Posts in “Syndicated”

Profiling Gecko in Firefox for Android

Aaron Train

At last week’s Mozilla QA Meetup in Mountain View, California I demonstrated how to effectively profile Gecko in Firefox for Android on a device. By targeting a device running Firefox for Android, one can measure responsiveness and performance costs of executed code in Gecko. By measuring sample set intervals, we can focus on a snapshot of a stack and pinpoint functions and application resources produced by a sampling run. With this knowledge, one can provide a valuable sampling of information back to developers to better filed bug reports. Typically, as we have seen, these are helpful in bug reports for measuring page-load and scrolling and panning performance problems, frame performance and other GPU issues.

How to Help

  • Install this (available here) Gecko Profiler add-on in Firefox on your desktop (it is the Gecko profiler used for platform execution), and follow the instructions outlined here for setting up an environment
  • If you encounter odd slowdown in Firefox for Android, profile it! You can save the profile locally or share it via URL
  • Add it to a (or your) bug report on Bugzilla
  • Talk to us on IRC about your experience or problems

Here is an example bug report, bug 1047127 (panning stutters on a page with overflow-x) where a profile may prove helpful for further investigation.

Detailed information on profiling in general is available on MDN here.

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Mozillians Vouch Refactor – Testday

Matt Brandt

Welcome to the Mozillians project. We love working with old and new
contributors!

The new Mozillians.org

The latest feature set of the community phonebook has landed
and is ready for testing. The phonebook is a place to find, share, and
communicate with open web advocates throughout the world.

The community has worked to find creative ways to make the phonebook a
place where active and trusted memebers of the community can connect. The
latest set of features seeks to push new contributors and returning contributors to be
more active in shaping our community.

The new trust model:

  • Anyone can create a Mozillians account.
  • 1 vouch allows users to search for and view Mozillian profiles
  • 3 vouches are needed to vouch for new Mozillians

A test environment is live on our dev server – mozillians-dev.allizom.org
– and ready for your critical eye. We welcome you to explore the features and offer
your open, honest, and unabashed feedback.

Test Plan

There are two areas that you can get involved with helping test; feature
verification using exploratory testing techniques and test automation coverage.

Setup for manual testing

Here are the unverified features that needs to still need to be tested. Find
a bug that needs verification and begin testing.If you have questions reach
out in IRC – #mozwebqa or #commtools – and introduce yourself.
Myself or another community member will help you.

To get started you’ll need:

  • Disposable email addresses so you can create test accounts on dev I recommend free services like Mailinator or 10minutemail.
  • personatestuser.org is one of my preferred tools if you don’t need to verify receipt of email but it forces you to parse a json file.
  • Create an account on our dev server.
  • Some of the test scenarios will require a vouched account. You can automatically vouch yourself by appending /vouch to the url.
  • For example mozillians.allizom.org/u/your_account_name/vouch.
  • Alternatively you can unvouch yourself by appending /unvouch to the url.

Filing Bugs

  • Write good bugs that provide clear steps to reproduce the problem. Read this document for tips.
  • Use this form to file new bugs.
  • Bugzilla etiquette – be polite and treat people with respect, we are a friendly community.
  • IRC etiquette – same as Bugzilla; relax and have fun.

Setup for test automation

Creating test automation assumes that you have a bit of experience writing code and working with version control.

The new Mozillians.org

Getting started:

We really appreciate your enthusiasm and help with making the community
phonebook better. This is fully a community initiative and wouldn’t exist
without you.

I look forward to seeing you online!

Matt Brandt

https://mozillians.org/u/mbrandt

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Moving Blogging Here

Al Billings

I just announced over on openbuddha.com that I’m effectively closing that blog. I’ve also changed my twitter username from openbuddha to makehacklearn as part of doing so. I’m moving my blog focus here to blog about more hackerish things, whi… Continue reading

Cal’s Dreambox

Al Billings

A few weeks ago, it was announced that there was now a 3D printing vending machine over at UC, Berkeley (aka “Cal”) now. This is the creation of Dreambox, some startup or somesuch doing 3D printing vending machines. Without a lot of data, I sent… Continue reading

Commtools – Meetup

Matt Brandt

The Mozilla Community Tools team is hosting a Meetup this week, June 10 – 12,
2014. Prior to the Meetup the community brainstormed goals for the gathering
as well as a loose schedule. Ongoing meeting notes can be found here. If you
would like to partic… Continue reading