Talkback Data Loss Coming Soon

Talkback is getting huge. Most people don’t realize that the size of Talkback (the database and the amount of processing needed) has grown immensely in the last couple of years as the userbase of Firefox has grown. Talkback wasn’t made to scale in the way we’ve needed it to. This is one of the (many) reasons it’s being replaced in Firefox 3 with Breakpad/Socorro.

The Talkback database is now around 500 GB, which is way too large to be manageable. As a result, the scripts that removed old data are unable to complete and, thus, unable to lower the size of the database. There are several ways we can “fix” the issue:

1. Let the size of the database grow infinitely until Talkback is replaced.
2. Manually run clean up commands to (hopefully) keep the database in good shape.
3. Remove a bunch of data to all the scripts to run and move to keeping 60 days worth of data instead of 90.

There are advantages and disadvantages of all of these, but after some discussion, we’ve decided to do #3. Removing data will allow us to have a manageable database and will allow us to keep the database in shape for the long term by lowering the amount of data we keep.

Sadly, as a result of this, we’re going to lose some (critical) data. Namely, remove this data will affect full stacks, topcrash reports, and smart analysis reports.

Tomorrow we plan to take Talkback down for a few hours and do a full cold backup of the database. After the backup, next week we plan to remove full stacks from existing crash reports. If you have a stack you want to save, please put it in the relevant bug.

New reports will, of course, generate full stacks, but all stacks from old crash reports (about 90 days worth, give or take) will be gone. Because full stacks will be gone, the main topcrash reports will not necessarily be correct and the smart analysis reports will be completely broken (they rely on full stacks to generate properly). This will last for a period of 10 days, then both reports will return to normal.

Note: The removal of full stacks does not affect the stack signature. The signature will remain.

We know this situation isn’t ideal, but it’s just yet another reason to convince your friends to upgrade to Firefox 3.

If you have comments or questions, please email me.

Weird Fishes

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo.

My mind has mixed feelings, watching this video. Is it trippy? Is it beautiful? All of the above? I can’t stop watching. Whatever adjectives describe the video, it was made with Processing. Which is both impressive and insane.

High quality version is available on the blog post.

A Sign of the Times?

Monthly vehicle-miles on U.S. highways from 1983 to today. Times are changing…

(via John Battelle.)

Camino Advertising on The Deck

Through the generosity of various people, Camino is advertising on the Deck this month. This is the second time we’ve participated in advertising on the Deck. The first time was noticed by Jon Hicks mere hours after the ads first appeared.

For the months of May and June, we’re running two different ads. Be sure to check them out.

As an aside: If you’re a designer who would like to help us design advertising, we have the option to change advertisements at any time and would be very appreciative of any help you offer. And, as always, we’re looking for designers to create graphics for our website. Contact me for more info.

Wii Tennis Champions, #1

Wii Tennis Champions

Also on YouTube.

16×16

Last week, Alex started work on a new idea. At first, I didn’t “get” it. But now, I think it’s pretty cool.

The basic gist is to collect a bunch of favicons from sites around the Web. By installing the extension (in Firefox 3b5 or later), you can help contribute to the ongoing collection. Alex is already thinking of some awesome ways to use the icons, the number of them has doubled since Friday.

Download Numbers of Camino

Since everyone else seems to be doing it, I thought I’d give out some download numbers of Camino releases.

Below is a graph which shows how many downloads we’ve had over the course of our releases.

The table above (for those of you who don’t wish to count) totals a little over 2.25 million downloads.

Notably missing is Camino 1.0. Sadly, when we shipped Camino 1.0, we weren’t yet in Bouncer (download.mozilla.org), which is the best way for a mozilla.org product to track their downloads. The estimates we received of Camino 1.0 downloads put them in the neighborhood of 350,000.

The numbers above also don’t include the, uh, “wonderful” download sites that link directly to a specific mirror instead of to our download.mozilla.org URLs, thus bypassing the mirror network. Over the course of time, we’ve had them correct links. Nevertheless, they mess them up every release. Counting in those downloads, we estimate an additional 300,000 1.0 and later downloads.

Finally, I’ve intentionally left out Camino 0.8.x both because it wasn’t in bouncer and because it’s so old. That said, some of our users are still on 0.8.x – mostly users who are on Mac OS X 10.1.

Taking all of those numbers above, in total, we’ve received approximately 2.9 million downloads of Camino 1.0 and later.

Sadly, the graph above also shows that most of those users aren’t upgrading, running older versions of Camino instead of the latest release. We’ve done some work on our start page to alert users when they’re running an old version of Camino, but people often change their start page. In Camino 1.6, we’ll have a software update mechanism built using the popular Sparkle framework. (Thanks to Stuart Morgan who wrote the Camino code to make this possible.) You can expect an alpha release of Camino 1.6 in the next week or two.

In terms of active users, we have fairly solid sources that tell us our user base is around (probably just below) 400,000 daily active users. Since we don’t have an update system yet (again: coming soon!), we can’t confirm those numbers, but they’re definitely a good estimate. Given an estimated 24 million Mac OS X users (Steve quoted 22 million in June; 19 million the August before), Camino market share would be around 1.6% of Mac users.

Check out Smokey Ardisson’s blog post for more on what various members of the Camino team have been doing.

Oh, and speaking of releases, expect Camino 1.5.4 this week.

Coming Soon: A 10.5 Camino Tinderbox

Since the release of Mac OS X 10.5, a lot of work has been done to get Camino building on that platform in a variety of configurations. Many Camino developers have already worked their way to 10.5 and definitely appreciate the work. In spite of this work, it’s often hard to know if the build will break on 10.5 without a tinderbox dedicated to running that platform.

One part of Mozilla’s evangelism team focuses on providing resources to the Mozilla community, including projects like Camino, Sunbird/Lightning, and SeaMonkey. (This is sometimes called the Community Giving and Empowerment Program.)

A little over a month ago, I approached the evangelism team and they’ve graciously provided a Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.5 for use as a Camino tinderbox. (The process actually went a lot faster than that, I’m just bad at blogging.) It’s still being set up, but soon you’ll see a new box reporting the build status of Camino on 10.5.

Thanks again to the evangelism team for providing this box and to the IT team for getting it installed in place for us!

Camino: Now Accepting Donations

(This is a re-post of a blog post on caminobrowser.org.)

The Camino Project is pleased to announce that we’re now accepting donations.

Up until now, when someone asked how they could contribute to the Camino Project, we directed them to our Contribute page our website. However, this leaves out those without time on their hands to participate in the development, quality assurance, or localizing of Camino. (Of course, everyone can promote Camino. Please do!)

Today, that’s changed.

Through the Mozilla Foundation, we’re now able to accept tax-deductible donations that will go toward the development and advancement of Camino. What’s more, through the end of the year the Mozilla Foundation will match 2 to 1 every dollar donated (up to $10,000). Donating now makes your dollar go three times as far as it normally would. You can read more about their new directed giving program from Frank Hecker’s blog post.

We want to thank the Mozilla Foundation for making this possible and thank any users who donate to Camino. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.

Farewell Friends

I’d like to post a quick goodbye to four people leaving the Mozilla Corporation this week. (Alright, one is leaving next next, but my frequency of posting is too low to write a second post.)

Scott and David: Your work on Thunderbird over the past years is most appreciated by your millions of users, myself included. I wish you both good luck in your new endeavors.

JT: Oh, JT… you who brought me so much work in my first couple of months… As hard of a time as I give you, you will most definitely be missed by all of us here (except me, of course). Good luck at your new job.

Paul: While you’re not leaving ’til next week, I just wanted to say that it’s been great working with you. Coffee breaks, housewarming parties, nights in the city, buying iPhones, etc etc. Since I started, you’ve been a big part of my experience here at Mozilla and I look forward to seeing you outside of the office more frequently.

To the four of you, I say farewell and wish you the best. So long, and thanks for all the memories. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.