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lucasr

136 karma · joined January 26, 2011

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lucasr··on Multithreaded rendering on Android
We've been doing a lot of that at Facebook and we do want to document this process a bit better. Stay tuned :-)
lucasr··on Malicious Use of the HTML5 Vibrate API
Firefox for Android developer here, you can long-tap on the location bar while on the page and select 'Edit Site Settings'. Is that what you're looking for?
lucasr··on 37signals Works Remotely [video]
A large part of Mozilla works from home. And I don't know of any team in the company that have everyone in a single location. In other words, we've very distributed. Have a look at: http://careers.mozilla.org
lucasr··on Android tablets: It's the browser
Firefox for Android developer here. First of all, thanks for the feedback. Just a quick reply/update on some of the points raised in the post:

1. We're currently working on a new iteration of the tablet UI which will replace the sidebar on portrait with a horizontal scrolling strip that goes away when you select a tab (see meta bug 817675). The sidebar will not be "stuck" by default anymore and will slide away once you select a tab (see bug 817728).

2. We mitigate things like this with anti-phishing/malware protection and the identity status icon. However, this is not guaranteed to cover every possible case. Anyway, I filed bug 839994 to get some discussion going.

3. I agree that the current approach is not ideal if you want to browse through your desktop/mobile bookmarks very often. The current UI is more oriented towards finding your bookmarks through the awesomescreen search. Two points about this: the UX team is working on a new design for bookmarks/reading list. It will definitely involve an overhauled UI for accessing bookmarks. In the shorter-term though, we'll be working on a new iteration of the start page that gives you quick access to your bookmarks from there (no extra taps). Work on some of these changes has already started. For instance, you can now 'pin' sites on your start page.

4. This is fixed in Aurora/Nightly builds (see bug 786982). You can close the last tab. You'll see the start page when you do so.

Hope that helps. We're an open source project. Next time, I strongly suggest you to file bugs. We're happy to clarify and re-discuss design decisions whenever necessary.

lucasr··on The Story of Nokia MeeGo
Nice read. I really enjoyed my time in the OSSO (then Maemo) team at Nokia from the N800 until the beginnings of the N900. The team was incredible with core hackers from the biggest and coolest open source projects out there (Linux, X, GStreamer, GNOME, GTK, Telepathy, etc).

It also feels great to know that I left the company at the right time :-)

lucasr··on Show HN: Android app for COLOURlovers.com patterns
I'm a COLOURlovers fan. Created this app to play a bit more with the Android platform. Just for fun. Feedback is welcome. A bit more background info on the app can be found here: http://lucasr.org/?p=2825
lucasr··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (May 2012)
Mozilla - Remote, or one of our 9 global offices (London, Mountain View, San Francisco, Toronto, Paris, ...)

Mozilla has quite a few engineering openings to work on exciting projects like Firefox (front-end and platform), Firefox Mobile (front-end and platform), Boot to Gecko, Web APIs, and more.

For more details: http://careers.mozilla.org

lucasr··on A CoffeeScript Intervention
This is why I think 'let' pretty much fixes (or maybe sanitizes) scoping in JavaScript (see e.g. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/New_in_JavaScript_1.7#Block...). In summary, it allows you to define variables per block.

Unfortunately, it's a feature only available in Mozilla's JS engine at the moment.

lucasr··on In Norway, personal income is a matter of public record
Same thing in Finland. If I remember correctly, there's even a number you could text the full name of any tax payer and get his income in the previous year.
lucasr··on Dropbox + git = Designer Luv
Hylke Bons wrote a very nice git-based Dropbox alternative with focus on collaboration called SparkleShare (http://www.sparkleshare.org). It's still in beta state but a few members of the GNOME design team are already using it to collaborate.
lucasr··on GNOME 3 Released
Have a look at jdub's comment on the item about Ars Technical review of GNOME 3. He summarizes pretty well what will happen (or not happen) in Ubuntu with regards to GNOME 3:

  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2419435
lucasr··on GNOME 3 Released
If you really want to build the whole thing for hacking purposes, yes, Jhbuild is probably what you want.

But if you just want to give GNOME 3 a try, I suggest you to simply run one of our live images here:

  http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/
lucasr··on GNOME 3 Released
If you want to get started with Jhbuild, you probably want to have a look at the official manual:

  http://developer.gnome.org/jhbuild/stable/
lucasr··on GNOME 3 Released
We'll be setting up redirects for the old press releases to the new website soon. We just had so many things to sort out today for the release that these small things end up slipping out. Cheers!
lucasr··on Cheese in The Board
I agree that the project definition is a bit too vague in that page in live.gnome.org. I'll fix that.

My blog post is definitely not targeting people outside the open source and GNOME circles. Maybe that's something I should take into account in the future.

Thanks for the feedback anyway!

lucasr··on Cheese in The Board
Not sure what you mean with "people who do not need to keep a record of the dates and times they create content on their computers". Could you elaborate?

I think this specific blog post should clarify at least some of the use cases I have in mind for The Board:

  http://lucasr.org/2010/12/06/adding-to-the-board/
lucasr··on How can open source survive in a post-PC World?
Android is licensed as open source but it's developed behind closed doors - just like any other closed source software. So, I think Glyn's description is fairly accurate, no?
lucasr··on This must be Google's Facebook clone. It sure looks like it.
Although the feature itself is not new, the new design does seem to be highly inspired by Facebook's.
lucasr··on Nokia Plan - Business Model Generator
If it starts accepting contributions, it will become a killer app! Or a killer plan, or...
lucasr··on SongKick (YC S07) Raises $2m More to Out-Innovate Other Concert Alert Services
Yay for UK-based startups!
lucasr··on Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership, New Leadership Team
This is the definitive proof that leaving Nokia back in 2008—when they pretty much killed Maemo—was the best decision I ever made.

They've made two major platform shifts in just a few years. From Maemo to MeeGo and now from MeeGo to Windows Phone. Not something that inspires confidence in the company or attracts talented developers...

lucasr··on Isotope - An exquisite jQuery plugin for magical layouts
Pretty nice plugin. The transitions look a bit choppy on Firefox 3.6. Very smooth on Chrome.
lucasr··on Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
I live in London and work for a Boston-based startup with a small office here. So, not actually a London startup. But I'd be interested in attending one those meetups in the future. Where are those events announced btw?
lucasr··on Android Market Web Store just Launched
It somehow resembles Ovi Store (not a good sign) but slightly better. The design is a bit too busy. Not bad for a first iteration though.
lucasr··on Power Blogging Hour (and Why You Should Have One Too)
A more free-form way of getting those posts out is setting up a Planet (http://www.planetplanet.org) that aggregates the blog posts from everyone in the company. This is very common among open source companies and communities. Although Planets are generally different than what is being proposed in the article which I guess is more about having all developers writing posts for the company's official blog.
lucasr··on Google Begins Testing Display Ads in Gmail - The Atlantic
Zenbe Mail was exactly that: a paid webmail service with great and clean design for $3-10 dollars a month. But they closed the service after the engineers joined Facebook as part of a talent acquisition. Not sure how successful they service was in terms of revenue/subscriptions though.