inside of me) says me that it he/she/it hasn’t worked too much… I began with a existing Firefox 2 translation (I don’t remember if it was only a 2.0.0.x translation or a 2.+ translation (on the trunk)), but it was easy to continue. Ricardo Palomares (owner of the es-ES team, and admin of www.proyectonave.es, and translator of Sunbird, and Thunderbird…) helped me with my environment, and it was really really easy to continue his job.

I use Mozilla Translator. Why? It’s simple, easy and has a good UI to manage all things I need, and, of course, because last translator of Firefox es-ES used it.

We use some bash scripts to do the work: one for checking out en-US files (or update), another with my CVS account to check out es-ES files and another to open MT with appropriate settings.

Once it’s opened, press Ctrl+U and you will see new strings to be translated, or modified, or something… Finish the translation and… Export to CVS!! Check in your changes and… that’s it!! You will have a nice build in a few minutes

And that works.

I see people complain about MT and a little problems with that, but if you set a good enviroment and check all things, you will have a nice tool (mmmm, maybe a wiki page?? [wait, writing down on my hand], oook).

The thing is: if you work along the timeline, you will have a nice and near-0-errors final build in your own language. Obviously, you have to translate, but always localize, so, it might be difficult to find a search engine for your region, or a dictionary, or ebay in your language… And protocols-handler too!! (what a headache!!). We decided to keep the same newsfeed (20minutos.es), a free and Creative Commons diary daily, so less things to think about.

The next thing is fix some bad translated strings and check in in the “trunk”.

Next-next thing: mozilla-central!! (cvs, bazar, svn, hg!!!)

WE did it!!!

Amazing, around 8.3M downloads in 24hours. 83TB of data only in 24hours.

You have downloaded Firefox 3 yesterday? Go and get your certificate!

Amazing guys, amazing!!!

19:00:00 in Spain.

10:00:00 in PDT.

It’s time to Firefox 3. Download it, and help us to make a Guiness Record!!

Now compatible with Firefox 3, that will be released this afternoon (17h UTC).

Alex Polvi told us…

Add this code to your page:

<a href="http://www.mozilla-hispano.org/images/ff3-cuenta-atras.php"><img style="border: none" src="http://www.mozilla-hispano.org/images/ff3-cuenta-atras.png.php" alt="Firefox 3" /></a>

Mozilla-Hispano (Nukeador and StripTM) did it.

[Another sizes here]

17th June, 2008.

Note this date on your calendar. Firefox 3 will be shipped this day.

Waiting for that, you can download a RC (RC3 at this momment).

Anyway, you can spread the word and make a world record.

A big article of Tristan Nitot about the performance on Firefox 3, JS and real world.

Must read.

As we are getting closer to the final release of Firefox 3, all our appreciated addons are being updated to work on Firefox 3.

Now, the turn of Firebug.

Firebug 1.2 beta released. Big improvements on memory and stability.

Recommended.