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Independent Projects Status Reports

by TONY JORDAN |

Chameleon - Pete Collins

CHAMELEON_0_02B_BRANCH has been cut and xpi build posted.
Dave Boswell and I were out at Netscape demoing the tool. I did some work on the API docs.

Hermes - Azrael

Hermes this week has actually developed quite alot of pace and action... not much of this is visible but discussions have been going on about the next major stage of advancement.

This revolves around the conversion over to XUL (one more step along from the conversion of HTML->XHTML) so that Hermes can integrate better with the style of Mozilla.. picking up theme colours would be great aswell.. at the moment Hermes is desiged to match the Modern theme.
If anyone out there with good knowledge of XUL wishes to help us with this...  even if it's only for a few hours converting the sidebar as it is.. it will give us a leg up.

The next phase of development which is theoretical so far is our wish to try and utilise the underlying code in use with the search sidebar tab. Because currently it is possible to create a search plugin ( http://sherlock.mozdev.org for this project) that has either webmail (eg hotmail) login or password scripted into it and use the search box to provide the other variable. This of course isn't extensible and we really need 2 input fields (for login and password) and so we are seeking a change to the underlying code within Mozilla itself that will minutely extend it to handle multiple fields and thus be more versatile and useable for much more than just searches.. indeed all manner of other gateways to internet content.

Of course this could do with far more help.. and thus I petition for it here to all who read... however such a change isn't necessarily likely in the near future.. and mimicing the effects by re-writing it in javascript could be possible.. .

A picture says a thousand words... well how about this mock up to spur the interest in people of what is possible... http://hermes.mozdev.org/screenshots/concept001.html

Bugs: Currently the mozilla psm doesn't handle sidebar password saving very well.. and any of you who use Hermes and would like to see this bug fixed, please add any relevant and useful comments to the bug please..

At mozdev  : http://mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=139
At mozilla : http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68572

Anything relevant to the bug being fixed.. your experiences etc.. post to the Mozilla list. Anything more conversational can go to the mozdev bug.. though you may wish to join the mailing list:

http://www.mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/hermes/

ChatZilla - Rob Ginda

Another set of development xpi's (0.8.1a for pre 3/21 builds, and 0.8.1b for post 3/21) have been posted to < http://www.hacksrus.com/~ginda/chatzilla>.

  The large change here is that styling the output window should be *much* easier.  You will find a new command ``/css'', and two sample style sheets, ``light'' and ``dark''.  The /css command can be used to change stylesheets on the fly.  In summary, ``/css light'' will switch to a white background, ``/css dark'' will switch back to the black background, ``/css'' default will remove all colors (using just your default foreground and background colors) but keep the formatting rules, and ``/css http://www.myserver.com/chatzilla/my-style.css'' will load the css file off the web (you don't even need to install the css file to try it out!)  To see what the contents of one of these css files look like, type ``/css dark'', ChatZilla will spit out a message like ``Using CSS file "chrome://chatzilla/skin/output-dark.css"''.  The chrome:// url will be a link to the css file, just click to see it in mozilla.

  Also added in 0.8.1 ...
   * draggable links.  Any link that you see in ChatZilla can be dragged into any open mozilla window and it'll load there. 

   * channel links.  Words like #mozilla and #mozillazine will be turned into irc:// urls that point to the channel in question.  This does not happen if the link would point to the same channel (ie, ``#mozilla'' won't turn into a link if it's said on the #mozilla channel.)  This is great for servers that spit out a list of popular channels in the MOTD (like irc.mozilla.org.)

   * timestamps.  Hover your mouse over a nickname or message-type indicator, and you'll see the time the message was posted as a tooltip.

   * random css changes.  Nicknames are now displayed at the top of the row they appear in, instead of in the middle.  This just seems to look a little better.  There are a few other changes like this that I just can't remember right now.

Bookie - Will Sargent

Ripped out most of the old code, moved the server over XML-RPC code base, got a mozilla client up and running, and did some unit testing on the server to make sure it gave back RDF which looked like a bookmark node.

Since Mozilla already has XML-RPC, all I have to do is tie a datasource to XML-RPC on the back end for queries, and Mozilla will have remote bookmarks automatically.  So far, so good...

ForumZilla - Myk Melez

XUL syntax changes and file interface work broke ForumZilla last week.  I have fixes for the problems, but I haven't checked them in or spun a new build yet.  The XUL changes make it impossible to support both Netscape 6.0x and post-March 23 Mozilla builds, so 0.2.9 will be the
last version of ForumZilla to support older versions of the browser.  There will be a 0.3.0 release very soon that will work with newer builds. The next task on my to-do list is a spiffy new subscribe dialog that lets you configure your forum subscriptions so you can do things like specify which topics/channels of a forum you want to see stories from (for forums that support this kind of thing).  I have the XUL framework and some of the RDF manipulation code in place; next steps are to write the event handlers and create a sample forum configuration screen.  I
will be on vacation this upcoming week, however, so none of this will get done until the following weekend at the earliest.

DocZilla - Mårten Ström

Citec Information Oy Ab is proud to present, DocZilla.

Imagine that you could combine in one product a standardized web browser, with all the nice features that usually has been possible only in tailor-made SGML/XML browsers : features like reading native SGML and XML files without transformation into HTML, advanced linking support, CALS tables, structured search, advanced navigators, friendly user interface etc. This is a product that all, especially companies within the technical field, have been waiting  for a long time. DocZilla makes it all possible, plus much more...

Please read the full press-release at;
http://www.doczilla.com/html/pressrel20010326.htm

Also see the http://www.doczilla.com website for more information, where you can download the basic package.

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