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Category Archives: Software

Telemetry Results for Add-on Compatibility Check

Earlier this year (in Firefox 32), we landed a fix for bug 760356, to reduce how often we delay starting up the browser in order to check whether all your add-ons are compatible. We landed the related bug 1010449 in Firefox 31 to gather telemetry about the compatibility check, so that we could to before/after […]

Add-on Manager JSON databases landed!

Felipe landed the Addon Repository (Bug 853389) changes on Aug 1, so they rode the uplift train and are currently in Firefox Aurora (25). My changes for the XPI Provider (Bug 853388), aside from the Telemetry measurements, landed on Sunday (Aug 11) and are in the latest nightly (Firefox 26). I still need to make some changes […]

Add-on Manager progress: Almost done!

Felipe has a full suite of r+ for his work on AddonRepository.jsm in Bug 853389, and I’m in the middle of handling review comments for the XPI Database changes in Bug 853388. I need to update based on the review comments, implement asynchronous loading of the JSON database, and add some telemetry so we can track performance […]

Saving browser state asynchronously

As part of switching the Firefox extensions databases from sqlite to a flat file containing JSON, we want to build a module that flushes the in-memory state of the data out to disk after it changes, in a way that doesn’t hang the main thread waiting for the I/O to complete. Felipe did an initial […]

Speeding up the Add-On Manager

One of the focuses of the performance team this year is to improve start-up time for the browser. We’ve identified that the Add-on Manager has several issues that can delay start up, and can also cause brief user interface hangs (“jank”) during normal operation. This Bugzilla search shows what we’re tracking right now. After investigating […]

Excellent article on the agile Product Owner role

Thanks to Adam for twittering a link to: The product owner and the product-shaped hole – Why what the product owner needs to worry about isn’t in the product backlog Everybody needs to read this – business folks for guidance as to what those crazy agile developers are asking you do do, and developers for […]

Hey! Anybody want a job?

I just managed to get a couple of positions posted for entry-level Java programmers. If you’re interested in working in health care, hop on over and apply: http://www.recruitingsite.com/csbsites/uhncareers/JobDescription.asp?SiteID=10031&JobNumber=594401 If you know me, send a copy of your resume directly to me as well.

How can we tell when we’re done?

One of the key guidelines for an agile development team is that everyone agrees on what it means to say a particular task (typically a user story implementation) is “done”. I really like the definition given in InfoQ: Version Control for Multiple Agile Teams (via Jurgen Appelo) So when a team member says that a […]

Real World Requirements Gathering

I’m going through almost exactly this process right now: “<ping> Irving, I want you to build a Provider Portal…” via Street Prophets: News from the Net Noah and the Ark. Bill Cosby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyc13…

Pascal Meunier on Teaching Secure Programming

CERIAS Weblogs » Speculations on Teaching Secure Programming Security is somewhat of a habit, an attitude, a way of thinking and life. You won’t become a secure programmer just because you learned of a new vulnerability, exploit or security trick today, although it may help and have a cumulative effect.