sivakrishna's blog

Ever worried about losing information in chat sessions when using Spicebird? You don't have to anymore. Spicebird now maintains a chat history. The latest nightly builds include this feature.

A new chat history window shows the list of all archived chat sessions. It can be opened by clicking 'Chat -> Chat History' in the 'Contacts' or 'Chats' tab.

The window has two primary sections. The left pane contains a list with each item showing the contact, date and a preview text of a chat session. The right pane shows the chat session corresponding to the item selected in the left pane.

When we set course for 0.7 release, the major objective was to include support for multi-protocol Instant Messaging, blogging and many other changes to the UI & features. Prasad already gave an update about this. We had to take unexplored paths and sometimes we were not be able to guage how deep the rabbit hole was. It sure did take a huge effort, but after solving the challenges, we have been running smoothly for quite sometime now. For the purpose of numbers, 108 bugs were fixed in the last month.

Recently I had to create an XPCOM component in javascript. The interface had a function, parse, defined as below:

interface xxx: nsISupports {
    ...
    void parse(in AString data, out AString info, out boolean success);
    ...
}

I intend to describe the implementation of functions with out parameters and their usage. Though it may be too obvious for experienced xpcom/xul programmers, I hope this might help newbies.

I did not find much help online. Thanks to the guys in mozilla #extdev, #xul irc channels. It would not have been easy if not for their (quick) responses.

MDC has an article on creating an XPCOM component. I will not get into any details of component creation here.

Things are moving ahead steadily towards Spicebird Beta 0.7. We will have all the features listed in our Roadmap, except basic email tabs. We had to shift email tabs to the next version to ensure we can work on more stable tabs implementation. We are planning to release 0.7 by mid of June, 2008. The deadlines are as usual tight and require us to spend marathon hours at work. Though that can be an excuse for not many updates from us, we will try to keep posting as & when we have some time.

Joining a startup is like entering into a long-term relationship. You have to do a lot of study about the company and the people running it. Compatibility plays a very important role when you want to be a part of a small team running a company. You also have to understand and discuss the objectives & future plans (mission & vision) of the company with the founders. When you get the picture of the company's growth, you should be able to figure out where you can add value. Knowing this is crucial to have a successful relationship.

To list a few advantages of joining a startup, you can be a part of a highly talented and motivated people, get your hands on bleeding edge technology, get involved in various activities and grow along with company. When the company is small, the hierarchy is flat and the process is democratic. This provides a dynamic environment where you can voice your opinions and discuss things directly with the implementors.

One line to say what happened when Prasad went to the recent FOSS.in
event at Bangalore - "He went, he talked, he conquered!!"

Well, if Axel Hecht, could say wow then it definitely is something to talk about. One level conquered :-), lot more to go!

He gave a talk on application development using mozilla. I guess Prasad will write a blog (very soon (-;) with more details.

Spicebird, our desktop collaboration suite, is almost near to the open source alpha release. We are holding its wings to ensure it gains proper weight before it flies. Being the user loving bird it is, it wants to say a "Hi" to you. And here it is, a preview of Spicebird.

It was created completely in-house and that should be an excuse for any amateurism.

Until we got hold of tools like x11vnc, vnc2swf, gimp, audacity, vnc2swf-edit, creating a demo video seemed to be a task for professionals. Good news is, with these tools it is much simpler than what it appears to be. When I get time, I will write a detailed step-by-step procedure of how we created this video.