Last week Tristan was in London talking at Internet World in London, he keynoted there on “The dangers of the proprietary web - Future of Internet and Open Source”. Whilst in the UK, where it poured incessantly the whole time, Tristan was able to meet blogger legend Rory Cellan-Jones. Rory is the BBC’s technology correspondent and writes for the Beeb’s tech blog dot.life. He interviewed Tristan on open source, the background of Mozilla and of course the word on everyone’s lips - the new Firefox 3.

Read the article here and also see Rory’s video of Tristan’s Firefox 3 demo.

Fab comments as well.

Last Thursday I had the great pleasure of meeting Steve Lee (more on Steve in the next posts) - one of Web accessibility’s most passionate advocates I have met, and a great fan of Mozilla to boot! Steve was in London attending Accessibility 2.0, which was organized by Ability Net. The conference had been designed to get more people involved in thinking about Web 2.0 accessibility, and saw the likes of Christian Heilmann from Yahoo and Ian Forrester from the BBC amongst other important folks from the accessibility field. You can read Steve’s write up of the event on his blog: http://eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog/329891.html

Talking to Steve about accessibility over lunch was a real learning experience for me. It was humbling to learn about the great efforts of so many people, who are helping others with disabilities have an easier and enjoyable experience of using the Web. You might want to consider how a blind person views the Internet? Or how a person unable to use a mouse or keyboard is able to write an email. Or even how an old aged pensioner copes. All things we take for granted.

I’m pleased to say there are a number of solutions out there, but often they are expensive. That’s where Open Source Accessibility comes in. I’m proud to say a number of Mozilla people have been working for some time on accessibility issues within the realm of the Open Web.

Previously championed by Aaron Leventhal (now living in Germany) and with full strategic support from Frank Hecker at the Mozilla Foundation, the growing accessibility community is now led by Marco Zehe (Germany) and includes people in Europe such as Alexander Surkov (Russia), Gijs Kruitbosch (Netherlands) and  Steve Lee (UK). Together with all of the Mozilla Accessibility Community they have all worked together tirelessly with the to ensure Firefox includes accessibility features.

These people are a real driving force. They have been working and advocating together to make the open Web a better place for all people, including those with disabilities.  Work includes, Firefox accessibility features such as display themes and keyboard access, add-ons and work with manufacturers of specialist Assistive Technology devices like Screen readers to ensure a good user experience of the web. There are also many Firefox add-on tools to help web site developers ensure their sites are accessible. Steve tells me, “…perhaps most important is Firefox’s implementation of the W3C’s WAI-ARIA specification that allows complex dynamic web pages to be accessible (as highlighted by Accessibility 2.0)”.

For the new version of Firefox 3 (currently out in Beta - version 5), we have been purposeful to include details to make browsing accessibility even easier e.g. Full page Zoom - whereby you can view any important detail by zooming in or out of the Web entire page, scaling the text, layout and all images. Firefox will also remember your zooming state the next time you visit the page. There are also some big features such as making Firefox 3 an accessible graphical browser on Linux and others mentioned at AccessFirefox.org.

My outlook has been widened by my discussion with Steve, and I’ll certainly be planning to let you know about more Mozilla Accessibility work in the coming months. In the meantime if you would like to find out more about Mozilla’s accessibility outlook please take a look at these blog posts from Frank:
http://hecker.org/mozilla/accessibility-for-all
http://hecker.org/mozilla/accessibility-vision-and-strategy

Finally the Mozilla Access logo…

Nice write up on Web Worker Daily about building online communities:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/04/27/building-online-community-brick-by-virtual-brick/

Aliza Sherman’s points are basic to many of us who have been working with online communities for some time - but I do appreciate her words of wisdom. As the title of the article states… “Building Online Community Brick by Virtual Brick” - no community can spring up and grow without careful nurture, and the tools and people to make it a success. Here at Mozilla - our community of people is our life source and always has been. Without their energy, without focus, and respect for each other to make great things happen on the Web - we certainly would not be celebrating sure an amazing 10 years of achievements at Mozilla this year.

It was interesting to see a blog such as VentureBeat write about Firefox’s market share growth in Europe last Friday. (Now hovering around 30% across the EU on average). In my opinion the coverage posted by VentureBeat - whose focus is usually “…news and information about private companies and the venture capital that fuels them” is another clear signal of the attention Open Source is claiming in the world of business. Read the article and interesting VentureBeat study here:

http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/24/firefox-continues-to-gain-market-share-in-europe-the-world/

Also check out further great coverage in France from l’expansion and les echos (you unfortunately need to registers to read the les echo article)

In French -

http://www.lexpansion.com/economie/actualite-high-tech/firefox-frole-les-29-pourcent-de-parts-de-visites-en-europe_151690.html

http://www.lesechos.fr/info/innovation/4720146.htm (need to register to read)

What an amazing 7 days its been for Firefox…

Last Friday Gandalf brought to our attention the latest Gemius browser market figures for Hungary. We were delighted to see Firefox 2 now at the top of the ‘browser version’ list - with more users than IE 6 and more than IE7. We are still fighting against a combined Microsoft market share of 60+% but our numbers still continue to grow, whilst theirs continues to shrink. We’ll keep you updated with this amazing progress.

Likewise in Poland yesterday - the very same thing happened. Gemius released their latest ‘browser version’ numbers, showed Firefox 2 pulling away here in terms of the most number of users. Similarly we are playing catch up behind IE, but in Poland the gap is much closer with IE 6 &7 totaling 56% and Firefox 2 34.7% according to Gemius.

Finally, Tristan just a few moments ago has blogged about the latest Xiti Numbers for Europe which have been released in French. I’m afraid my french is more than rusty - so I’m more than happy to cite Tristan’s amazing news that Xiti states Firefox now has on average in Europe - 29% market share. For more please read Tristan’s post here: http://standblog.org/blog/post/2008/04/25/Firefox-progress-in-Europe

When I am privy to the EN version - I’ll be pulling this apart and sharing more with you then.

But in the meantime, I think we should offer a VERY big thanks to the Hungarian and Polish teams - and for the rest of Europe - a HUGE well done to you too!

Consumer Press Meetings in Madrid

This week has been a busy week for Tristan and Anne-Julie. They headed to Spain on Monday afternoon, and met with our Mozilla community in Madrid on Monday evening. An early start saw them meeting with some very high-level press publications. It was the start of a big push for us to reach more consumer audiences by talking with more newspapers and magazines which have a more general readership. Meetings included:

• El País (Largest newspaper in Spain)
• Quo (monthly magazine about science for general public)
• IDG.es (video interview) (The biggest technological specialized editorial group with magazines such as
• Computer World, PC World, Dealer World …)
• Cinco Días (second business newspaper in Spain)
• El Mundo (second largest newspaper in Spain)

Here’s some amazing press which has already been published today -

http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2008/04/22/tecnologia/1208887623.html

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internet/Firefox/llego/salvar/web/elpeputec/20080423elpepunet_1/Tes

I’ll be sure to send more updates when we get them. Well done Tristan! He’ll be travelling to Milan, Italy the week of May 5th - to do more of the same.

Accessibility 2.0 - London, April 25th

Steve Lee, will be attending Accessibility 2.0 in London this Friday. I’ll be meeting him tomorrow and will an update about the event and more on Steve.

Zak Greant in Germany - April 24th.

Zak Greant from the Mozilla Foundation will be in Munich tomorrow giving a talk at the Leadership by Open Innovation in the Telecoms, IT and Media Industries conference. He’ll be speaking on “Beyond Methods, Processes, and Tools: The Fundamental Drivers to Succeed in Open Innovation”. You can read the conference program here: http://www.muenchner-kreis.de/uploads/tx_veranstaltung/OpenInnovation.pdf (opens as a PDF)

Today, Jack Schofield - a legend in UK tech journalism and founder of The Guardian’s technology section wrote about Mozilla’s 10 year anniversary, citing further notes he made during the February interview he conducted with Mitchell Baker - Mozilla Corporations and Foundation chairperson (read Feb article: “Wrangling the web into an open future”)

Read the new article published today entitled: “Firefox’s Mitchell Baker — the anniversary interview in full (In a long interview, Mozilla’s Chief Lizard Wrangler reflects on 10 years of progress — and the future on mobiles)” here:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/07/firefoxs_mitchell_baker_the_anniversary_interview_in_full.html

Some of you have been asking a lot of questions about the t-shirt contest and if/when they will be able to buy them. I’ve been asking our colleague Tara Shahian who helped manage the contest and she’s given us some early feedback. The dates could move, and stuff change - so please take this as a guide for now and we shall have some firmer news shortly to share.

1.)  When can we buy the t.shirt?

“We have submitted the design to our Mozilla Store teams… Production time can take generally anywhere from 2-5 weeks, but we are working on getting them in the Stores as soon as possible”.

2.)  Where can I view the other t-shirt submissions?

“You can definitely view the other submissions, they are all in the original contest image-pool on Flickr. (UPDATED LINK) The only hurdle is that you need to have a Flickr account and become a member of the contest group in order to gain full viewing rights.  Some of the submissions have been removed by the designers themselves, but the greater majority are still up and displayed on the image-wall.  The Top 5 designs were posted on the Mozilla Store and they were also posted on the Flickr discussion group:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/ff3_tshirt_design_contest/discuss/72157604321781642/ “

Also check out this image gallery link on Spreadfirefox : http://www.spreadfirefox.com/tcontest

3.) Can I buy any of the other designs?

“This is a popular question… and one that has inspired us into creating a whole new project to help embrace and promote the many ‘other’ great designs that we’ve received from this contest… We’re working hard on this and are excited to make it happen”. We should have more news soon.

The Firefox 3 T-shirt design contest has finished, and we’re excited to announce the winners! Congratulations Tracie Andrews from the UK. Here’s her wining design which will be featured in the Mozilla Store as the official Firefox 3 T-shirt:

The runners up were Kevin Weagle, Ali Riyaz, Mathew Anderson, and Brett Rex Cannell.

We received an incredible 2,000 submissions from all around the world. Thanks again to everyone for your support and creative contributions. Well done to all the winners!

Late last week and early this, we’ve seen Comscore release some interesting figures about Mozilla’s growth in 3 major EU locales.

According to Comscore’s press releases for Feb 2008 -

• Mozilla grew by 48% in the UK - http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2124

• By 91% in Germany breaking into top 20 most visited sites in DE - at 19th place - http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2160

• And by 79% in France - http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2148

In the UK, Germany and France - Mozilla was the company who has gained the most ground of all sites in Feb - quite incredible growth.

It will be interesting to see the next Xiti report examining Firefox market share figures for Europe -Q1 figures should soon be out.