As I already said in some of my earlier posts, I see the localization as one of the most important things out there. Although I’m writing this blog in English, I do and always will support having localized applications and documentation for it, so non tech-savvy users could enjoy using them with flavour of all its features. Of course, as much as the application a one uses is good, the localization gets more on importance.

On the other hand, it looks like most of the tech-savvy people in Serbia do not agree with aforementioned statement. As some of you might know, I’m the Mozilla Serbia community leader, Web Localizer, Firefox localization peer and Mobile Firefox localization coordinator. Mozilla localization team allowed all lead localizers to have a brief stats on how many Firefox downloads we had last week, and what’s even more important, what percent of those downloads are actually downloads of localized versions of Firefox.

Last week I took a look at those statistics, and noticed that more than 60 percent of Firefox downloads from Serbia belongs to en-US locale, or the default one. That is something that worried me a bit, because we have Firefox localized in Serbian for several years now, and by now a one would expect that more than 70 percent of people in Serbia using Firefox, to actually use it in Serbian language.

I crawled the web a bit these days, and saw that many Serbian website’s web-masters tend to link to official Mozilla website rather than to Mozilla Serbia community website or even official Mozilla website in Serbian. Also, I asked a few of them if they could change the links with an brief argument, and believe it or not, always got the response saying that they DO NOT SUPPORT SERBIAN LANGUAGE ON THE INTERNET. Now, that got me amused, and made me wonder what could cause such a thing, and how should we treat it. So here’s the thesis:

Why would a man/woman from Serbia one prefer English over Serbian(in apps)

• People got used to English
• Some of them are not actually reading the whole strings, but can recognize them by reading first few letters
• Some translations in Serbian may sound weird or funny

So, now we came to the point where we should ask ourselves the following: “How to change that, or how to convince people that can change things that we should really encourage users to use native language?”. There is no simple nor ultimate answer that can explain the process as it should be done. The first thing is the root, and if we’re talking about Firefox(I am), than that is Mozilla. I have noticed that Mozilla actually cares about this, and is trying to promote both localized versions and local Mozilla Communites, to help localizers their “product” is seen. We can see a link to Mozilla Serbia local community on Firefox Support, Thunderbird Support, SpreadFirefox…

Another thing that we could do, is to advertize the localized version of our product to users coming from Serbia (using GeoIP tech) and are using Firefox in en-US locale. The pages on which we need this the most are the ones you get when you start Firefox after installation or upgrade process. That’d, in my opinion, significantly improve the percentage of usage of localized Firefox. Also, we need to spread the word, to ask wherever we can and whoever we can to promote the localized Firefox for the sake of all newbies that will and are using Firefox.

After a lot of talk about possible event somewhere in South-Eastern Europe, we finally did it. We are now organizing a whole new and somewhat experimental event on the Rocky Balkans. Leaders of local Mozilla communities from the Balkans have joined their efforts to organize this event, the first of this type in the Balkans.

The spark that started all of this is an idea that came to the Mozilla Camp in Prague back in October 2009th when we presented that idea to William Quiviger from Mozilla Europe, speaking about the possible expansion of Mozilla ideas to the Balkans. William agreed with everything we have stated at that time and decided to support this idea. Fortunately, during this FOSDEM, which was held in Brussels this February, we had a little more time, few more ideas and a few more helpers. Support is provided by Seth Bindernagel and Stas Malolepszy, long-time and well respected members of the Mozilla community.

The very idea was to promote Mozilla Manifesto and to strengthen ties and encourage cooperation between local Mozilla communities from the Balkans. There are already several local communities in this area that are actively working on the Mozilla products and web sites localization. Kerim, Gorjan and Bogomil, representatives of Bosnian, Macedonian and Bulgarian Mozilla community respectively actively participate in marketing projects for a long time. Also, I can not overlook prominent Mozilla contributors, Alina and Mathjaz, who had been an active part in promoting Mozilla and its ideas for a long time now.

In early March, we organized several internal meetings which were attended by all leaders of local communities, and used to talk about the most important matters for the organization of events. We focused on the goals of this event, location and time of the event itself. Finally, in a democratic way, the city of Skopje was selected as the official location of this first event, and we also agreed that late May (probably the weekend 21-23rd) would be the best time for all of us.  Beside Skopje, we had Sofia and Belgrade as options.

In the end I’d just like to invite all those who wish, can and have the time to join our meetings and to contribute with new and refreshing ideas. You can always find us on channels #balkans and #europe on irc.mozilla.org IRC server. Also, you can add all your ideas on the wiki page at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Balkans:2010 . I have yet to quote William and say that this is “just the first event in the chain”, and to say that soon we will organize a competition for this event’s logo. Follow the news and stay tuned.

Our lives are full of choices. Where to eat? What to read? Who to spend time with?

The choices we make determine the quality of our life, and how we see the world. So many of these choices we take quite seriously, weighing the consequences, thinking about the implications, and choosing carefully and thoughtfully.

So it’s strange, then, that the majority of people in the world haven’t ever considered the Web browser on their computer or mobile phone — that so many people every day use the browser that comes by default.

It’s an important choice because the Web browser has become one of the most critical and trusted relationships of our modern lives – with nearly perfect knowledge of everything we do. It is the lens through which we look at the virtual world, and the medium by which we connect, learn, share, and collaborate. The browser you choose is responsible for providing you with the necessary tools to manage your online life, and to protect your privacy and security.

And so we’re pleased to support the European Commission and Microsoft in also recognizing how important choice is. In accordance with a landmark settlement, if you’re using a Windows PC in Europe and you’re still using the default Web browser, in the coming weeks and months you’ll see a Browser Choice screen appear. That screen will provide you the opportunity to make an active choice in the source of the software that acts on your behalf to broker your online experiences, and meet your own unique needs and interests.

As an international non-profit organization, Mozilla has always believed that the freedom to make smart choices should be central to making the Web, and the world, a better place. This shows through with Mozilla Firefox, a free, open-source Web browser that more than 350 million people around the world have chosen to use every day. Values of choice and self-determination are built into everything that we do, including Firefox.

We believe that the Browser Choice screen is an important milestone towards helping more people take control of their online lives — and we hope for the conversation to become broader and deeper. We’ve set up opentochoice.org as one place for you to discuss what this choice means to you — and we hope that you’ll add your own voice to this conversation and those to come.

Whether or not you decide to keep your current Web browser, we encourage you to learn more about your browser and the impacts it has on the way you see the world, and to make your own choice.

Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Chair & John Lilly, Mozilla CEO

Taken from:

www.opentochoice.org

Last weekend Brussels was the hometown of probably the biggest developers meeting in Europe. Our fellow mates from Mozilla did an awesome job inviting few dozens of us to participate in it, and we’re all greatfull that they made that possible for us. Vast variety of topics, a lot of presentation and community in general made this event even more great than it used to be.

I can say that I saw a lot of interested in many Mozilla-lead topics, ie. HTML5. About 50 people waiting in front of our dev-room says enough about it. Also, the WoMoz project was something we wanted to push a bit harder to the audience, and I think I can say that our mission was successful. Also, talking to David Tenser about plans for SUMO(Mozilla Support website and forums) was more than a awesome, as we both agreed that we need a powerful engine that will make SUMO experience for regular users more comfortable.

One more thing I’d like to point out is Mozillas initiative to educate users about the new browser choosing screen that will show to both new and existing users using Windows 7 operating system(Europe only). A lot of people were interested about it, and everyone wanted to talk about it more and see what does Mozilla community thinks about that.

Conclusion: One more event to strengthen Mozilla community relations made our weekend. Thanks to all attendants, and I hope we’ll meet again soon.

Hello Madhava. Can you tell me a little about yourself, and how did you first got involved in Mozilla.

I’m Canadian and I live and work in the city of Toronto, where Mozilla has a small office.  My first name is Indian and my last name is Swedish, by way of Finland.  I’ve been doing interaction and user-experience design for 10 years, always in the software field.  I’d followed the Mozilla project for some time, trying out nightlies and reading usability-related bugs, for a while before starting to work for Mozilla in 2007, when I worked on the design of Firefox 3, especially the “Get Add-ons” section of the Add-ons Manager.