I Hate Accesskeys

As usual, before the final release we’re doing a lot of QA work on our localized Firefox builds, and this includes a careful check on accesskeys. There are two different issues with accesskeys:

• use of a character not available in the label. For example: using “F” as accesskey for “Shiretoko” creates a label “Shiretoko (F)”. This can easily happen if you update the label and forget to correct the corresponding accesskey.
• duplicated accesskeys (two or more labels with the same scope share the same accesskey).

In the last 24 hours we found two duplicated accesskeys in the Italian build: the first one is quite hidden (you have to check for updates in the Extension manager and then click on the “More information” button), while the second one is located in the main window (Toolbar search). This last issue affects the en-US build (see bug 498840) and probably also other locales.

I think that we should really start to think about accesskeys and how to introduce automated tests.

The first step should be to create a standard naming convention (it’s not even mandatory, but it would make things easier): right now you can find accesskeys named like “label_accesskey”, “labelaccesskey” or “label.accesskey”. At this point, checking for external characters shouldn’t be a problem.

The real challenge would be to find accesskeys conflicts – using different tables to store all the accesskeys with the same scope – in particular in pop-up menus. Have you ever tried to select different parts of a web page (create a selection with images, links, images with links, text, etc.) and check how the context menu change? Doing this kind of checks manually is simply crazy

Technorati Tags: accesskeys, localization

Cheers from Geneva

I really hate shooting with compact cameras (noise, small control on the settings, etc.), and this is the only photo that I took with my father’s Canon Ixus 90 IS during the Geneva meetup.

Unfortunately, I already had too much luggage to carry also my usual equipment (see a couple of examples here or here) 

Technorati Tags: geneva

Mozilla Italia & SUMO in Geneva

This is the presentation we did, as Mozilla Italia, during the first great EU Intercommunity Meetup in Geneva.

In the last year I joined several Mozilla meetings – Whistler and Barcelona in 2008, Fosdem and Geneva in 2009 – and I feel that this last one in Geneva had the best format in terms of “productivity”: few people, around 20, with common experiences and problems can really try to identify and solve problems.

I have a lot of things to think about for the next months: localized Litmus (and localized tests) to expand the local QA community, how to reproduce in our site the “tasks” used by the Mozilla Hispano guys to track unfinished or new works, effective ways to involve new contributors (see also the previous post).

Technorati Tags: mozgeneva09, mozilla meetup, mozilla italia, sumo

Local communities, always the same faces?

This post will probably end up as a stream of disconnected thoughts more than a well structured analysis, but it’s something that has bothered me for months and it’s quite difficult to choose a starting point and not to get lost in the middle.

The problem is easy: is your local Mozilla community growing? If not, what are you doing to involve new people in the project?

I started contributing to the Italian community at the very beginning of 2004 (the community was just born), trying to help other people as a simple user on the local support forum.  Soon I became a moderator and then an administrator of the forum, after that I started working also on localization: first the integrated Firefox help, then web projects (Mozilla Europe, AMO) and now also software products (Firefox and Fennec).

It’s more than five years of active contribution to the Italian community. Why? Since I liked what Mozilla was (is) giving to me for free – Firebird and Mozilla Suite at that time – I wanted to give something back to the project: since I’m not a programmer but an advanced user, fond of my language, I contributed with support and localization.

If that was possible for me and a lot of the current contributors of the Italian community, why is so difficult to involve new people? Not counting that older contributors can stop helping for different reasons (personal, work, change of priorities), while the number of projects to maintain keeps growing.

Here’s a lot of questions, very few answers.

• Is this a specific problem of the Italian community? For what I see on the mailing lists (dev.l10n and dev.l10n.web), I don’t recognize a lot of new names, so I’m thinking that maybe it’s a problem also for other wide communities.
• Is this a specific Mozilla problem? Maybe the Mozilla project, seen from the outside, seems too big or too complex, and people interested in free software and Open Source choose to invest their time in contributing to smaller projects?
• People got used to “having things for free” and don’t even think about contributing?
• They don’t know how to contribute, or even that they can do it?

Honestly, for what I saw in the last year I’m not very confident about the future and that’s why I keep asking to myself: how can we change this trend? Looking forward to discussing these issues during the upcoming community-meeting

Technorati Tags: local communities

Another Firefox Wallpaper

Canon EOS 40D, Canon 17-40mm ƒ4, tripod

If you like it, there’s a whole set on Flickr

Technorati Tags: fotografia, firefox wallpaper, mozilla wallpaper

Firefox hangs because of malware

In the last few weeks, starting from the end of March, we noticed a strange spike in requests on the Italian support forum. The symptoms described were always the same:

• Pages stop loading after a few minutes of normal browsing.
• When the user tries to restart the browser he gets the error message “Firefox is already running but is not responding“.
• Other browsers on the same system are not affected and work without problems.

Since Firefox stopped working at the same time of the Firefox 3.0.8 release, a lot of people thought that the problem was caused by the last update, so they were searching the best way to go back to a previous version.

The usual solutions were not effective: safe-mode, disable plug-ins, temporarily disable antivirus and firewall, reinstall the last version in a different folder, create a new profile.

From the beginning we were able to restrict the problem to the Windows platform, so we thought of some sort of malware. By the evidences we’ve collected so far, the problem seems to be caused by a variant of the Navipromo Adware, not identified by most of the antivirus softwares (see this virus total’s analysis).

Users found suspect files in the local %Appdata% folder (C:\Documents and Settings\%User%\Local Settings\Application Data on Windows XP, C:\Users\%user%\AppData on Windows Vista):

• [random_name].exe
• [name_of_exe].dat
• [name_of_exe]_nav.dat
• [name_of_exe]_navps.dat

After killing the .exe process in Task Manager, Firefox returns to its normal behavior.

There are still two unanswered questions:

• Why does only Firefox (and not other browsers) hang?
• Why now and so hard in Italy? This adaware seems to be quite old.

If you’re interested, there’s a bug and an ongoing discussion on the SUMO Contributors’ forum.

Thanks to all the guys of the Italian project and SUMO for the support and the great team work of the last days

Technorati Tags: firefox, Firefox is already running but is not responding, navipromo

Survey for Ubiquity localization

How can we localize this set of commands in Italian (see Mitcho’s post)?

1. search HELLO
2. search HELLO with google
3. translate HELLO from English to French
4. lookup the weather for PLACE
5. shop for SHOES with Amazon
6. email HELLO to Bill
7. email HELLO to ADDRESS
8. map PLACE
9. find HELLO
10. tab to HELLO or switch to HELLO tab

1. cerca HELLO

Italian uses the same order of English, so this one is easy.

2. cerca HELLO su google

First minor problem (see also this comment): do you search “on” Google, “with” Google or “in” Google? The form “cerca su” (“search on”) is probably the most used nowadays. Note that the object is placed between the verb (cerca) and the preposition (su).

3. traduci HELLO da inglese a francese

Removing definite articles maybe gives a little less natural feeling (“da inglese a francese” instead of “dall’inglese al francese”), but it still sounds good.

4. controlla meteo di PLACE
5. compra SHOES su Amazon

Same order and structure of English, just need to find the most appropriate verbs (for example, you “check” the weather or “display” weather conditions?).

6. email HELLO to Bill
7. email HELLO to ADDRESS

These two commands are quite problematic to localize:

• we don’t have a single Italian verb for “to email”
• you can “send (or write) an email to someone”, the tricky part is to include the object (HELLO)

If “HELLO” is an object (like a map, a selection or a link), the structure “send this by email to someone” is ok:

invia HELLO per e-mail a Bill/ADDRESS

What if HELLO is a text, like “email «good luck» to Bill”? In this case the proposed structure sounds weird, but honestly I can’t find a better structure (any suggestion out there?).

6. invia HELLO per e-mail a Bill
7. invia HELLO per e-mail a ADDRESS

8. cerca mappa di PLACE

Since we don’t have a single verb equivalent to “to map”, we can use something like “search map of”.

9. trova HELLO

Same order of English.

10. passa alla scheda HELLO

“Tab to HELLO” is almost impossible to translate, while “switch to HELLO tab” has a different order in Italian (equivalent to “switch to tab HELLO”).

This is the final result, hopefully with chances of improvement on 6 and 7

1. cerca HELLO
2. cerca HELLO su google
3. traduci HELLO da inglese a francese
4. controlla meteo di PLACE
5. compra SHOES su Amazon
6. invia HELLO per e-mail a Bill
7. invia HELLO per e-mail a ADDRESS
8. cerca mappa di PLACE
9. trova HELLO
10. passa alla scheda HELLO

1. search this with google
2. translate this to French
3. bookmark this tab

The only problem in these 3 commands is the lack of a single verb for “bookmark”, which can be changed to “add to bookmarks”. The correct form is “aggiungi questo ai segnalibri” (“add this to bookmarks”).

1. cerca questo con google
2. traduci questo in francese
3. aggiungi questo ai segnalibri

Technorati Tags: ubiquity, l10n

Localizer: Follow That Address!

A brief follow-up to the previous post: after the discussion held in mozilla.dev.l10n, a new pseudo account has been created in Bugzilla (see bug 484645) to track changes that affect the localization process in an earlier stage.

If you’re a localizer, maybe it’s a good choice to follow that account: in BugZilla’s Preferences, open the Email Preferences panel and add community@localization.bugs to the User Watching list.

Technorati Tags: community@localization.bugs

Why l10n should be involved in UI redesign

Take a look at this mock-up of the new Privacy panel: looks great, doesn’t it? But for me it’s just a l10n nightmare.

When you localize software, you have two possibilities (at least in Italian):

• be informal and use the second-person singular
• be formal and use passive forms and third-person singular

The second one is the obvious choice for professional translations, and we chose this path for our localization. This means that you should also try to avoid software personification: actions are done by (or with) the software, software’s name shouldn’t be used as a subject in sentences.

“Firefox will” is a bad choice for another reason: many languages don’t use auxiliary verbs to create future forms, so how can I translate that? Ok, I could try to find a suitable auxiliary verb, for example “deve” (must). “Firefox must: remember history/never remember history”. And there I’m stuck again: in negative forms, the “not” should go before the auxiliary verb:

• Firefox deve salvare la cronologia (Firefox must remember history)
• Firefox non deve mai salvare la cronologia (Firefox must never remember history)

The purpose of this rant is: please try to involve l10n in UI redesign, and try to land this massive changes before a string freeze.

Technorati Tags: localization, mozilla, privacy panel

D’oh!

That’s why I hate string freezes: from green to a billion strings missing in one second

Technorati Tags: string freeze