Independent Status Reports
Monday July 8th, 2002
The latest set of status reports includes updates from Diggler, K-Meleon, Livelizard and Mycroft.
Full Article...
Diggler is very cool. It's also good to see Ricky and the mycroft project so active again. Keep up the good works folks. I use or try out all your cool tools, plugins, bolt-ons and enhancements. Mozdev and the other independent projects around the Net are what makes Mozilla feel fresh and new even after being involved with the core project for years. Thanks.
I would love to test a beta build (I'm a good tester and I know how to file useful bugs, I promise) but I don't want to sign up to a mailing list when I don't see how that's going to help me get ahold of a beta build. Does signing up generate an automatic email telling me where to get a beta and where to report bugs?
hint: If you make it easier for people to test your beta builds (even if they're _really_ beta) people will. And if you make it easy for them to file good bug reports they will. Many of them may even file bugs with patches.
Don't leave me hangin', man :-) where's the URL to the beta builds?
--Asa
#4 Re: k-meleon, please make it easier to test betas
by amutch
Tuesday July 9th, 2002 5:02 AM
Reply to this message
Asa,
We would be glad to have you test the beta. The link that Alex posted does indeed provide the link to the current beta. The reason that we've been less than public with the beta is that we got burned when we posted our last public beta. We had a number of people who acted like the beta was the regular release and innudated us with complaints about features being broken and the release being unfinished. If they had read the release notes or the beta announcement, they would have already known that we were well aware of the problems. So, we've kept a lower profile. But I can see your point and we'll have to work out a happy medium that meets everyone's needs. In the mean time, give our test build a test drive and let us know what you think. As always, bug reports and patches are most appreciated!
How about big, bold, red letters in any announcements and on the download page stating that the software is "Beta and will have bugs"?
Funny you should mention that. It is just about what we did for the "release notes" that first appear when the browser launches for the first time. It still didn't seem to help. But, I'm sure we'll be able to come up with something.
Maybe add something like: "THIS VERSION _DOES_ HAVE UNSOLVED BUGS!"
I swear not everybody knows what "beta" means.
And these people are always to lazy to read the whole announcement.
Here's what appears in a big red box in our current beta:
"This is NOT an official K-Meleon release.
This is intended for beta testers only.
Please submit bug reports and feedback to the developers mailing list"
Even with this, we are still getting users who post to the Forums, which is OK, but not what we asked. Maybe they are just too excited by the newness of it all!
:)
I'm submitting this link for the last time just incase anyone might be interested. It's basically a yahtzee game written in Java for the sidebar. A screen shot can be found here.
<http://www.webdice.org/sidebar.html>
One thing I've noticed is that it will not render the applet unless you force a refresh of the sidebar screen. This is probably a bug on Mozilla's part because the applet renders properly if you just go to the applet in your regular screen. <http://www.webdice.org/mini_wd2k/index.html>
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