text:
Armen Zambrano: The Joy of Automation
This follows the idea that mconley started with The Joy of Coding and his livehacks.
At the moment there is only "Unscripted" videos of me hacking away. I hope one day to do live hacks but for now they're offline videos.
Mistakes I made in case any Platform Ops member wanting to contribute want to avoid:
- Lower the music of the background music
- Find a source of music without ads and with music that would not block certain countries from seeing it (e.g. Germany)
- Do not record in .flv format since most video editing software do not handle it
- Add an intro screen so you don't see me hiding OBS
- Have multiple bugs to work on in case you get stuck in the first one
This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Benjamin Bouvier: Making asm.js/WebAssembly compilation more parallel in Firefox
In December 2015, I've worked on reducing startup time of asm.js programs in Firefox by making compilation more parallel. As our JavaScript engine, Spidermonkey, uses the same compilation pipeline for both asm.js and WebAssembly, this also benefitted WebAssembly compilation. Now is a good time to talk about what it meant, how it got achieved and what are the next ideas to make it even faster.What does it mean to make a program "more parallel"?
Parallelization consists of splitting a sequential program into smaller independent tasks, then having them run on different CPU. If your program is using N cores, it can be up to N times faster.
Well, in theory. Let's say you're in a car, driving on a 100 Km long road. You've already driven the first 50 Km in one hour. Let's say your car can have unlimited speed from now on. What is the maximal average speed you can reach, once you get to the end of the road?
People intuitively answer "If it can go as fast as I want, so nearby lightspeed sounds plausible". But this is not true! In fact, if you could teleport from your current position to the end of the road, you'd have traveled 100 Km in one hour, so your maximal theoritical speed is 100 Km per hour. This result is a consequence of Amdahl's law. When we get back to our initial problem, this means you can expect a N times speedup if you're running your program with N cores if, and only if your program can be entirely run in parallel. This is usually not the case, and that is why most wording refers to speedups up to N times faster, when it comes to parallelization.
Now, say your program is already running some portions in parallel. To make it faster, one can identify some parts of the program that are sequential, and make them independent so that you can run them in parallel. With respect to our car metaphor, this means augmenting the portion of the road on which you can run at unlimited speed.
This is exactly what we have done with parallel compilation of asm.js programs under Firefox.A quick look at the asm.js compilation pipeline
I recommend to read this blog post. It clearly explains the differences between JIT (Just In Time) and AOT (Ahead Of Time) compilation, and elaborates on the different parts of the engines involved in the compilation pipeline.
Because asm.js programs can be gigantic in size (in number of functions as well as in number of lines of code), the first compilation of the entire program is going to take some time. Afterwards, Firefox uses a caching mechanism that prevents the need for recompilation and almost instaneously loads the code, so subsequent loadings matter less*. The end user will mostly wait for the first compilation, thus this one needs to be fast.
Before the work explained below, the pipeline for compiling a single function (out of an asm.js module) would look like this:
- parse the function, and as we parse, emit intermediate representation (IR) nodes for the compiler infrastructure. SpiderMonkey has several IRs, including the MIR (middle-level IR, mostly loaded with semantic) and the LIR (low-level IR closer to the CPU memory representation: registers, stack, etc.). The one generated here is the MIR. All of this happens on the main thread.
- once the entire IR graph is generated for the function, optimize the MIR graph (i.e. apply a few optimization passes). Then, generate the LIR graph before carrying out register allocation (probably the most costly task of the pipeline). This can be done on supplementary helper threads, as the MIR optimization and LIR generation for a given function doesn't depend on other ones.
- since functions can call between themselves within an asm.js module, they need references to each other. In assembly, a reference is merely an offset to somewhere else in memory. In this initial implementation, code generation is carried out on the main thread, at the cost of speed but for the sake of simplicity.
So far, only the MIR optimization passes, register allocation and LIR generation were done in parallel. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do more?
* There are conditions for benefitting from the caching mechanism. In particular, the script should be loaded asynchronously and it should be of a consequent size.Doing more in parallel
Our goal is to make more work in parallel: so can we take out MIR generation from the main thread? And we can take out code generation as well?
The answer happens to be yes to both questions.
For the former, instead of emitting a MIR graph as we parse the function's body, we emit a small, compact, pre-order representation of the function's body. In short, a new IR. As work was starting on WebAssembly (wasm) at this time, and since asm.js semantics and wasm semantics mostly match, the IR could just be the wasm encoding, consisting of the wasm opcodes plus a few specific asm.js ones*. Then, wasm is translated to MIR in another thread.
Now, instead of parsing and generating MIR in a single pass, we would now parse and generate wasm IR in one pass, and generate the MIR out of the wasm IR in another pass. The wasm IR is very compact and much cheaper to generate than a full MIR graph, because generating a MIR graph needs some algorithmic work, including the creation of Phi nodes (join values after any form of branching). As a result, it is expected that compilation time won't suffer. This was a large refactoring: taking every single asm.js instructions, and encoding them in a compact way and later decode these into the equivalent MIR nodes.
For the second part, could we generate code on other threads? One structure in the code base, the MacroAssembler, is used to generate all the code and it contains all necessary metadata about offsets. By adding more metadata there to abstract internal calls **, we can describe the new scheme in terms of a classic functional map/reduce:
- the wasm IR is sent to a thread, which will return a MacroAssembler. That is a map operation, transforming an array of wasm IR into an array of MacroAssemblers.
- When a thread is done compiling, we merge its MacroAssembler into one big MacroAssembler. Most of the merge consists in taking all the offset metadata in the thread MacroAssembler, fixing up all the offsets, and concatenate the two generated code buffers. This is equivalent to a reduce operation, merging each MacroAssembler within the module's one.
At the end of the compilation of the entire module, there is still some light work to be done: offsets of internal calls need to be translated to their actual locations. All this work has been done in this bugzilla bug.
* In fact, at the time when this was being done, we used a different superset of wasm. Since then, work has been done so that our asm.js frontend is really just another wasm emitter.
** referencing functions by their appearance order index in the module, rather than an offset to the actual start of the function. This order is indeed stable, from a function to the other.Results
Benchmarking has been done on a Linux x64 machine with 8 cores clocked at 4.2 Ghz.
First, compilation times of a few asm.js massive games:
The X scale is the compilation time in seconds, so lower is better. Each value point is the best one of three runs. For the new scheme, the corresponding relative speedup (in percentage) has been added:
For all games, compilation is much faster with the new parallelization scheme.
Now, let's go a bit deeper. The Linux CLI tool perf has a stat command that gives you an average of the number of utilized CPUs during the program execution. This is a great measure of threading efficiency: the more a CPU is utilized, the more it is not idle, waiting for other results to come, and thus useful. For a constant task execution time, the more utilized CPUs, the more likely the program will execute quickly.
The X scale is the number of utilized CPUs, according to the perf stat command, so higher is better. Again, each value point is the best one of three runs.
With the older scheme, the number of utilized CPUs quickly rises up from 1 to 4 cores, then more slowly from 5 cores and beyond. Intuitively, this means that with 8 cores, we almost reached the theoritical limit of the portion of the program that can be made parallel (not considering the overhead introduced by parallelization or altering the scheme).
But with the newer scheme, we get much more CPU usage even after 6 cores! Then it slows down a bit, although it is still more significant than the slow rise of the older scheme. So it is likely that with even more threads, we could have even better speedups than the one mentioned beforehand. In fact, we have moved the theoritical limit mentioned above a bit further: we have expanded the portion of the program that can be made parallel. Or to keep on using the initial car/road metaphor, we've shortened the constant speed portion of the road to the benefit of the unlimited speed portion of the road, resulting in a shorter trip overall.Future steps
Despite these improvements, compilation time can still be a pain, especially on mobile. This is mostly due to the fact that we're running a whole multi-million line codebase through the backend of a compiler to generate optimized code. Following this work, the next bottleneck during the compilation process is parsing, which matters for asm.js in particular, which source is plain text. Decoding WebAssembly is an order of magnitude faster though, and it can be made even faster. Moreover, we have even more load-time optimizations coming down the pipeline!
In the meanwhile, we keep on improving the WebAssembly backend. Keep track of our progress on bug 1188259!
Air Mozilla: Foundation Demos April 22 2016
Foundation Demos April 22 2016
Cameron Kaiser: 38.8.0 available
Don't bother me on my honeymoon.
David Burns: Selenium WebDriver and Firefox 46
As of Firefox 46, the extension based version FirefoxDriver will no longer work. This is because of the new Add-on policy that Mozilla is enforcing to try help protect end users from installers inserting add ons that are not what the user wants. This version is due for release next week.
This does not mean that your tests need to stop working entirely as there are options to keep them working.Marionette
Firstly, you can use Marionette, the Mozilla version of FirefoxDriver to drive Firefox. This has been in Firefox since about 24 as we, slowly working against Mozilla priorities, getting it up to Selenium level. Currently Marionette is passing ~85% of the Selenium test suite.
I have written up some documentation on how to use Marionette on MDN
I am not expecting everything to work but below is a quick list that I know doesn't work.
- No support for self-signed certificates
- No support for actions
- No support logging endpoint
- I am sure there are other things we don't remember
It would be great if we could raise bugs.Firefox 45 ESR
If you don't want to worry about Marionette, the other option is to downgrade to Firefox 45, preferably the ESR as it won't update to 46 and will update in about 6-9 months time to Firefox 52 when you will need to use Marionette.
Marionette will be turned on by default from Selenium 3, which is currently being worked on by the Selenium community. Ideally when Firefox 52 comes around you will just update to Selenium 3 and, fingers crossed, all works as planned.
– Bare et tidsspørsmål før Google og Mozilla vil kreve sikre websider - digi.no
– Bare et tidsspørsmål før Google og Mozilla vil kreve sikre websider
Den siste måneden har bruken av sikre forbindelser for overføring av norske websider fått ekstra mye oppmerksomhet, etter at NRK i slutten av mars fant ut at bare 422 av nærmere 10 000 offentlig eide nettsteder benytter HTTPS-protokollen (Hypertext ...
Google Nieuws
Support.Mozilla.Org: Get inspired! Reaching 100% SUMO Localization with the Czech team
Hey there, SUMO Nation! We're back to sharing more awesomeness from you, by you, for all the users. This time I have the pleasure of passing the screen over to Michal, our Czech locale leader. Michal and his trusted team of Czech l10ns reached all the possible KB milestones ever and are maintaining the Czech KB with grace and ease. Learn how they did it and get inspired!
The years 2015 and 2016 were a great success for our Czech localization team. We have grown in number, improved our suggestion & reviewing workflow, moved all projects to a single place (Pontoon) and finished all milestones for SUMO l10n – both for UI and articles. But there is much more that we gained when making all dashboards green than just "getting the work done".But who is the Czech team?
That's a very good question. The Czech team has not been involved much in the global SUMO life. So, if you do not know us, let me introduce everyone.
- First there is me ;) – Michal. I primarily focus on product localization, but "as a hobby" I am trying to help the SUMO heroes too.
- Our biggest hero and record breaker Jiří! If you open any Czech article, he worked on it directly, or reviewed and polished it to perfection. His counter recently exceeded the number of 730 articles updated.
- Miroslav is our long-time contributor and his updates and translations are considered approved in advance.
- Tomáš does irreplaceable work keeping Kitsune UI localization in great shape, and he started that in the old ages of Verbatim.
- I almost forgot our former leader Pavel. Many thanks to him for the outstanding work on both Kitsune UI l10n and the very first help articles as well.
- I also want to highlight the contributions of other brave volunteers. Their updates and translation even a few articles helped us conquer our dashboard.
Thank you, SUMO! So, the story… At the end of last year, Michał looked closely on the locale statuses and assigned the milestones we should smash this year. Our milestone was to localize all articles globally. That was something I didn't believe we can do easily. Even in February or March a new set of milestones appeared and the updated one for Czech reduced the "requirement" to localize 700 articles. Well, from that point in time, we cheated a little. ;)
As you may notice only 697 articles now. During the localization we noticed some articles were pretty outdated, containing links to pages that no longer exist, etc. So we've got in touch with the team, reported them and… they were magically archived. But do not think we are just bloody cheaters achieving milestones through asking for content deletion. No, we made almost 400 updates to all articles this year (50% of the total we've done in the whole 2015)!
The cooperation between us (localizers) and the SUMO team (Michał, Joni, Madalina, and others), I personally have found very beneficial. One one side, they put a huge effort in our support, introducing a new tool or explaining article content, as well as Firefox release notes and news. During the localization we read each article whole at least once or twice, so giving them feedback or suggesting updates is the smallest thing we can offer from our side.Amazing! But you mentioned you learned something new too?
True. We learned that communication is very important. In the team, we learned to share new ideas on terminology and also opened a discussion on the theme of screenshots, which are our next target. Did you notice, there is no dedicated way to mark that your localization revision is missing localized screenshots? Oh, it's quite simple in fact. We are adding a "[scr]" tag into the revision comment each time we have not had enough time to take localized screenshots, and only translated the article content. It's very easy to filter them out in the "Recent revisions" list, once you have time and mood for some "screenshotting".
Equally important is the communication outside the localization team. A lot of strings in the Kitsune UI would have been translated blindly without any consultation. Especially in the support forum areas, we haven't been using those pages ourselves until the beginning of April (yes, we did forum support, too!).
In the light of our success, we do not want to rest on the laurels. It's time to look forward – our screenshots are not perfect, and we are still dividing our efforts between articles and the Kitsune UI. I hope that Kitsune can support us in both areas a little more, e.g. there are no tools for finding the actual location of the strings, but that's something we can help fix. We are actually quite new to Kitsune. But as it's great to help people by bringing knowledge into your language, it's also quite important to start a discussion, even if we might think the questions we have are trivial. Just do not be afraid to say what you think is important for the project.
Karl Dubost: [worklog] Mabuigumi, the soul shifting
We had two powerful earthquakes in the south of Japan which have been registered both at 7, the maximum, on the Japanese earthquake scale. Previously only 3 other earthquakes had been that high in Japan.
Tune of the week: Boom! Shake the room.Webcompat Life
Progress this week:Today: 2016-04-22T10:25:49.831867 376 open issues ---------------------- needsinfo 4 needsdiagnosis 132 needscontact 27 contactready 95 sitewait 116 ----------------------
You are welcome to participate
(a selection of some of the bugs worked on this week).
- -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; and a missing width: 100vw; creates a scrolling issue for a menu. If you speak Chinese you can help us find the contact and reach out to them.
- One of the issues with Webcompat work is that people change life, job, assignments like it is happening on this Amazon bug, but after finding another person in charge, the dialog is still going on. And it's an healthy one, where constraints and needs are discussed on both sides. That's the best you could hope for when discussing about features and bugs.
- User-Agent override is never an easy choice. When deciding to do user agent override, aka faking the user agent so you receive the proper user experience from the Web site, what else will you break in the process?
- A selection which creates a jump in reading the next article on the NYTimes Web site.
- There is something to write about user agent sniffing, websites and longterm. Orbis is obviously a site which is not maintained anymore BUT working at least for some browsers. The strategies of user agent sniffing are still in place and then fail the browser even if it could work.
- There should be a special category for Daniel Holbert's Web compatibility bug reports… Holy cow. This is just butter on top of grilled bread. A barber shop
Need to increase my dev rate.Gecko Bugs
- Brian Grinstead [fixed] an issue which was created by the interaction of User Agent Switcher addons and developer tool.
In two tweets, Jen Simmons got pretty interesting answers:
- "web compatibility" is HTML content which is accessible via interconnected URLs independent of further technologies.
- another buzzword.
- Web compat means pages that work for everyone regardless of browser, screen size, network speed, language, physical ability.
- Something that can safely be loaded in a browser?
- more seriously, https://webcompat.com is a cool initiative. Wasn't aware until you asked :)
- Spiderman vs. Bizarro Spiderman
- Web Compatibility, but then in a slightly puzzled manner I wonder why they decided to shorten compatibility to compat.
- it means someone didn't finish their sentence
I like this series of answers. "Web Compat" as a buzzword is interesting. We usually use webcompat in between us in the team without realizing that it might be not understood outside of our circle. Taking notes.
The other answers are very spread apart into something which is more on does it work more than interoperable, aka focusing more on universality of the Web technologies. In the London agenda, we have an item opened for discussions on the meaning of Web Compatibility and what are the class of issues. It should be fun.Reading List
- RIP isindex. There might be more occurences of isindex in the tests cases of mozilla-central than in the full Web. I documented the history of isindex
- Document how to write tests on webcompat.com using test fixtures.
- ToWrite: rounding numbers in CSS for width
- ToWrite: Amazon prefetching resources with <object> for Firefox only.
Air Mozilla: Connected Devices Speakers and Open Forum
This is the Connected Devices Meetup where we will have 3 speakers presenting their slides or demos and answering questions.
David Lawrence: Happy BMO Push Day!
the following changes have been pushed to bugzilla.mozilla.org:
- [1264207] add support for the hellosplat tracker to 'see also'
- [1195736] intermittent internal error: "file error – nav_link: not found" (also manifests as fields_lhs: not found)
- [1265432] backport upstream bug 1263923 to bmo/4.2 – X-Bugzilla-Who header is not set for flag mails
- [1266117] I have found a bug in the section 2.6.1 in the user guide(2.6) of BMO documentation. The bug identified is a grammatical error committed in one of the sentences.
- [1239838] Don't see a way to redirect a needinfo request (in Experimental UI)
- [1266167] clickjacking is possible on "view all" and "details" attachment pages
discuss these changes on mozilla.tools.bmo.
Firefox: Mozilla und Canonical verlängern Ubuntu-Partnerschaft - soeren-hentzschel.at
Firefox: Mozilla und Canonical verlängern Ubuntu-Partnerschaft
Mozilla und Canonical haben heute die Verlängerung ihrer Partnerschaft angekündigt. Damit wird Firefox auch in Zukunft der Standard-Browser von Ubuntu sein. Außerdem wird Mozilla ab diesem Jahr Firefox-Versionen im neuen Snap-Format ausliefern.
en meer »
Support.Mozilla.Org: What's Up with SUMO – 21st April
Hello, SUMO Nation!
Let's get the big things out of the way – we met last week in Berlin to talk about where we are and what's ahead of us. While you will see changes and updates appearing here and there around SUMO, the most crucial result is the start of a discussion about the future of our platform – a discussion about the technical future of SUMO. We need your feedback about it as soon as possible. Read more details here – and tell us what you think.
This is just the beginning of a discussion about one aspect of sumo, so please – don't panic and remember: we are not going away, no content will be lost (but we may be archiving some obsolete stuff), no user will be left behind, and (on a less serious note) no chickens will have to cross the road – we swear!
Now, let's get to the updates…Welcome, new contributors!
- Swarnava, for being his usual awesome self ;-)
- The forum supporters who helped users out for the last week.
- The writers of all languages who worked on the KB for the last week.
We salute you!Don't forget that if you are new to SUMO and someone helped you get started in a nice way you can nominate them for the Buddy of the Month! Most recent SUMO Community meeting
- You can read the notes here and see the video on our YouTube channel and at AirMozilla.
- …is happening on WEDNESDAY the 27th of April – join us!
- Reminder: if you want to add a discussion topic to the upcoming meeting agenda:
- Start a thread in the Community Forums, so that everyone in the community can see what will be discussed and voice their opinion here before Wednesday (this will make it easier to have an efficient meeting).
- Please do so as soon as you can before the meeting, so that people have time to read, think, and reply (and also add it to the agenda).
- If you can, please attend the meeting in person (or via IRC), so we can follow up on your discussion topic during the meeting with your feedback.
- Once again – the most important news of the week (month?) – WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK.
- The second most important update… at least today ;-) We are looking for more contributors to our blog. Do you write on the web about open source, communities, SUMO, Mozilla… and more? Do let us know!
- Want to know what's going on with the Admins? Check this thread in the forum.
- Ongoing reminder: if you think you can benefit from getting a second-hand device to help you with contributing to SUMO, you know where to find us.
- Madalina is plotting and planning for Sprinklr's future and looking at other tools that could support our valiant Army of Awesome!
- Ongoing reminder: We have a training out there for all those interested in Social Support – talk to Madalina or Costenslayer on #AoA (IRC) for more information.
- We have an ongoing QuickTime discussion, since Apple is not longer providing updates to the QuickTime Player, and has been blocked for Windows Machines. Huge thanks to everyone who jumped in to help out with this hot potato!
- Please review the discussion about the upcoming 46 release – if you notice any major issues please let us know on that thread.
- Remember, if you're new to the support forum, come over and say hi!
- Hackathons everywhere! Well, at least in Stockholm, Sweden (this Friday) and Prague, Czech Republic (next Friday). Contact information in the meeting notes!
- A guest post all about a certain group of our legendary l10ns coming your way – it will be a great read, I guarantee!
- An update post about SUMO l10n coming over the weekend, because there ain't no rest for the wicked.
- for Desktop
…and that's it for today! We hope you enjoyed the update and will stick around for more news this (and next) week. We are looking forward to seeing you all around SUMO – KEEP ROCKING THE HELPFUL WEB!
Allen Wirfs-Brock: Slide Bite: Early Era Products
The chaotic early days of a new computing era is an extended period of product innovation and experimentation. But both the form and function of new products are still strongly influenced by the norms and transitional technologies of the waning era. New technologies are applied to new problems but often those new technologies are not yet mature enough to support early expectations. The optimal form-factors, conceptual metaphors, and usage idioms of the new era have yet to be fully explored and solidified. Looking back from the latter stages of a computing era, early era products appear crude and naive.
This is a great time to be a product innovator or an enthusiastic early adopter. But don't get too comfortable with the present. These are still the early days of the Ambient Computing Era and the big changes are likely still to come.
Mozilla WebDev Community: Beer and Tell – April 2016
Once a month, web developers from across the Mozilla Project get together to talk about our side projects and drink, an occurrence we like to call "Beer and Tell".
There's a wiki page available with a list of the presenters, as well as links to their presentation materials. There's also a recording available courtesy of Air Mozilla.emceeaich: Memory Landscapes
First up was emceeaich, who shared Memory Landscapes, a visual memoir of the life and career of artist and photographer Laurie Toby Edison. The project is presented as a non-linear collection of photographs, in contrast to the traditionally linear format of memoirs. The feature that emceeaich demoed was "Going to Brooklyn", which gives any link a 1/5 chance of showing shadow pictures briefly before moving on to the linked photo.lorchard: DIY Keyboard Prototype
Next was lorchard, who talked about the process of making a DIY keyboard using web-based tools. He used keyboard-layout-editor.com to generate a layout serialized in JSON, and then used Plate & Case Builder to generate a CAD file for use with a laser cutter.
A flickr album is available with photos of the process.lorchard: Jupyter Notebooks in Space
lorchard also shared eve-market-fun, a Node.js-based service that pulls data from the EVE Online API and pre-digests useful information about it. He then uses a Jupyter notebook to pull data from the API and analyze it to guide his market activities in the game. Neat!Pomax: React Circle-Tree Visualizer
Pomax was up next with a new React component: react-circletree! It depicts a tree structure using segmented concentric circles. The component is very configurable and can by styled with CSS as it is generated via SVG. While built as a side-project, the component can be seen in use on the Web Literacy Framework website.Pomax: HTML5 Mahjong
Also presented by Pomax was an HTML5 multiplayer Mahjong game. It allows four players to play the classic Chinese game online by using socket.io and a Node.js server to connect the players. The frontend is built using React and Webpack.groovecoder and John Dungan: Codesy
Last up was groovecoder and John Dungan, who shared codesy, an open-source startup addressing the problem of compensation for fixing bugs in open-source software. They provide a browser extension that allows users to bid on bugs as well as name their price for fixing a bug. Users may then provide proof that they fixed a bug, and once it is approved by the bidders, they receive a payout.
If you're interested in attending the next Beer and Tell, sign up for the email@example.com mailing list. An email is sent out a week beforehand with connection details. You could even add yourself to the wiki and show off your side-project!
See you next month!
Air Mozilla: Meetup Open Transport #8
Les meetup Open Transport ce sont des échanges réguliers autour des initiatives ouvertes et collaboratives dans le secteur de la mobilité (projets à base d'open...
Firefox is the default browser for Linux users on Ubuntu, new snap format coming soon
At Mozilla, we strive to offer users a great experience based on transparency, choice and trust, and to make Firefox available across many platforms, devices and operating systems. Today, Mozilla and Canonical are renewing their partnership to make Firefox the default browser for Ubuntu users. We are proud to have been a partner of choice for Ubuntu for over a decade. Canonical and Mozilla share a similar heritage as open-source and community-supported organizations.
Ubuntu version 16.04 will include the introduction of the snap infrastructure. With the snap format, we will be able to continually optimize Firefox on Ubuntu. Like our rapid engineering release cycle, snap format will allow us to provide Linux users the most up-to-date features, in particular security patches, even after major Operating System ship dates.
Previously, a static version of Firefox would ship with each new Operating System version for the lifecycle of that OS. With the snap format, new features can be released to users of older OS versions too. Later this year, we will offer Firefox in snap format making it easier to push the browser directly to users rather than relying on an intermediary to accept updates before they reach users.
Mike Conley: The Joy of Coding (Ep. 11): Cleaning up the View Source Patch
For this episode, Richard Milewski and I figured out the syncing issue I'd been having in Episode 9, so I had my head floating in the bottom right corner while I hacked. Now you can see what I do with my face while hacking, if that's a thing you had been interested in.
I've also started mirroring the episodes to YouTube, if YouTube is your choice platform for video consumption.
So, like last week, I was under a bit of time pressure because of a meeting scheduled for 2:30PM (actually the meeting I was supposed to have the week before – it just got postponed), so that gave me 1.5 hours to move forward with the View Source work we'd started back in Episode 8.
I started the episode by explaining that the cache key stuff we'd figured out in Episode 9 was really important, and that a bug had been filed by the Necko team to get the issue fixed. At the time of the video, there was a patch up for review in that bug, and when we applied it, we were able to retrieve source code out of the network cache after POST requests! Success!
Now that we had verified that our technique was going to work, I spent the rest of the episode cleaning up the patches we'd written. I started by doing a brief self-code-review to smoke out any glaring problems, and then started to fix those problems.
We got a good chunk of the way before I had to cut off the camera.
I know back when I started working on this particular bug, I had said that I wanted to take you through right to the end on camera – but the truth of the matter is, the priority of the bug went up, and I was moving too slowly on it, since I was restricting myself to a few hours on Wednesdays. So unfortunately, after my meeting, I went back to hacking on the bug off-camera, and yesterday I put up a patch for review. Here's the review request, if you're interested in seeing where I got to!
I felt good about the continuity experiment, and I think I'll try it again for the next few episodes – but I think I'll choose a lower-priority bug; that way, I think it's more likely that I can keep the work contained within the episodes.
How did you feel about the continuity between episodes? Did it help to engage you, or did it not matter? I'd love to hear your comments!
Bug 1025146 – [e10s] Never load the source off of the network when viewing source – Notes
Meeting Notes: Thunderbird: 2015-04-21
Thunderbird meeting notes 2015-04-21. NOON PT (Pacific). Check https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/StatusMeetings for meeting time conversion, previous meeting notes and call-in detailsAttendees
ATTENDEES – put your nick 1. below 2. in comments unless explicit under round table 3. top right of etherpad next to your color
mkmelin, rolandt, pegasus, makemyday jorgk, rkent, gneandr, aceman, merike, Paenglab, wsmwkAction items from last meetings
- (rkent, Fallen) AMO addon compat: TheOne said that this late it is probably not worth doing at all. WIth so many other things for me to do, that sounds like a plan.
- glandium, for fixing the various packager bugs that will help package Lightning (nominated by Fallen, who won't be at the meeting)
Critical bugs. Leave these here until they're confirmed fixed. If confirmed, then remove.
- (rkent) I am enormously frustrated by the inability to get two critical features landed in tb 38: OAuth and Lightning integration. Can we please give this very high priority?
- OAuth integration: partial landing for beta 2, really REALLY critical that we get this finished.
- In general, the tracking-tb38 flag shows what are critical issues. In the next week or so, that list will be culled to only include true blockers for the Thunderbird 38 release. There will still be many.
- I don't think we have a reasonable chance of shipping a quality release on May 12. More realistic is June 2.
- We need to decide on how to do release branching. I am uncertain whether Lightning integration requires this or not.
- Auto-complete improvements – some could go into esr31 (bug 1042561 included in TB38)
- Lightning integration (below) really REALLY critical that we get this finished.
- maildir UI: nothing more to do for UI, still want to land a patch for letting IMAP set this.
- gloda IM search regressions: mostly fixed, some db cleanup necessary for users of TB33+ that nhnt11 will hopefully have ready to land soon.
- aleth landed a fix to stop duplicated entries from appearing, nhnt11 will take care of the cleaning up the databases of Aurora/Beta/Daily users this weekend and keep us updated
- bug 1140884, might need late-l10n
removing from critical list/fixed:
- ldap crash bug 1063829: a patch in beta 37, beta results are unclear – not seen in 38
- bug 1064230 crashes during LDAP search made worse by Search All Addressbooks bug 170270, needs tracking 38+ and review?rkent/jcranmer – not seen in 38
- everyone should probably skim http://mzl.la/1DaLo0t version 31-38 regressions for items they can help fix or direct to the right people
- Past
- 31.6.0 shipped
- 38.0b1 shipped 2015-04-03
- 38.0b2 shipped 2015-04-20
- Upcoming
- 38.0b3 (when?)
See https://calendar.etherpad.mozilla.org/thunderbird-integration
- As underpass has pointed out repeatedly (thanks for your patience!) , we need to rewrite / heavily modify the lightning articles on support.mozilla.org. let me know irc: rolandtanglao on #tb-support-crew or rtanglao AT mozilla.com OR simply start editing the articles
Unfortunately not much progress because I was away. I hope to have the packaging bits done until the weekend. Glandium did a great job on the packager.py changes, hence I nominated him for Friends of the Tree. (fallen)
MakeMyDay should comment on the opt-out dialog, I think we should get it landed asap. bug 1130852 – Opt-Out dialog had some discussion on prefsRound Table wsmwk
- managed shipping of 31.6.0, 38.0b1, 38.0b2
- Core: Editor and font problems (three patches have review+ or have landed, one ongoing)
- bug 756984, bug 1141017, bug 1140105, bug 1154791
- Thunderbird: Font problems during compose, Mime problem, correspondents column
- bug 1139524, bug 1141446, bug 1148330, bug 1152706
- We have the beginnings of a business development group (rkent, wsmwk, magnus) that after signing NDAs will be given access to Thunderbird business documentation.
- bug 1134986 autocomplete bug investigated and landed on trunk +++
- still no mention at https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/extra-folder-columns that the addon should be disabled in TB38. Can anybody arrange for that? A comment and marking it incompatible in its manifest.
— PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR NICK with your bullet item —
- What happened to the Avocet branding? (Jorg K)
- won't be persued
- Info about the meeting with Mitchell Baker on 20th March 2015, funding issues (Jorg K)
- http://mzl.la/1O9khi4 can we get hiro's bugs reassigned so the patches contained can get landed, and not lost? (wsmwk)
- It would be great if some jetpack add-on support were available in thunderbird to share functionality with firefox and fennec. See also bug 1100644. No useful jetpack add-ons seem to exist for thunderbird (earlybird would be fine to use jpm over cfx). Are there any jetpack add-ons available to prove me wrong?
(pegasus) Is it worth looking at going to a 6-week release schedule to avoid the conundrum with getting not-quite-ready features in vs delaying?Support team
- Reminder: Roland is leaving Thunderbird May 12, 2015 after the release of Thunderbird 38: working on Thunderbird 38 plan and finally kickstarting Thunderbird User Success Council
- looking for 3 people: English KB Article Editor, L10N Coordinator and Forum Lead. Is that you we're looking for? If so email rtanglao AT mozilla.com or ping :rolandtanglao in #sumo or #tb-support-crew
- Note – meeting notes must be copied from etherpad to wiki before 5AM CET next day so that they will go public in the meeting notes blog.
- wsmwk to pat glandium
- wsmwk to email hiro's bug list to tb-planning
- rkent to review tracking list
Rumbling Edge - Thunderbird: 2015-04-20 Calendar builds
Common (excluding Website bugs)-specific: (6)
- Fixed: 1003196 – Add icons to more imip bar buttons
- Fixed: 1137673 – extra divider in the options menu of new task dialog
- Fixed: 1146500 – Wrong first occurrence for monthly recurrence with BYDAY and BYMONTHDAY
- Fixed: 1150707 – Make use of tags for running only icaljs/libcal tests
- Fixed: 1150882 – Lightning incorrectly unified after bug 1143163
- Fixed: 1151404 – Nightly Windows x64 lightning hits 404 when updating
Sunbird will no longer be actively developed by the Calendar team.
Official Linux (i686), Official Linux (x86_64)
Rumbling Edge - Thunderbird: 2015-04-20 Thunderbird comm-central builds
Thunderbird-specific: (27)
- Fixed: 768480 – Mac OSX TB 13 crashes in nsMsgDBFolder::CreateFileForDB when going online. Caused by folder subscribed on server that no longer exists?
- Fixed: 849540 – Log in to Gmail (IMAP/SMTP) using OAuth in backend
- Fixed: 939462 – Feature to count and show number of unread e-mails in subfolders should be optional. (because enumeration is slow)
- Fixed: 1054308 – Investigate switching Thunderbird comm-central MozMill tests to mozharness
- Fixed: 1118263 – C-C TB: JavaScript 1.6's for-each-in loops are deprecated in accountprovisioner and about-support
- Fixed: 1130852 – Add opt-out notification for calendar integration
- Fixed: 1134234 – resource://app/modules/gloda/mimemsg.js should be resource:///modules/gloda/mimemsg.js in /mail/test/mozmill/shared-modules/test-message-helpers.js
- Fixed: 1134986 – Address autocomplete sorting wrong – appears to ignore recent use (popularityindex) information in 31.4.0+
- Fixed: 1138478 – 'Write' toolbar button disabled/greyed out after opening the menus in the Saved Files tab
- Fixed: 1139524 – Font indicator doesn't update when cursor is placed in text with this font
- Fixed: 1140720 – Error reading font prefs in the Slovenian locale
- Fixed: 1145970 – Port Bug 1005105 to TB [Remove noise from tab textures]
- Fixed: 1145974 – Move more styles to shared addressbook.css
- Fixed: 1147006 – TB shows instructions with [File] – [Offline] – [Synchronize] instead of [Download/Sync Now]
- Fixed: 1147526 – Port Bug 1147311: migrateUI() should migrate font.language.group to a supported value
- Fixed: 1148369 – "invalid 'in' operand colState" when switching folders
- Fixed: 1148503 – TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | toolkit/components/telemetry/tests/unit/test_TelemetryPing.js | xpcshell return code: 0
- Fixed: 1149275 – Ensure newly opened conversations get focused
- Fixed: 1150051 – C-C TB: EXCEPTION: formatted size is not numeric: 'Read'
- Fixed: 1150073 – C-C TB: Exception: Found visible column 'correspondentCol' but was expecting 'recipientCol'!
- Fixed: 1151223 – Reorder mail's package-manifest.in to minimize differences to browser's version
- Fixed: 1152045 – Email address missing from "From" field on emails sent through Thunderbird 38 if the identityName pref was set
- Fixed: 1152852 – Notification sound for highlights in chats not played if chat tab is selected, even when Thunderbird is not the currently active/focused application (in background)
- Fixed: 1153511 – TEST-UNEXPECTED_FAIL | check-sync-dirs.py | build file copies are not in sync: differing file: ./win32/mozconfig.vs2013-win64
- Fixed: 1153551 – Priority button : description missing
- Fixed: 1154799 – "this._browser.messageManager is undefined" error just by starting Thunderbird
- Fixed: 1156049 – Port 'Bug 1155476 – Update sccache to 155c926' to fix check-sync-dirs.py failure.
MailNews Core-specific: (30)
- Fixed: 306035 – mail server appended to usernames with "@" (Password dialog for IMAP says <alias>@<domain>@<mailserver> instead of <alias>@<domain> on(at/…) <mailserver>)
- Fixed: 662907 – web site from RSS feed not rendered correctly (due to noscript tags)
- Fixed: 810495 – Make the classes which use the XPCOM nsISupports implementation macros final, to avoid the warning about deleting using a pointer to a base class with virtual functions and no virtual dtor
- Fixed: 1123124 – Remove use of expression closures in mailnews/
- Fixed: 1126607 – Kill the LDAP build system
- Fixed: 1132218 – Update comm-central for PLDHashTable changes in bug 1131901
- Fixed: 1139167 – Some birthdays are off by one day in Thunderbird's addressbook
- Fixed: 1139965 – Implement function to export addressbook in vCard format
- Fixed: 1140652 – deduplicate some JS code writing out a simple string to a file in profile
- Fixed: 1140884 – An error occurred while sending mail garbled
- Fixed: 1141735 – unaligned labels in the LDAP server Advanced properties tab
- Fixed: 1144621 – mimemsg.cpp might leak memory in some instances
- Fixed: 1144719 – Allow the user to decide whether or not to use libnotify for new-mail alerts on Linux
- Fixed: 1148887 – Message string for SMTP server connection error is incorrect. File: composeMsgs.properties, key: smtpSendRefused
- Fixed: 1148888 – Message string for SMTP server connection error is incorrect. File: composeMsgs.properties, key: smtpAuthNotSupported
- Fixed: 1148957 – Port bug 1148463 by backing out bug 1144128: temporarily disable new performance tools for Aurora uplift
- Fixed: 1149247 – remove deprecated for-each-in loops in the account manager and account wizard
- Fixed: 1150176 – Remove nsMemory::Alloc/Free/Realloc from c-c following their removal in bug 1134920
- Fixed: 1150967 – Port Bug 1147839 to comm-central – Fix building installer on mingw by only including helper.exe if mknsisu is used
- Fixed: 1150981 – Port Bug 674779 to comm-central – Add per-compartment CPU accounting
- Fixed: 1151002 – Port Bug 1120308 to comm-central – [Presentation WebAPI] control protocol establishment and offer-answer exchange
- Fixed: 1151181 – uninitialized error string in mailnews/extensions/mdn/src/nsMsgMdnGenerator.cpp
- Fixed: 1152287 – TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | crypto | Failed to find the appropraite data_path
- Fixed: 1153187 – Build process is broken while reticulating splines "Variable SHARED_LIBRARY_LIBS" involved.
- Fixed: 1153543 – when adding a new identity, the smtp server menulist is collapsed with no default item selected
- Fixed: 1153557 – do away with preprocessing in am-identity-edit.js due to identity.autocompleteToMyDomain
- Fixed: 1154468 – unused function getServerIdAndPageIdFromTree in am-identity-edit.xul
- Fixed: 1155951 – Fix a non-array delete for scalars
- Fixed: 1155953 – Remove Structurally dead code in nsNNTPProtocol.cpp
- Fixed: 1155955 – remove a self assignment in nsImapUtils.cpp
Official Windows, Official Windows installer
Official Linux (i686), Official Linux (x86_64)


text:
ISIS video shows 4-yr-old UK boy blowing car with prisoners
In the latest video, the child dressed in ISIS's trademark camouflage clothing and a black headband, is apparently shown with his hand on the detonator.
Shots fired in US Capitol complex; gunman caught
There was confusion in early accounts about what occurred but police said a suspect was take...
'Old age' review: An appropriate blend of sincerity and opportunism.
Kinsley is intent on being wryly realistic about coping with illness and...
How and where to sell your old stuff online
In an age where people want to change their cars, furniture and sundry household appliances every other year, it makes sense to sell what you want to dispose online.
How and where to sell your old stuff online
In an age where people want to change their cars, furniture and sundry household appliances every other year, it makes sense to sell what you want to dispose online.
New Myanmar government begins releasing political prisoners
The releases were part of a general amnesty that also covered other convicts ahead of Myanmar's traditional New Year festival.
Old land scar not healed, Singur limps to elections
In Bengal, Singur is not just another constituency, it is a dream that has gone wrong; a place that promised so much, but got nothing.
Sheena Bora murder case: Court allows CBI to quiz Indrani Mukerjea in prison
A special court today granted permission to CBI to question Indrani Mukerjea, prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, in Byculla women's prison here.
How Apple iPhone sales in India defy an old stereotype
iPhone sales across the world, including China, have dropped significantly — except in India, where "extremely price conscious" customers are still panting for the product.
How Apple iPhone sales in India defy an old stereotype
iPhone sales across the world, including China, have dropped significantly - except in India, where "extremely price conscious" customers are panting for product.
Sanjay Dutt to Indrani Mukerjea:You'll be surprised to know what prison did to these hot shots
In the can, Bhujbal cannot hide his age with hair-dye, & Indrani has turned into Ms Knackerjea.
Micromax Canvas 6 Pro review: Revamped features but many old issues
Micromax has done well to deliver useful software features and high-end specifications in a budget.
Old classmates, Pinarayi Vijayan and Mambaram Divakaran, battle it out in Dharmadom
CPI(M) Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, a man of few words, is crossing swords with Divakaran who hails from the same constituency in North Kerala.
Old Delhi delicacies at 'The Grand Trunk Culinary Journey' for citadel foodies
A tasting event in Delhi which recreated an array of old Mughlai & Indian specialties & snacks for the capital's food aficionados.
Immigrants, old and new, remain at the core of Assam politics
From the vast Brahmaputra river off Guwahati, Lachit Borphukan lunges forward, scimitar drawn and hand pointed in exhortation to his soldiers beside him.
White House lockdown: US Capitol Police officer shot at, gunman detained
The US Capitol was on lockdown after shots were apparently fired in the Capitol Visitors Center, police said, but local media said the gunman was injured and taken into custody.
Sell in May and go away! Will old adage haunt Dalal Street this year?
This old adage that cautions investors to sell stocks in May, hold cash and come back to the market around November seems to be losing its relevance.
Auto companies consider discounts to back government's plan to retire old vehicles
The 'voluntary vehicle modernization scheme' is being viewed as a move that will enable the entry of cleaner vehicles, while phasing out the ones that are not environmentally friendly.
Iraq forces free prisoners from underground IS jail: Officials
Iraqi forces freed a large number of prisoners from an underground Islamic State group jail during a battle to retake a western town from the jihadists.
Bengaluru sizzles, breaks 85-year old record for April
It sees a huge release of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere, which can disrupt weather patterns around the world.
'Automatic de-registration' of 15-year-old vehicles on cards
In the case of commercial vehicles, getting fitness certificate renewed is mandatory every year for all vehicles that are over two years old.
Was 31-year-old Christine Bredo the X-factor in Agusta deal?
The sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate are now busy piecing together details of Spliid's visits to India between 2010 and 2013, the officials said.
West Bengal's 103-year-old Asgar Ali casts his vote for first time in life
For the last several decades 103-year-old Asgar Ali had been waiting patiently for this moment in his life when his voice is heard in the formation of a government.
In Pics: Hollywood celebs look more old-school than sci-fi at Met Gala
Hollywood stars, music moguls and fashion models strutted tech-inspired glam at the event.
Facebook rewards $10,000 to 10-year-old for discovering flaw in Instagram
Facebook rewards $10,000 to 10-year-old for discovering flaw in Instagram
Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman makes bold challenges to kingdom's old ways
Whether the 31-year-old son of King Salman will achieve his goal of modernising the kingdom's economy is the subject of animated debate on social media, in office buildings and at coffee shops here.
Soaring old eco stocks give HDFC funds a big boost
HDFC Top 200, which manages Rs 11,718 crore, is up 17.3%, the top gainer in the large-cap fund category.
Facebook rewards $10,000 to 10-year-old for discovering flaw in Instagram
Facebook has paid $10,000 to a 10-year-old boy for spotting a bug in Instagram. The boy is named Jani from Finland.
BSNL customers can now retrieve 30 year old deleted mails
BSNL today said its customers using its hosting and email services will soon have a facility to retrieve their mails deleted as long as 30 years ago.
Biharsharif prison raided amid reports of Rajballabh Yadav hosting lunch for jailmates
The Patna district administration conducted a raid at the Biharsharif prison after reports of RJD MLA Rajballabh Yadav, who is accused in a rape case, was hosting lunch for his jail-mates.
Pakistan hands 87 freed prisoners to India
The Indian nationals were freed from the Landhi Jail in Karachi yesterday. They arrived Lahore by a train today morning.
34% of 80-year-olds in villages and 27% in cities confined to homes
The ability to get around is an important indicator of the physical condition and overall health of older persons.
94-year-old former SS Auschwitz guard apologizes for the Nazi Holocaust
As he spoke, Auschwitz survivor Leon Schwarzbaum watched on with a steely face, afterward saying he was happy Hanning apologized but that it wasn't enough.
25-year-old provides security to UPI from cyber threats
Saket Modi's Lucideus Tech has been hired to keep hackers off the tech that allows easier transfer of money between bank account using smartphones.
Emaar to separate from MGF, ending decade-old JV
Dubai-based Emaar Properties PJSC is set to terminate its decade-old joint venture with Indian partner MGF Development Ltd, two people familiar with the development told ET.
BJP MP Radadiya justifies kicking an old man
A video purportedly showing BJP MP from Porbandar Vitthal Radadiya kicking an elderly man at a religious function has gone viral on social media.
Jewellers may end month-old strike in 'next few days'
After keeping their shutters down for almost six weeks, a large section of jewellers and bullion traders across the country reopened their shops today.
Pentagon to submit plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo prison
Republicans and some Democrats in Congress largely oppose proposals to move any of the prisoners to the United States.
Patna declared dry but old tradition of imbibing by Ganga in memory
Having a glass of Blue Riband Gin with Duke soda and lime, by the Ganga flowing by in December is what Patna memories are made of.
DFJ's three-year old quest ends, sells nearly entire India portfolio to NewQuest Capital Partners
Experts said such secondary sales are bound to increase as venture capital and private equity firms approaching ends of their typical 7-10-year investment cycles scramble to sell holdings.
DGCA mulls easing aircraft import norms; import of planes up to 18 years old may be allowed
The watchdog has proposed that pressurised aircraft that are to be imported should not have "completed 18 years of age or 50 per cent of operating cycle".
The bridge connecting old Bengaluru with the new
The state guesthouse was initially the residence of Mysuru Dewan Seshadri Iyer.
'Prison Break' actor Wentworth Miller talks about his suicidal depression in response to body-shaming Facebook meme
The actor also said he was "ashamed and in pain" at the time, and suffered in silence.
Your old car may not be eligible for CNG conversion
The catch here is that only BS-III and BS-IV compliant vehicles are now eligible for conversion.
9-year-old reporter defends homicide coverage after backlash
A 9-year-old reporter who wrote about a suspected murder in her small Pennsylvania town is defending herself after some locals lashed out about a young girl covering violent crimes and said she should be playing with dolls.
55-year-old grandmother is oldest woman to give birth to triplets
Sharon Cutts, a nurse, and her boyfriend Stuart Reyonlds, a factory worker, welcomed triplets Mason, Ryan and Lily into their family on 21 March.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
In this week's DJ Sessions, we spoke with KCRW's Raul Campos about "southern fried soul" from Texas and a dance duo from Los Angeles.
A day after House lawmakers voted for delays in implementing health care reform, President Obama today made a push for his Affordable Care Act, claiming that consumers will see rebates averaging around $100 from health insurance companies under the ACA.
House lawmakers voted largely on party lines yesterday to delay when individuals must have health insurance.
They also affirmed an Obama administration decision to delay when larger employers must offer health coverage to their workers.
Throughout the week, Here & Now is looking at the impact a raise in the minimum wage would have on states, the federal government and workers.


text:
Photo of Obama Playing With Tiny Spider-Man Charms the Web
Fine. Time magazine was right -- Barack Obama is the Person of the Year. We can't argue with this photo, which was taken back in October.
Fine. Time magazine was right -- Barack Obama is the Person of the Year. We can't argue with this photo, which was taken back in October.
Attention everyone: we now officially have T-minus eight days until Christmas, and preparation time is running out faster than we can shove holiday cookies in our mouths. We still have to buy last-minute presents, dig out those stockings from the back of our closets and make time for that awful office party.
There is nothing anyone can do to take away the pain the community of Newtown, Connecticut is going through right now. But a charity group from Illinois is using man's best friend to provide a little comfort to those who are mourning the loss of life from last Friday's mass school shooting.
There's something about the holidays that puts a lot of us here at TheFW into extra crafty moods. Maybe it's all those awesome Etsy decorations we so wish we could copy or just the fact we're feeling particularly festive this time of year. Either way, trying to get all creatively crafty is just plain old fun.
If there's one thing you need to know about us here at TheFW, it's that we love to find any excuse to dress up animals. This is especially true during the holiday season, because festive puppies and cats are like, the best things ever.
'Miracle On 34th Street' was the first big screen remake of the 1947 Christmas classic of the same name.
Yesterday's 12-12-12 benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy relief raised over $30 million dollars, but it wasn't all good. We're still cringing for Bobby Moynihan's awkward appearance as his 'SNL' character "Drunk Uncle," for example.
64 percent of homeowners say they are going to put up Christmas decorations this holiday season. Of course "decorations" can be anything from a simple candle in the window to a blinding and all-encompassing collection of flashing lights.
We've personally never encountered a look-alike, but it would have to be pretty unsettling. Fortunately, the subjects of Montreal photographer Francois Brunelle's pictures don't seem to mind that much, as they were willing to have their picture taken with their (non-biological) twin.
Roughly 800 people put on Santa costumes for the Fourth Annual Michendorf Santa Run in Michendorf, Germany. The race is sponsored by Laufclub Michendorf (which translated means Michendorf Running Club, imagine that) and is 10 kilometers long. You can't quite tell from these pictures, but it actually began snowing pretty hard during the race, which probably makes these the most Christmas-y photos ever. Enjoy!


text:
Grimsby Town Fixtures
Thu 5 May
National League
- Grimsby V Braintree
Sun 8 May
National League
- Braintree V Grimsby
Sun 22 May
The FA Trophy
- Halifax V Grimsby
Please note: All times UK. Fixtures are subject to change. The BBC is not responsible for any changes that may be made.


text:
Related quotes
" Some .. see things that are ... and ask why ? I Dream things that never were ... and ask Why Not ! "
"I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition."
"His fastball is still there, but that doesn't mean he's not fatigued. He's still a very important part of our bullpen."
"I'm sure both teams will be a little bit more fatigued than normal, and as a result will have to rely on energy and enthusiasm and those kind of things, which when you're at home is a little bit easier. We've got to make sure that we're not only extremely prepared, but that our mindset and our energy level is set at high so we can give ourselves a chance to be in the game and be as competitive as we need to be."
"I think a lot of guys are a little bit fatigued but I didn't think the intensity was there and overall we didn't have the work ethic that we need,"


text:
Aguirre sues governor over records
Corruption rife between Brown, attorney general, utilities commission?
Don Bauder 8:30 a.m., May 6
Posted October 22, 2013
So why don't employers try harder to keep the employees they have?
Fact No. 1: 19 million American workers expect to change jobs in the next year. That's 13.3 percent of the country's workforce. Fact No. 2: The average wage of U.S. workers was $42,979 per year, ...
Don Bauder 8:30 a.m., May 6
Matt Potter 6:30 p.m., May 5
Garrett Harris 4 p.m., May 5
Don Bauder 2:30 p.m., May 5
Scott Marks 1 p.m., May 5
Delinda Lombardo 11:30 a.m., May 5
Barbara Zaragoza 9:30 a.m., May 5
© 2016 San Diego Reader. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission.
Each newsletter subscription means another chance to win!Close


text:
Dion Adrian Lambert
Position: DB
Height: 6-0 Weight: 190 lbs.
Born: February 12, 1969 in Lakeview Terrace, CA
High School: John F. Kennedy
College: UCLA (school history)
Drafted by the New England Patriots in the 4th round (90th overall) of the 1992 NFL Draft.
Weighted Career AV (100-95-...): 4 (9949th overall since 1950)
Output includes all games from 1920 to 2015.


text:
Nilay Patel for The Verge:
But then I look at the Apple Watch and it's so obviously underpowered. We can sit around and argue about whether speeds and feeds matter, but the grand ambition of the Apple Watch is to be a full-fledged computer on your wrist, and right now it's a very slow computer. If Apple believes the Watch is indeed destined to become that computer, it needs to radically increase the raw power of the Watch's processor, while maintaining its just-almost-acceptable battery life.
No disagreement from me. I had hoped things would get noticeably better with WatchOS 2.0 and native apps, but not really. In fact, Apple's own apps can be annoyingly slow. I'm reminded of this every day when I launch the exercise mode. It's laggy and not very responsive to get going and close out. This is a major core feature and should perform better, in my opinion. Heck, even unlocking the watch first thing in the morning is a less than good user experience.
Still, it's a first generation device. With everything there are design tradeoffs with size and battery life that directly affect horsepower. Generally I think these tradeoffs get much better the second time around.
India blocks cheaper refurbished Apple products
People have been tossing around peak iPhone as smartphones ownership saturate global markets. Global expansion has been a major factor in Apple's iPhone growth over the years. That growth gets harder when upgrades increasingly drives sales vs feature phone conversion. India is largely untapped by Apple, but India's protectionist policies are block Apple's efforts there.
Apple's rivals have mounted a public campaign against the effort, arguing that such a move would trigger a flood of used electronics while defeating the government's Make-in-India program to encourage local manufacturing.
The decision is a setback for Apple, which has just 2 percent of Indian phone shipments but needs to tap new markets as global iPhone sales plateau. The U.S. company is also seeking permission to open its first Indian retail stores, key to driving its brand in a market dominated by local vendors. That decision is pending.
Report: Your phone's biggest vulnerability is your fingerprint
Russell Brandom for The Verge:
..fingerprints may become one more form of easily leaked data, alongside passwords, credit cards, and social security numbers. We've already seen it happen when the OPM breach compromised the fingerprints of 14 million federal workers. That same credential theft can happen at a smaller scale, as criminals pull fingerprints off furniture or even from high-resolution photos. For a determined attacker, a fingerprint is easier to steal than a password: it's visible on your body at all times, and you give it away every time you touch a flat surface.
Even during the rumor period of the iPhone 5s, (first iPhone to get a finger print sensor) ways to spoof the sensor where making the rounds. Such a spoof if I recall was demonstrated on launch day. So, yeah, it's not bullet proof, but I think that's missing the point.
If people may be missing the forest for the trees if they avoid biometrics because of the very slim chance they might fall into a scenario involving sophisticated hackers or three letter agencies. Even with a database of finger prints and a 3D printer, they still need to have your device.
The alternative is likely less secure for most people for situations that are much more probably. Such as theft or online account breaches from common criminals. Entering your password over and over all day means for most people a simple password or no password at all.
To me, it's sort like preparing for the zombie apocalypse while failing to keep your smoke detectors running. If you bail on biometrics, you need to be prepared to do it the hard way.
Comcast to move data caps to 1 TB per month
Comcast has been rolling out broadband data caps to residential customers. Comcast says it's a trial, but it seems clear what's going on here. The caps have widely been scored as nothing more than a profit center for Comcast. You gotta work hard to be a perennial entry in those most hated companies lists.
The caps are 300 GB per month, which Comcast maintains only a very small percentage of customers exceeded. We managed to be in the camp by mostly due to streaming what I feel like is a modest diet of some kids movies and a handful of TV shows. The caps haven't reached me yet, but I've been thinking about alternative plans. Thankfully that won't have to happen as starting in June the caps will be 1 TB per month.
Jon Brodkin for Arstechnica:
After the June 1 change, fewer customers will need to buy unlimited data--but it will cost them $50 a month to do so instead of $30 or $35. Overage fees will stay the same, $10 for each additional 50GB. Thus far, Comcast has allowed customers to exceed the cap in three "courtesy months" before charging them overage fees.
New iPhone ad celebrates Mother's Day
Continuing the shot on iPhone campaign, the latest iPhone ad shows photos and videos for Mother's Day.
"Celebrating motherhood through the lens of iPhone users around the world."
Apple's CareKit gets new third-party apps
Apple's previously announced CareKit initiative got moving last week with some new third-party apps.
Stephanie M. Lee for Buzzfeed:
A few companies were given a CareKit head start with Apple's blessing and are incorporating elements of the tool into app updates released today. The programs intend to help people manage diabetes (One Drop), track the effects of antidepressant medications (Start), and monitor pregnancies and newborn health and development (Glow Nurture and Baby). The University of Rochester also has one dedicated to Parkinson's disease, and others are in the works from institutions like Texas Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
CareKit complements Apple's other health-related app frameworks with HealthKit and ResearchKit. To me, CareKit seems to sit between the more consumer-focused HealthKit and medical research-focused ResearchKit. CareKit is used by consumers but would likely be most helpful as part of a physician's care plan. The apps are dedicated for specific purposes and ideally doctors could monitor activities for improved care.
1Password 6.4 for iOS enhances Touch ID
1Password 6.4 for iOS is now available and has cool feature for users of Touch ID. The password vault app can now be unlocked by Touch ID after a device reboot. Previously, users were required to enter the full unlock password.
If users prefer the added security of requiring a full password to unlock 1Password, this can be set in the setting.
Other new features with version 6.4 include improve import functionality from 1Password 3 and improvements to the Families and Teams subscription service, in addition to other features.
Dropbox Project Infinite
Dropbox today previewed a new feature they're calling Project Infinite. Essentially it will allow users to see both sync'd and unsync'd files side by side on the desktop.
With Project Infinite, we're addressing a major issue our users have asked us to solve. The amount of information being created and shared has exploded, but most people still work on devices with limited storage capacity. While teams can store terabyte upon terabyte in the cloud, most individuals' laptops can only store a small fraction of that. Getting secure access to all the team's data usually means jumping over to a web browser, a clunky user experience at best.
That pretty much sums things up for me on laptops. With SSD storage, it's obviously impractical to sync everything in a paid account that could reach to 1TB, for example. So, I juggle stuff with selective sync and if I need something I log into the webpage.
This sounds a much better solution. It could possibly be a little confusing, but it appears Dropbox is trying to make the experience seamless. When talking smaller files on fast Internet, it should work well, but otherwise pulling down files on-demand may be a more frustrating experience to the point of essentially doing a selective sync.
Anyway, Project Infinite is currently being tested with select customers. There is no timeline given for a general release.
Apples iPhone upgrade program now available for online sales
Last fall, Apple launched an upgrade program to encourage faster upgrade cycles. Essentially you enter into a monthly installment loan and when you're ready for a new phone, Apple will accept the device as payment for the balance of the loan.
Retail upgrade programs like Apple's can be a convenient way for users to upgrade every year without having to deal with private sales or other trade in schemes. To date, Apple's program required you to go into an Apple retail store to signup for the program. That appears to have changed this week.
Chance Miller for 9 to 5 Mac:
Starting today, if you visit Apple's website and go through the process of buying an iPhone, you'll see a new option alongside the traditional carrier installment, contract, and outright purchase options. At the very top of the list is the iPhone Upgrade Program and its installment pricing. In fact, when you go through the process, the iPhone Upgrade Program is now the default choice.
This sounds great to me since I'm a nerd and like to get new iPhones at launch. I don't however, want to deal with the circus of Apple retail during launch weekends. If I can do this online, that makes Apple's trade in program much more attractive.
Apple's program likely isn't the best deal, however, it's easy. Again for iPhone launches, Apple has historically prioritized direct sales and retailers get limited stocks to ration out.
2016 MacBook gains on MacBook Air benchmarks
I'm not really in the market for a new laptop, but eventually I'll be looking to replace my MacBook Air. When the MacBook was refreshed last week I was curious how the latest Skylake Core M5/M7 processors would compare to the Core i5/i7 found elsewhere in Macs.
Joe Rossignol for Mac Rumors:
Meanwhile, the top-end Skylake-based 1.3GHz Intel Core m7 built-to-order configuration earned average 64-bit single-core and multi-core scores of 3,023 and 6,430 respectively, which is between 9% and 17% faster than the equivalent Broadwell-based 1.3GHz model released in 2015.
That's just shy of the top end 2015 MacBook Air. Likely when the MacBook Air gets refreshed the gap will be larger, but point being at least now the new MacBook is in the ballpark of a current Mac.
Browse and search for more articles


text:
Real Estate Act comes into force tomorrow after 8 year long ef...Ministry of HUPA would make Rules for Union Territories without legislatures while the Ministry of Urban Development would do so for Delhi. As per the notification announcing the commencement of the Act on May 1,2016, Rules under the Act have to be formulated ... India Infoline, 17 hours ago
Real Estate Act comes into force on Sunday - Hindu Business Line, 1 day ago
Real Estate Act to come into effect from today - Sify, 17 hours ago
Centre keen on boosting mass transport : Venkaiah Naidu
Bengaluru: Union Minister for Urban Development, Venkaiah Naidu assured on Friday that the Modi government at the Centre would fully support the Karnataka government in implementing the second phase of the Metro Rail project covering 72.95 km and ...Deccan Chronicle, 2 days ago Centre seeks Metro reply The Telegraph, 2 days ago Underground Bengaluru Metro Station service flagged off, Siddaramaiah seeks Centre's help for Namma Metro phase III DNA India, 2 days ago Venkaiah Naidu, Siddaramaiah flag off south India's first underground Metro Prokerala, 2 days ago
Faridabad MC submits final upgraded SCP to Urban Development ministry
Chandigarh, Apr 22 (UNI) To develop Faridabad as a smart city, the Faridabad Municipal Corporation has submitted the final upgraded smart city proposal (SCP) to the Union Ministry of Urban Development. The revised SCP, projecting a total ...United News of India, 1 week ago Pb finalises blueprint for smart city Amritsar, Jalandhar proposals New Delhi Pioneer, 3 days ago Upgraded Faridabad Smart City Proposal submitted EGov Online, 1 week ago Faridabad MC submits upgraded Smart City Proposal to Centre Business Standard, 1 week ago
Bengal polls 2016: Babul Supriyo chases 'drunk' TMC protester
Kolkata, April 21: Union Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo was allegedly heckled by Trinamool Congress (TMC) supporters at the time of casting his ballot in a booth in Jorashanko constituency in North Kolkata on Thursday. ...Oneindia, 1 week ago When Babul Supriyo chased and caught Trinamool Congress' `heckler` ZeeNews.com, 1 week ago Babul Supriyo Allegedly Manhandled at Polling Booth in Kolkata IBNLive, 1 week ago Union Minister Babul Supriyo heckled by 'TMC supporters' Press Trust of India, 1 week ago
Sudhir Krishna to head Fifth Finance Commission
Ahead of the municipal by-elections on May 15, Delhi government has named former Union Urban Development secretary Sudhir Krishna as the head of the Fifth State Finance Commission on civic finances. Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung has approved the Aam Aadmi ...Deccan Herald, 3 days ago
Projs via JV company with Maharashtra will help generate employment: Suresh Prabhu
Railway ministry, along with the Union Urban Development Ministry, is working on an integrated transport plan for bettering transportation in Pune.DNA, 4 weeks ago Three crucial Mumbai rail projects to start by August India Infoline, 1 week ago Railway projects via joint venture with Maharashtra will help generate employment: Suresh Prabhu Economic Times, 4 weeks ago
Union urban dev min to execute HRIDAY projects
Varanasi: The Union ministry of urban development has taken over the power of executing the projects from VMC sanctioned for the city under National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY). Now, the National Building Construction ...Times of India, 1 week ago Heritage development projects for AP, Telangana okayed Prokerala, 2 months ago Heritage development projects in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana approved Times of India, 2 months ago
'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' comments not government authorised: Naidu
Union Parfliamentary Affairs and Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said the views expressed by various individuals on chanting "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" are not authorised by the government, and added he doesn't agree with it himself.Asked ...Prokerala, 3 weeks ago `Bharat Mata ki Jai` comments not government authorised: Venkaiah Naidu Zee News, 3 weeks ago Comments on 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' not authorised by government: Venkaiah Naidu IndiaTV News, 3 weeks ago 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' Comments Not Authorised By Government: Venkaiah Naidu NDTV, 3 weeks ago
More from: , Business Standard...and 3 other sources
'Mangaluru 3rd cleanest city in country'
A survey by the Union Ministry of Urban Development has rated Mangaluru as the third cleanest among 476 cities across the country.The sanitation rating was for 2013-15 based on 19 indicators. Mysuru h...The Hindu, 1 month ago Mangaluru third cleanest city in the country The Hindu, 1 month ago Mangaluru third cleanest city The Hindu, 1 month ago
Dirty city tag is not surprising, say Patnaites
The latest survey by Union urban development ministry, ranking Patna as one of the dirtiest cities in India, has not surprised its residents, though they are not happy with the result.Times of India, 2 months ago Survey will help cities know how they fare: Venkaiah Naidu Asian Age, 2 months ago Dhanbad dirtiest, says swachh survey The Telegraph, 2 months ago
Realtime News
on your WebpageAdd Widget >Get your members hooked!


text:
Hello! Pro has you covered.
With a variety of color palettes and textures, Hello! Pro features styles that are perfectly-suited to a wide variety of personal brands. Hello! Pro was designed by brandiD.
You're not afraid to display the best attributes of your business so everyone can see them and appreciate them.
You'll love setting up your homepage using Hello! Pro. Explore and customize the rotating content area, the portfolio area, and the highly-visible opt-in form. Custom widget spaces and included CSS3 animations round out Hello! Pro's robust design offerings.
And of course, Hello! Pro features everything you're used to in StudioPress themes:
Take a look at the Hello! Pro theme here.]]>
Your potential clients want a digital window into the spaces you create and you want them to jump off the screen when viewed.
With Interior Pro, your images take center stage, whether they're the full-stretch focal point of your page, or anchoring a post that shares your latest exciting tips.
Its dreamy palette and inviting typography make Interior Pro classy but accessible. It puts forth the hospitable welcome you want to convey to prospective clients.
With multiple column classes to choose from and a straightforward, streamlined landing page, you're ready to serve up content beautifully via desktop or mobile.
This design was done by the talented Ashley Schweitzer of Simple Mondays.
As always, Interior Pro features everything you've come to expect from StudioPress themes:
Click to step inside the Interior Pro Demo now.]]>
We'd like to introduce you to Aspire Pro. It's the newest third-party theme from StudioPress, and you're going to love what it brings to your business. Aspire Pro was designed by Appfinite.
If you like to tinker, Aspire Pro has flexibility baked in. It features an endlessly versatile home page with 15 custom widget locations. You'll enjoy unlimited theme color changes via an easy-to-use interface. You can change up your custom header and background images quickly, too.
But Aspire Pro's greatest strength is its attention-getting style.
You'll love the clean, beautiful pages that form Aspire Pro's backbone. And the vivid colors — even though they're easy to change — are beautiful right out of the box.
And of course, Aspire Pro features everything you count on in StudioPress themes:
Take a look at the Aspire Pro theme here.]]>
UPDATE: To give developers more time to prepare their plugins and sites, we will NOT be introducing the breaking change, outlined below, in Genesis 2.2.7. Instead, we will push it to Genesis 2.3.0. Genesis 2.2.7 will still release on Monday, March 7th, to address other bugs.
If you have built a plugin that relies on the Genesis term meta system in order to function, it's incredibly important that you prepare your plugin for Genesis
2.2.7 2.3.0. If your plugin relies on Genesis to store and serve term meta, you will very likely receive messages from your users saying that it's no longer working.
Normally, we do everything we can to maintain backward compatibility, which is exactly what we did with Genesis 2.2.6. Even after the conversion to the official WordPress term meta method, we still pulled and injected a term's metadata into the term object variable, so it could be accessed using the old method.
Unfortunately, some users reported that this was performing quite poorly on pages where many terms appeared. For every term that was queried on the page, the entirety of its term meta was also queried. Do this for a few dozen terms, and you can see how the number of queries could quickly get out of hand.
And frankly, this was always a problem with Genesis term meta. It simply didn't scale to larger sites that used anything more than a few terms with metadata.
To use a metaphor, we were emptying the pitcher to pour a glass of water. Not efficient at all.
Which is why we switched to the more official method.
With the official method, we're able to only pull the data we need at the time we need it. It's also run through the WordPress caching system, which adds another layer of efficiency.
Put shortly, it's better in every way. But it's implemented in a way that is, unfortunately, incompatible with the previous method we used in Genesis.
So, we're forced to choose, and I chose to go with the better, more efficient method.
To be clear, nothing should error out or make a site whitescreen. It's not that kind of breaking change.
What will happen is this: if your plugin tries to use stored metadata by accessing the
$term object, looking at the
$term->meta array, it won't find anything. That array is now empty (but does still exist).
For example, in Genesis Simple Sidebars, we look at this array to see if a term's archive page should use a custom sidebar.
As of Genesis
2.2.7 2.3.0, that array will be blank, so the chosen sidebar won't be used.
So, I've updated Genesis Simple Sidebars to account for this. You can see that the calls are much simpler now, and this is not a difficult change to make. But it must be made in order for your plugin to continue to function properly.
No. When Genesis updated to 2.2.6+, the old data was converted for you. You just have to switch methods for accessing the data.
For most of you who build Genesis plugins, you won't need to do anything. This is only for plugins that use the Genesis term meta implementation … so, VERY few of you.
But for those of you who do, instead of accessing term metadata like this:
You'll access it like this:
get_term_meta( $term->term_id, 'term-meta-key', true )
You'll want to do this everywhere term meta is used, including on the edit screen when you give the input fields their values.
It's also a good idea to go ahead and bump the minimum requirements for your plugin up to WordPress 4.4 or greater so that people don't get "function doesn't exist" errors. And if you place Genesis version requirements on your plugin, bump that to Genesis
2.2.7 2.3.0 as well. Please have the update ready to release by Monday, March 7th.
If you need me to review your modifications, or would like help updating your plugin to the new method, I'm happy to help. I understand this is an inconvenience, but I promise it's worth it.
Contact me on Twitter @nathanrice and let me know what you need.]]>
It's the newest third-party theme from StudioPress, and you're going to love the wow factor it brings to your business. Glam Pro was designed by Restored 316 Designs.
You're not afraid to display the best attributes of your business so everyone can see them and appreciate them.
And you aren't afraid to offer products for sale! That's why you'll love how Glam Pro is WooCommerce ready so you can plug it right in and put it to work. And you'll appreciate the one-of-a-kind in-between post ad space you can use to feature your best products and services.
Make Glam Pro your own when you weave your own brand colors into your site using the WordPress customizer to modify the theme's built in color palette.
And of course, Glam Pro features everything you're used to in StudioPress themes:
Take a look at the Glam Pro theme here.]]>
To show your offerings in the best possible light so others recognize what you bring to the table.
We recommend you place your content inside Showcase Pro, the newest third-party theme designed and developed by the very talented JT Grauke.
Showcase Pro is designed to highlight your best content in a bright, clean design that puts your strengths on display.
The clear interface, contemporary typography, and full-width images highlight your best assets. And the flexible templates for team, author, pricing, and landing pages will give you plenty of options. Throw in a testimonial slider and this theme is perfect for your next website.
Naturally, Showcase Pro features everything you're used to in StudioPress themes:
Take a look at Showcase Pro here.]]>
And you need options — lots of options. Because in the early days, information changes on a daily basis. You deserve a theme that adapts as quickly as your business does.
Meet Kickstart Pro. Whether you're getting a new business off the ground, or want to freshen up your existing business to make it look like a startup, Kickstart Pro is the theme you need.
Kickstart Pro includes these flexible features:
Slider or no slider: it's your choice. Feature a slider on your home page or use a single strong image with text.
Customizable primary color. Quickly try out a new primary color with no coding necessary.
Highlight an article or category. Draw attention to a post — or category of posts — with the Blog Top widget area.
Stylish pricing page. Kickstart Pro's beautiful built-in pricing table allows you to showcase all your options and plans.
Highlight your location. The Google Map widget area on the Contact page template will show your location if you'd like to make it easy for customers to find your bricks-and-mortar business.
Support for full-width background images. Quickly add an image to the top of any regular WordPress page (excluding posts and special page templates).
And of course, Kickstart Pro features everything you're used to in StudioPress themes:
Take a look at Kickstart Pro here.]]>
That's why your website's appearance and content are crucial: it's what your site visitors will use to formulate a first impression about your business.
Meet Digital Pro, the newest addition to the StudioPress family of themes.
Digital Pro welcomes site visitors with a friendly style that makes them feel comfortable right away. The clean, easy-to-read typography provides frictionless delivery of your content.
And check out the white space! It gives you plenty of room to feature beautiful photography that draws visitors in.
Of course, the Digital Pro theme features everything you're used to at StudioPress:
Take a look at Digital Pro here.]]>
Right out of the box, the Jessica e-commerce theme gives you the choice of using three potent plugins with built-in styles that adapt to each:
You know that operating a booming e-commerce business means managing all the complex behind-the scenes website features that offer your users a seamless buying experience.
With Jessica on your side, you'll be able to:
The fully-responsive home page allows you to decide which content goes where so you can customize your site to meet your needs. And with Schema support, you can take full advantage of the power of structured data.
Of course, Jessica features everything you're used to in StudioPress themes:
Click here to a look at Jessica e-commerce theme.]]>
When we first introduced Schema.org integration in Genesis, we wanted to try to be a specific as we possibly could. For example, if we knew a search results page was being displayed, we would make sure to mark that page as a search results page using microdata.
In that same spirit, we wanted to make sure that blog posts got marked up as a "blogPosting" content type.
But there's a problem with that. As I'm sure many of you would agree, blog posts aren't always blog posts. WordPress is so much more than a blogging platform, and even though custom post types exist, many people still use the standard "post" to publish all kinds of different content. Podcasts, image galleries, recipes … the list goes on.
So saying that all posts are "blogPosting"s really isn't accurate.
But a new problem was brought to our attention recently. Turns out that Google requires anything that you mark up as an "Article" (or sub-types of "Article", including "blogPosting") to include some extra elements: an Image and a Publisher, both of which require new objects be added to the entry content output. We even received reports from our users that Google is flagging their content as spam, because they're detecting a "blogPosting" without associated Image and Publisher objects.
So, rather than force new output in your content, we decided to remedy the original problem while solving the new one.
Instead of considering all post entries as "blogPosting", we are using the more generic (but still perfectly valid) "CreativeWork". For what it's worth, this is what all your published pages were marked up as all along.
"CreativeWork" has fewer required elements, and therefore passes Google's structured data testing tool.
If you know that you're using post entries as blog posts, you might be wondering how you can switch back to using the "blogPosting" schema markup. Totally understandable, and totally possible.
Just know that if you do this, you're going to need to make sure your blog posts have featured images, and you're going to have to provide publisher information. You're also going to need to write a little code. But fear not! Here's some code that will get you started, with inline comments that will help explain things. Just paste the code in your child theme's functions.php file, and fill in the blanks.
While we have you here, here are the other things we fixed in this release.
First, WordPress 4.4 compatibility.
WordPress 4.4 was released recently, and they added a really cool, and finally official, way of storing meta data for terms. For those who don't know, terms are things like your categories and tags.
For years now, Genesis has relied on a fairly clunky way of doing term meta storage, so we're happy a much better official offering has been introduced. Genesis 2.2.6 switches everything over to the new official term meta system, converting all the old data over to the new system.
Second, we're including and using our own html5shiv file.
So, instead of linking to the file hosted at Google Code, we pulled the file (it's open source) into Genesis and link to that copy instead. An easy, but necessary, fix.
So that's it. 2.2.6 is available now, and you can update from your dashboard.]]>