2004.10.03 UPDATE
This past week was amazing on many separate fronts. I have no idea where to begin so I will just ramble on from here...
"THANK YOU!"
I want to say "Thank You" to each and every one of you who has posted a kind word in the forums, sent me a donation (even the 2 who just sent $0.50 - because every donations adds up and helps), or sent me an email saying "Thank You." Your words are greatly appreciated and serve as motivation to keep making the best damn builds I can! I have always done some sort of volunteer work in my life (too many different scenarios to discuss) and this is just another form of that for me. It is a challenge to make these builds better (Mozilla does an great job on their own) but there is also a demand for different and better builds. I take great joying in meeting that demand and providing something that helps people around the world.
Next Builds
Right now I am planning on doing a full suite of BRANCH and TRUNK builds for FX and TB on Monday AM. The FX builds will be up by 8:00AM CST and the TB builds will be up after 5:00PM CST when I return from work.
Security Updates
All of my builds since 2004.10.01 have the updated source code for the security fixes.
Slashdotting
Wow! I had feared a link on slashdot for a long, long time and it finally happened on 2004.09.28. I am still feeling the effects of it as the avg amount of data downloaded from the site remains more than double the daily average of 2.78GB. Thank goodness for the awesome dual-Opteron server that moox.ws is hosted on at nineblack.net - it has handled the increase in traffic flawlessly. My only concern now is bandwidth. If the avg hits and downloads stay where they are right now, I will exceed the current bandwidth allotment by the 20th of this month. Guess I better start scrounging some more pennies to cover that expected overage...
It is great to get the /. recognition, but we cannot forget all of the other builders busting their asses - people like mooy, JTw, BangBang23, BlueFrye, daihard, pigfoot, scragz, amano, djeter, matlhDam, and MMx.
Localized Builds
If you have not noticed yet, I am now making localized builds of Firefox. You can find them here:
http://www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/localizedbuilds.htm
At the moment, the localized builds are based off of the source code for PR1.0 and PR1.0.1 depending on the locality (I have not had a chance to update all of them yet). There has been much demand for daily localized builds, but doing 3 separate M versions for all of the available localizations would require 36hrs of straight building on my Athlon64 - not an option. What I am working on, and have almost finished, is a simple way of updating the daily BRANCH builds with any localization(s) you want. You would simply download an M build, and 2 separate .xpis to be able to do it. The .xpis are not mine, and I will make sure the proper devs get the credit they deserve, so I am simply testing all possible situations/configurations to make sure the method I am proposing works. Next task for the localization effort will come with Thunderbird - can I do the same for TB Pr builds and daily TB builds as well?
General Maintenance & Updates
I have found a way to streamline my build script even further. These changes will make custom builds easier to manage and allow for easier upkeep of the script as it is getting more and more modularized.
I want to redo the main site at moox.ws to include a blog so that I can make my main posts there, rather than having to make duplicate posts at mozillazine and pryan's sites. Any suggestions on a good blog tool? Also, I am thinking about redoing the layout of the site - I have ideas but again, suggestions are welcomed!