The Mozilla Blog

[This is a repost of Asa's original blog post at SpreadFirefox.com - Paul Kim]

Join us this Wednesday for the return of Air Mozilla – the live “call-in” show featuring influential Mozilla contributors from all over the world.

This second inaugural broadcast will feature Mitchell Baker, Chief Lizard Wrangler and CEO at Mozilla.

Mitchell will be talking about the state of the Mozilla project, and she will be taking questions from our audience via email, IM, and IRC.

Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and special guest Mitchell Baker.
When: Wednesday, July 11, from 2pm – 3pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7.)
Where: View the live webcast at air.mozilla.com and participate on IRC, IM, or email.

• IRC: join the discussion on irc.mozilla.org #airmozilla
• IM: instant message your questions to the AIM/YIM/GTalk screenname airmozilla.
• Email: send in your questions before and during the show to airmozilla -at- mozilla -dot- com.

We’re hoping to make Air Mozilla a regular feature and to broaden the format to include not just interviews, but screencasts with tips and tricks, news segments, and other community generated content.

Join us for the relaunch this Wednesday and help us shape the future of Air Mozilla!

A great deal of Firefox’s popularity is due to the ability to personalize it and add all sorts of functionality via add-ons. But there are some nifty shortcuts and features right in Firefox. I asked around here at Mozilla for favorite Firefox features and time savers. The list was huge, but here are some highlights:

• Session Restore: Never feel the pain again of accidentally closing a website! (Editor’s note: can you tell this is my favorite?) You can recover closed tabs and windows, and even text you entered in web forms, by going to the History menu and selecting the “Recently Closed Tabs” option. You also can set Firefox so that it automatically opens the last websites you visited by going to the Tools menu, picking Options and selecting “Show my windows and tabs from last time” under the Startup section. (On Mac OS X: go to the Firefox menu, then pick Preferences)
• Crunch numbers within Firefox: You can use Google in the built-in search box (upper right corner) as a calculator. Simply type in the equation (e.g. 243 + 5,234) and the answer appears in the drop down menu of suggested search options (e.g. = 5477).
• Set multiple home pages: You don’t have to be limited to one home page with Firefox. In fact, I have it set so that Firefox launches both of my web mail accounts – Gmail and Yahoo! mail – when it opens. Learn Firefox has a great explanation of how to choose your start page in the first place. In the URL field enter the addresses of your preferred pages separated by a pipe or the “|”.
• Maximize or Minimize your font size: Using this keyboard shortcut, you can control the size of your browser font — this comes in handy when reading small fonts. Simply press the “Ctrl” and “+” keys together in Windows (or the “Command” and “+” keys on the Mac) and the “Ctrl” and “-” keys to decrease. “Ctrl” and “0″ keys pressed together returns you to the original text size.

What are your favorites? Let us know at blog at mozilla dot com — this will be an ongoing series here and we’d love to hear from you.

Much of the success of Firefox and Mozilla has been driven by our passionate community. Students, in particular, have helped build and improve Firefox by testing and contributing to the code base, and spreading it one dorm at a time. In January 2007, as an effort to reach out to and empower these folks, we launched the Mozilla Campus Rep Program.

The response has been enormous — with reps from 50 schools signing on, all passionate about our mission and eager to help spread the word. Our debut event was a worldwide Kick-Off held the week of February 19th, with students in the US, Canada, UK, and Ghana hosting creative info booths, contests, raffles, give-a-ways, and install parties. The week was a huge success at the University of Southern California, Appalachian State University, and many others.

One of the most exciting efforts was an announcement by UNLV to offer technical support for Firefox. The IT office hosted a week-long open house to provide install help, recommend Firefox Add-ons and give out swag. That’s dedication! It was such a success that we’d like to use their campaign to roll out a campus rep “starter kit” to other campuses.

We’re now working with reps at over 150 schools, and our ranks are growing every week due to their support and enthusiasm. Send me a note to rbaker at mozilla dot com if you have ideas, want to share feedback or learn more. Let’s get campuses all over the world installing and supporting Firefox!