Over the past few years I’ve re-embraced the pumpkin experience with a slight twist. Instead of carving, I’ve painted anything from classic Halloween icons to Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.  This year I wanted to aim for something that is closer to my heart, and a more complex design and layout.  Enter Ursula the Sea Witch (from the Little Mermaid).  For anyone that knows me, I’m a *bit* obsessed with the Little Mermaid and love the Ursula, the villain.  I found a coloring book illustration a few weeks ago and knew that this would be a great idea for a pumpkin.  I’ve normally been pretty quiet about my process for doing these pumpkins but I figured this year I’d detail it out.

First off, I don’t consider myself to be an amazing artist.  I print out the illustration to size, and use graphite paper to transfer the image onto the pumpkin.  This isn’t exactly easy, since the pumpkin curves and you lose a lot of detail from the transfer.  This year after transferring, I then outlined again in pen the design on the pumpkin so it could stay visible when painted.

Once the transfer is done, I start painting.  I keep a pretty basic set of acrylic paints on hand along with way too many paint brushes.  Most of the colors I mix to my liking.  This year I printed out a bunch of “inspiration” pictures of Ursula so I would have ideas on what my color palette should look like.  Overall, painting is a pretty slow process, especially in detailed areas.

When the pumpkin is dry, there is a final touch.  I’ve always been a fan of black outlining with a Sharpie.  I was first introduced to this technique in middle school art class.  I loved the simplicity of the black line and the way it made the art pop, so I have integrated it into all my pumpkin designs and feel that it really helps bring the artwork to life and pop on an orange backdrop.

And there you have it.  The Ursula pumpkin.

Happy Halloween!

With the help of Rodrigo Garcia, one of our superstar community members from Firefox Chile we worked to translate the article to English.  Personally, I think this is a fantastic article and does a great job of explaining our future and the state of the current browser market.  Enjoy!

Link to original article here.

Firefox’s Creator Describes the Tactics of the Browser to be the Biggest Rival of Internet Explorer

Six years ago he became the first employee of Mozilla. Today, as the director of Engineering and Special Projects of the Foundation, Chris Hofmann spoke exclusively with La Tercera about how an open-source project that allows the community to collaborate in their improvement – successfully transformed in the main competition of Microsoft browser

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It was 2003 and the still new Mozilla Foundation had decided to hire its first employee. His name was Chris Hofmann, who since 1996 had worked for Netscape, considered to be one of the most important browsers in history.

His work? To help the creation of a new browser to enhance the experience on the web almost entirely dominated by Internet Explorer. The browser is Mozilla Firefox, which six years later had obtained about 30% of the global market.

Today, Hofmann serves as director of Engineering and Special Projects of the Mozilla Foundation, a role that brought him to Chile as part of the Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre. During his visit there he had time to talk with La Tercera about the past and the future of the open source browser during such an important time.

The Myth of Open Source
Hofmann explains that he joined the Mozilla project for the same reason he entered Netscape: to improve the user experience on the web. “The web is a great tool and a good browser is essential to maximize the performance.”

But the road was not easy. After what Hofmann called “anti-competitive practices,” by Microsoft, Netscape disappeared off the map and Internet Explorer was left with 98% marketshare. With no competition, Microsoft became lazy,  which was the perfect opportunity for Mozilla to prepare their product for market.

Without realizing it he found a rival program that not only had greater security but also incorporated new features such as tabbed browsing and a pop-up blocker. “The debate between open or closed source disappears if you have a good product,” said the engineer, who notes that at first many people did not know that the program was a project supported by the community. “And when they know this, they love Firefox even more,” he laughs.

The Future of the Web
Part of his job is traveling around the world, meeting with members of the community including developers and testers. And whether it is in Prague, where he was before Chile, the objective is always the same, “We want a faster, more secure and easy to use browser.”

The biggest challenge is to combine the new uses of the Internet, where users are increasingly active.  “Over 30% of users are uploading content to the web and this trend is rapidly increasing.”

“This opens a new front of concern for developers: privacy. Users upload content every day without knowing it could be within the servers of companies. One issue not least, considering that 20% of Firefox users are businessmen” he explains.

Another challenge is how to modify browser navigation. “Tabs were created so people could avoid having too many windows open.  Now there are users with more than 20 tabs open at once, so we need to rethink how the browser looks visually.”

To improve these pieces competition is crucial. Hofmann does not fear his rivals, but feels it is the way to give users the best web experience.. “It is disappointing to see that nobody is thinking beyond the limits of the four browser: Explorer from Microsoft, Chrome from Google, Safari from Apple and Firefox.  They are all very similar, but seeing for the first time four players in the market fight for the best browser experience indicates that people are working to improve the web.  And that is exactly what we want.”

Many of you are probably thinking it’s a bit ridiculous to be wishing a web browser a “happy birthday”. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought over the last few weeks.  For most of us Firefox is more than a piece of software.  It’s a living breathing organism, something that we can contribute to and make a difference with.  In a world where the majority of companies care about profit margins and stock price, Mozilla and Firefox are different.  We care about making the best product out there and pushing the web forward.  And we care about doing all of this without closed doors and working in an environment where everyone can get involved.

Lately, being on this 5 year anniversary ride has made me a bit emotional.  The first time I watched the 5 year video I got a bit teary eyed.  Everyday I’m thankful to be able to interact with our amazing community whether it is conversing on IRC, through e-mail or interacting through our bi-weekly community marketing calls.  I am constantly reminded that Mozilla is much more than a web browser.  We are a group of people who care very deeply about the web, and without everyone’s hard support we could have never reached this 5 year milestone.

So without further ado, Happy 5th Birthday Firefox and to everyone that has helped make an impact, I love you and thank you.

And so the countdown begins!

A few months ago, we sat down with our security team to talk about how we could reinforce our thought leadership beyond security research and technical audiences and have a direct role in in educating users about online security.

At Mozilla we are always interested in new ways of reaching our audience and directly communicating.  With our Facebook group reaching close to 600,000 members, we thought this was a unique way to get in front of our non-technical web users (regardless of what web browser they use) and share some great information on how to help stay safe while browsing.  Since this is our first foray into the world of Facebook applications it will not be localized and will only be available in English.

Most Facebook applications are notorious for capturing lots of user data.  One of the coolest things about our app, is that we have made sure that there will be no personal data captured by Mozilla.  We even go the extra step of hashing out the Facebook user ID.

Like all projects, this was a wonderful collaboration from many people both internal and external to Mozilla.  I wanted to give a huge thanks to our security and web dev teams, AllWidgets, Elise Allen, John Slater, Melissa Shapiro and Mike Morgan, Jonathan Nightingale, Brandon Sterne, and Laura Mesa.

So please, go out and take the quiz.  Share it with your friends.  Post to Twitter and your favorite social networking sites and let’s get this party started!

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