Mozilla Design Patterns ContestThursday October 14th, 1999The "Design Patterns in Mozilla" contest is now underway. Find and document as many design patterns as possible in the Mozilla code, with the chance to win a copy of "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by Gamma et. al. signed by the authors and a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Visit the contest rules page to learn more. It goes into detail regarding the two phases of the contest, the submission rules, the source you need to use, and the prizes. This is not an official contest, but an incentive program for developers, and is being organized and run by the contest jurors. See the contest rules for more details. Thanks go to Heikki Toivonen of Citec (creators of Doczilla) for organizing the contest. Good luck, and start hunting. i liked the idea of encouraging development through contests. i followed the throbber contest closely and liked the results. what about organizing a skins contest for ui development? This is a pretty good idea, although I have to admit I wasn't that happy with the throbber entries or results. But regardless of my opinion, before such a contest can happen, we have to be sure that the XUL spec is stable... Also, bear in mind, you'll get far fewer entries. Each full skin is comprised of lots of different XUL definitions for different windows and dialogs... On top of that, it is possible to break the browser functionality by writing bad XUL. So it's really a lot harder to make than the average WinAmp theme... [Each full skin is comprised of lots of different XUL definitions for different windows and dialogs...] Yaaa.... But for the basic user, I think a redesign of the browser window alone would be fine... and a little simpler for us pleebs to accomplish... I guess it would depend on if the contest was based on usability issues or just plain old "Prettyness". The best solution would be to create a catigory based contest. "Best e-mail redisign...", "Best browser redisign...", "Funkiest Buttons ...", "Best overall design..." That sort of thing. "Most Creative Use of a Wookie Head!" (sorry, its a REALLY old joke of mine) Well, I remember when the Wookie head was being thrown around (figuratively speaking, of course)in the XUL arguments way back when. I still think it's a cool idea. This, by the way, is a great book for OO developers. It's not a bible, nor is it a cookbook with recipes for all of your programming needs; but it is a great, tight reference. Whether or not you get it signed by the authors, if you hack big things in C++ (*cough*mozilla*cough*) you should have this book under your pillow at night. i liked the idea of encouraging development through contests. i followed the throbber contest closely and liked the results. what about organizing a skins contest for ui development? wow, i've heard of clicking "submit" twice, but a half-hour apart from each other? intense! :) i promise that i only hit submit once. i checked these messages this morning and was embarrassed to see that a third copy of my message had cropped up on the page. if it claim that i'm not doing it, then who, or what, is? i promise that i only hit submit once. i checked these messages this morning and was embarrassed to see that a third copy of my message had cropped up on the page. if it claim that i'm not doing it, then who, or what, is? #18 Don't reload a page created by a message postby SomeSmartAss Friday October 15th, 1999 11:16 AM If a little alert pops up asking you if you want to "repost form" say NO, hit the back button untill you get past the message entry, then try again. i liked the idea of encouraging development through contests. i followed the throbber contest closely and liked the results. what about organizing a skins contest for ui development? There has been a book in the works for a while that is supposed to document the Mozilla Source code (Do a search at amazon.com using 'Mozilla' and it will come up with one result). 'Netscape Mozilla Soure Code Guide' by William Stanek. Does anyone know the status of this? It was supposed to be out last month. -Brian A while ago I heard of a book that explained the Mozilla code, but according to people that checked it out it was only about the Mozilla Classic broswer. Current Seamonkey project was written from scratch and therefore it is quite unlikely if this book would be of help. I do not know if 'Netscape Mozilla Soure Code Guide' by William Stanek is that book, but I do not know of any other book. I've found a new pattern that wasn't documented in the Gang of Four, but is very prevalent in the Mozilla source! I call it the MemoryLeak pattern. I've seen hundreds of instances of this pattern in Mozilla. Do I get the prize? i liked the idea of encouraging development through contests. i followed the throbber contest closely and liked the results. what about organizing a skins contest for ui development? #19 MozAdmin, can you prune these extra posts? (N/T)by SomeSmartAss Friday October 15th, 1999 11:19 AM no text i liked the idea of encouraging development through contests. i followed the throbber contest closely and liked the results. what about organizing a skins contest for ui development? The contest to find patterns in Mozilla's sources starts at the wrong end: patterns are supposed to help design your code, not the other way around. Altough useful to your project, it may be counterproductive to the advocacy of patterns in coding, since the end result will be too costly to be effective, and will probably render inconsistent views of the code. I dont consider it harmful because software <i>often is</i> an iterative design process. this piece of software is designed by many people. thus, such a work would be a comunications tool for people just coming on board, or letting those people on board see what kind of patterns are being used to implement a particular piece of software. just because a pattern is used, doesnt mean that it is the optimal pattern to use. in fact, someone looking at the design (who doesnt code) could even make high level observations. |