Category: Video

Bugzilla for Humans

Bugzilla is the devil we know. It’s more complicated than we’d like it to be (albeit mostly by our own hand), it’s pretty intimidating to new users (though I recognize the efforts to improve that), and adding the features we want can be a slog (I’m looking at you, multi-state flags).

It’s also essential to the way we manage our project at scale, though, and enough of our project’s history and daily activity lives there that understanding it is not really optional. Certain edge cases aside, you can’t really be effective in the Mozilla project without at least a passing ability to wade through Bugzilla.

I put together this video to help people who don’t really live in Bugzilla learn how to at least manage themselves. If you’re inclined to thank me for it, thank Deb and Dan instead – they’re the ones that actually made me sit down and finish the job.

Until wordpress stops eating my video tags, you can get the open-web, flash-free, unencumbered-codec goodness here.

If you’re using a browser that doesn’t understand ogg, I’ve put a copy on Vimeo as well:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9205730&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Videos – Firefox Privacy & Security Features

Preamble (with Discussion Question)

I don’t know if there are people out there who like the way they sound in audio recordings, or look on video. I certainly don’t. I don’t think it’s a self-image issue, either; and I know I’m not alone. My recorded voice lacks the resonance I experience internally, and my recorded image just looks… mouthier (?!) than I imagine myself to be. I don’t even know what that means.

Proposed:

Nightingale’s Corollary to the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis: The depth of one’s psychological attachment to, and familiarity with, one’s own image, amplifies feelings of canny/uncanniness. This can result in greater than average affinity for moderately dissimilar representations (c.f. the popularity of “realistic cartoon avatar” generators, or caricature artists), but also particularly heightened sensitivity to minor dissimilarities.

[Discuss. Cite examples.]

The Point (i.e. Where You Should Have Started Reading)

I bring this up because the inimitable duo of Alix and Rainer recently took some of my scattered ramblings and knit them together into an educational piece on some of the security features in Firefox. I think they did a lovely job:



YouTube

In very much related news, Drew worked with Alix and Rainer to put together a video that talks about some of Firefox’s privacy features. I find it much easier to listen to Drew’s calm, matter of fact, “we did awesome stuff, and want you to know about it” delivery. I suspect you will, as well.


YouTube

What’s a Few Months, Really?

I know.  It’s  been a few months since my last post.  But what’s a few months, in the grand scheme of things?

Stick that in your perspective and smoke it. It’s worth clicking through to the HD version.

The Most Important Thing

Microphone by hiddedevries on flickr… or How Mozilla Does Security and What You Can Steal

As promised last week, I have now put my presentation slides for my talk at FIRST2008 online.  I’ve also put up a video I recorded of a dry-run through the slides, in case you want to experience the talk, and not just read it.

Slides (CC-BY-SA):

Video (CC-BY-SA):

Thanks again to Mike Shaver for helping me put these slides together, and to all the people who reviewed them ahead of time.  I really enjoyed this talk, and hope to give it again – as I’ve said many times before, we have learned a lot of lessons the hard way; we should be sharing that experience broadly, since we’re one of the few organizations that can.

I would love any edits or suggestions for the slides themselves, or my presentation of them.  I’ll also accept offers of exciting cash and prizes to give this talk at your campus/company/private island.

Security Screencast(s)

As Alix mentions, I recently put together a quick screencast of some of the new security features in Firefox 3. Of course, beltzner promptly scooped me with his own inimitable screencast, and what with the launch, it’s only now that I’m getting around to posting mine.

What’s interesting to me, though, is the difference between what I originally recorded, and what Alix published. I recorded the raw screencast using Jing, which is a simple, free screencasting tool for Mac and Windows. It caps you at 5 minutes, and records as flash, but it’s super easy to use, and screencast.com will host the resultant video for you. You can see what I recorded here:

http://content.screencast.com/bootstrap.swf

But then I handed it off to Alix and David and Rainer, and they turned my 5 minutes of low production values into 2 minutes of edited, titled video, with helpful visuals! See if you notice the difference…


Firefox 3: Security from Mozilla Firefox on Vimeo.

As promised in my last post, I’ll soon be posting yet another video, this time an hour long talk I gave at FIRST. And then, I think, no more blatant self-promotion for a couple weeks, eh?

Have you installed Firefox 3 yet?