[gopher] Unveiling the Overbite Project (and other announcements)

[Cameron Kaiser <spectre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This message is really, really long. Here goes:

** OverbiteFF for Firefox 3: "RTM"

With the release of Firefox 3 RC2, I took the wraps off OverbiteFF. This is
the release version, 1.0-1381. It does have some small changes, including a
bug fix for port access, additional explicit ports and CSS tweaks, so it is a
recommended download if you are still using -1380. We'll see if anyone gets
the joke on the build number. ;-)

You can now preview the Overbite Project pages. There are HTTP and Gopher
versions:

        http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

        gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/overbite/

(These are not publicly announced yet, but you can access them.) The
HTTP and Gopher pages are largely drawn from the same data store, so
people will get mostly the same views.

Additional language packs are still being accepted from translators and I
will gladly add them to OverbiteFF 1.1.

** Calling for OverbiteFF skins

If you are or you were making your own skin for OverbiteFF, I would love to
host them. I think this would give people something fun to play with -- I
know Avery wanted some interface changes: Avery, did you come up with something
of your own? The skins folder is here:

        gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/overbite/files/skins

I'm going to be playing with this a little myself, but I'd love some
community contributions.

** Mozilla Gopher activism

When Firefox 3 is released, I will be putting the FF3 add-on up to the
Mozilla official add-ons site, and then petitioning bug #388195 for one
of the following:

- Permission to backport the JavaScript to Core and then the add-on can
  go away. I am doubtful, however, that this would be permitted given the
  response by Brendan Eich. However, it had been suggested before.

or,

- Get the add-on into the release notes for FF4. I don't see how they could
  regard this as unreasonable.

The other thing that will need to be done is to remind them that Gopher
support must stay in 1.9. This was stated by Brendan in the thread. I'll
notify the list to watch this bug when I start making announcements there
to make sure they keep to it.

** Firefox 2 version (and later Camino 1.6 version)

For Firefox 2.0 owners, now that the FF3 version is finalized, I am working
on backporting it to 2.0.0.14. This should actually not take very long; if
I did it right, there should be only two or three areas that need changing.
I hope to have an FF2 beta within a couple of weeks.

FF2 will use the same language packs as FF3. The Camino version will follow
but there are some additional technical issues due to that browser's very
limited add-on support.

Skins should also work in FF2, but some of the Cairo-based rendering will
probably not.

** bucktooth 0.2.5

Finally, bucktooth 0.2.5 should be released later today or this weekend with
some important fixes, so stay tuned.

-- 
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@xxxxxxxxxxxx
-- Born free. Taxed to death. -------------------------------------------------