Firefox’s fifth anniversary arrived. Looking at my SFX account, it is almost as old as the browser, but I started using this way of thinking much earlier, at the times of Mosaic and Netscape, but that’s another topic.

The presents are the most important thing in a birthday party. But if we are talking about Firefox’s birthday the most important topic would be the web-freedom. Most of the people I know use Firefox. I also know people, who have been using the browser before it was called that way, but so few of them understand the meaning of Open Web, which is really a pity.

It is true, that spirit, beer and cake are very important for a birthday, but it is even more important for this fifth anniversary that we could find many new people, understanding the open web and contributing to its development.

Who creates the Bulgarian web?

Years ago the answer to this question inevitably would have been “The web companies”; the companies, which first launched websites, made them popular and attracted many users; the ones, which developed the Bulgarian web through many new portals, services, discounts, advertisements, and so on and so forth. If you ask them now – “Who makes the Bulgarian web?” they would answer “We do”; if we ask the people on the streets, they would probably answer the same: “They do”.

But that’s not true. You, creating and sharing content every day, commenting, writing, blogging, uploading pictures and video, publishing articles in Wikipedia and anywhere else, YOU create the Bulgarian web, not the companies, remember that! Things are changing at a breakneck speed and while years ago the web companies created the web, now they are just a small part of the whole cloud of everyone, included in the task and taking part in it, willing or not. The web-evolution started a long time ago and YOU are a part of it. YOU CREATE THE BULGARIAN WEB.

I believe that’s the spirit for a Firefox birthday party; it must clarify and teach, not just to gather people, who know what Firefox is to drink beer and talk loudly. That’s why we launched a campaign to make this happen. From October 14th until November 9th the Mozilla Bulgaria Team will present about 6 lectures in different places around the country, telling of the open web, our freedom, the personal space of each of us and the way we can protect it in the Internet. We will be discussing open standards, explaining what Firefox is and why we should celebrate on November 9th not only an anniversary, but something bigger: the realized notion that web – this is you.

Hello Milos. First of all, how old are you and were do you come from?

I was born and raised in the city of Niš, Serbia, and I'm 24 years old.

You are a contributor for the Serbian Mozilla Community. What do you contribute to exactly?

Mozilla Srbija, Serbian Mozilla Community, is involved in many different Mozilla projects. The very first project of our community was the translation of the Mozilla.com website in Serbian.

More specifically, I helped translating some well known Mozilla websites, such as Mozilla.com, Firefox support website (SUMO), Mozilla add-ons website (AMO) and Mozilla Europe. Furthermore, I'm pretty active in SUMO developing area, having successfully completed some quite complex and important activities with the Mozilla WebQA team in the last couple of months. Besides the above mentioned activities, I occasionally write a patch or two for Mozilla add-ons site, trying to help developers.

So in the end, while translating, I came across many other Mozilla projects, and got interested in them. Which is why I'm now actively participating in several projects.

How long have you been contributing to Mozilla?

My first contact with the global Mozilla community was during the winter of 2008. I followed events on the #xul talkings on Mozilla IRC server, as well as tutorials on the MDC site. At the beginning I wasn't too active, but as time passed, I was more and more involved. A few months later I met Pascal Chevrel, who guided me during translations efforts of the Mozilla websites. From that time on, I've been an active member for the Mozilla community.

And what has made you want to contribute to Mozilla? Did you already have any contacts with Mozilla before you started to contribute?

The very first contact with Mozilla was Firefox. After having tried other well known Web browsers, I discovered Firefox and decided to use it for good. As a logical step after Firefox, I started to use using Thunderbird, and later Sunbird.

As I said before, I began by looking for some 'online' help with XUL. After the MDC website, I found the Mozilla IRC server and registered my nickname on it. Several days spent on the #xul channel led me to other channels on the server, where I noticed that many people volunteer in various Mozilla projects. After a few days well spent in getting to know the localization associates, I realized that the work of a contributor is very pricy and respected, and that really got me overjoyed. Furthermore, I saw that I could help, and that what I do will help other community members, so I decided that I would - to the possible extent - help the community, as I really value the time and effort other people have spent helping me.

While working on all these projects, I realized the value of all of this: the communities that work on these projects, as well as directly on the software, are simply invaluable. So I am very happy to have the opportunity to participate a bit in such great things.

While working on all above-mentioned projects, I got to know in more detail how the community works, breaths and creates great software, and I can tell you that I am really proud that I had the opportunity to contribute to its success.

I have heard that you have recently started translating the Mozilla Europe Website in Serbian. What can you tell us about this experience?

Yes. Few weeks ago, I began work on translating the Mozilla Europe website into Serbian language. As there are currently very few active members in our community, so far we have not had the time nor or the courage to initiate this project. However, we are now ready, and I hope that we will soon see the Mozilla Europe Serbian site on the way

Mozilla Europe, as part of the global Mozilla community, is really incredible. Although the goal of all our efforts is to promote and improve Mozilla products and websites, this community is very much responsible for the great success of our projects in Europe. In a world of information technology, much less attention is paid to spread awareness in smaller countries, and that is exactly what Mozilla Europe is trying to correct. All European Communities are equal, and all have the same privileges. What I find wonderful, is that a lot of attention is paid to countries from Southeastern Europe, and thus given a chance to local contributors to promote their country and language. It is very important that on these sites communities get a lot of the integrity to use their language and communities have equal opportunities to present themselves in the best possible way.

Is there anything you would like to add, a message that you would like to pass around?

I'd like to thank all contributors for making our world a place where this great community exists, as well as for honestly accepting new people that come in, and for trying to make things better... I would especially like to thank all Mozilla developers and all others involved in projects, for endless support and community promotion.

At the end, I would like to send a message to all reading this text that they should drop by, at least briefly, to feel the atmosphere among Mozillians, or even contact us. The goal of everything we do is to ease the work, dissemination of knowledge and friendship... and all are welcome!

Well everyone, the promotion has finished! The weather and the Macedonia - Scotland soccer match kept people in their houses, but we still got plenty of visitors. 3 hours of fun on the city square in Skopje and Kumanovo was great. People came, they got to know the Firefox browser, the +5000 addons, Mozilla and the Macedonian promotion team.

But words cannot do anything here, so thanks to Damjan Arsovski, we have a bunch of nicely shot pictures of the Skopje promotion.

Dig in to our Flickr gallery, here. For more info about the promotion itself and the group can be found in this blog post.

Hi everyone, I am very excited to be the first Macedonian author here on the Mozilla Europe Blog. I am also very happy to announce that the Republic of Macedonia now has it's very own Mozilla Promotion Team named Mozilla Macedonia! Because the so called "Internet Boom" just recently took over the Republic of Macedonia, things in the IT sphere are just starting up. So a few enthusiasts got the idea to create a Mozilla promotion team here. From the black-board, the idea grew into reality, forming Mozilla Macedonia in 2 cities around the Republic of Macedonia: Skopje (capital) & Kumanovo].

Although the Republic of Macedonia is young as an IT country, more than 58% of it's internet users use Firefox! As our first course of action, we will hold a Firefox promotion in our 3 cities on the 5th of September. Handing out Firefox 3.5 CD's (Macedonian & Albanian install, Macedonian & Albanian Menus, Firefox stickers, badges and neck-straps are part of the plan). Media attention will be big, so that's a big plus!

We welcome you all to attend in the city nearest you on the 5th of September, 17:00 o'clock on the city square. See you there and have a Mozilla-rific day!

UPDATE: The Bitola promotion has been postponed for sometime later this year.

On the 3rd and 4th of October we will hold Mozilla Camp Europe 2009. This year we will be in the beautiful city of Prague. We hold the event to give everyone in the community a chance to interact face-to-face (yes, we're all real people!) and to exchage ideas and information about the community and the Mozilla project.

This year, we will be holding an Advocacy track, covering all aspects of promoting the project and the Mozilla mission. We would especially like to hear your insights or stories about your local community, how it started, and how you recruited members, or what observations you would make about forming your community - all ideas are welcome.

If you want to make a proposal for a talk, or have any questions, please contact Patrick Finch at patrick at mozilla dot com or me, irina at mozilla-europe dot org.

Photo info: Marek (Aviary.pl) presenting the Polish community - by Gandalf

As far as Firefox 3.5 launch parties are concerned, Romania was not a country to be left behind. We had not one, but two events celebrating the launch of the world-acclaimed browser.

The first one, chronologically speaking, was organized in the beautiful city of Cluj, in the heart of Romania. Over 30 people gathered in the pub chosen for the event over beer, cake and Firefox swag. A special, big and yummy Firefox 3.5 cake was made for the ocassion. The first thing on the agenda was the viewing of the Meet Firefox 3.5 video, where Mike Beltzner gives "A quick overview of what makes Mozilla’s latest browser so great". Now that everybody was up-to-date, the feasting on the cake could begin.

In Bucharest, the party had a more academic feel, as it took place on the university campus, and had a similar format: presentations first and drinks and food later. This time there were two talks: the first was about the new features in Firefox 3.5 and the second, more designer-oriented, was focusing on the new HTML technologies Firefox supports. The second part of the celebration consisted of beer, pizza and ice cream at the nearby pub. More photos here.

Now, for the people who helped organize the parties, I want to give thanks to the wonderful enthuziasts who joined Mozilla in celebrating another successful launch and made sure the parties were a success. Among them there are Stas Sushkov, Tibi Turbureanu and Nicu Buculei. Thank you guys!

Photo credits: Stas Sushkov and Nicu Buculei

This year again, the French Mozilla community (and a part of Russian one) attended to the 10th Libre Software Meeting ("Rencontres mondiales du logiciel libre" for its French title) which took place in Nantes. This is one of the biggest FOSS events in France which gathers altogether free software communities, enterprises and local or national government employees during five days, to share experiences.

There were lots of people this year, geeks and real life people and we had very interesting conversations. This was also the occasion to meet old acquaintance from the other communities. The last day, like every year, Richard Stallman gave a conference, and the boothes were moved to another place, downtown in Nantes, in the Isle of Beaulieu. This new location allowed more people to come as it was really in the center of the city. As a bonus, we were located just aside the Machines of the Isle of Nantes and we could attend to the walking of the Royal de Luxe Elephant.

Well, this was a busy and exciting week and we are looking forward next year, where the event will take place in Bordeaux.

See the whole set of photos.

Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe will be hosting a live chat on the Web User website (www.webuser.co.uk) on Friday, the 3rd of July at 12:30 BST (that's British Standard Time). He will be answering questions about the recent Firefox 3.5 launch and the floor will be open to anyone who wants to ask Tristan a question about the browser.

All you need to do to take part in the chat is visit www.webuser.co.uk/livechats at 1230BST on Friday 3 July. Questions and comments will be moderated.

Everybody is welcome to participate.

Marie Alhomme is the one who designed this new cool theme for the European Mozilla Community Blog. She is the winner of the theme design contest organized by Mozilla and Dotclear and I had the pleasure of finding out some more about her and the story behind the design so I can share it with you.

Can you tell me a bit about you: where do you live and what do you do for a living?

I live in Avignon, I'm 29 and I'm a webdesigner/front-end developer, or at least I think that's what I'm called.

Basically, I design identities (logos, etc), webpages, and produce them in xHTML/CSS/JS. I specialize in accessibility and respect of standards.

How did you find out about the Mozilla/Dotclear contest?

I've been using Dotclear pretty much from the beginning and recently decided to upgrade my own site to the latest version. That got me on the new website for Dotclear, where the announce was pretty visible. Plus, I had a reminder in the admin webpage of the new version once installed.

Can you tell us how you came up with the design for the theme and what was your inspiration?

Well, I've always been amazed and awed by Mozilla and what it has accomplished in freeing the web and enabling web workers like me to be even better developers (I'm thinking Firefox and fighting for standards and all that that means), and when I talked about the contest I just could not find one idea to illustate the proposed concepts (open source, collaboration, etc) that would not be "boring", or seen before.

When I talked to people about it, I explained that in that respect I felt like the proverbial worm that fell in love with a star. Well, I had the star mixed up with the moon, but the point of the original story is the same. I thought it would be cool to have that worm, green like my Poupoui, my symbol, gazing up at a "Firefox-hugged" moon, and then discovered I couldn't modify the Firefox logo. So I decided to do it the other way around and tadaaa!

But I was skeptical at first and a lot of people had to push me to participate, I thought my take on it would be too personal to get any attention in the contest. But in the end I'm quite happy, because it IS what I feel like toward Mozilla, Dotclear, and all the open source initiatives.

I also had tremendous help from Sylvain Leconte, a great designer and illustrator, who took my pitiful drawing on a piece of paper and my first illustrator comp and actually drew a worm that looked like one (and the pole and first version of the satellite). I can't not mention him, he's very responsible for my success here.

So you use open source software. Which are the ones you use the most?

Good question, not as much as I'd like... Dotclear and Firefox, obviously, Thunderbird. I also have Ubuntu on my laptop but am not very good with it.

Have you ever contributed to an open source project?

Yes, Dotclear a little (helping in the forums, modifying a plugin, etc), SPIP (modifying a plugin's CSS), and my own (close-to-defunct) open source project, the Pouiblio, which is kind of a very lightweight virtual library to keep your books tracked, but I haven't been able to work on it by lack of knowing how.

PHP is not my strongsuit, even though I love using it in my very basic way. I also try to provide translations for articles or software every time I have the opportunity and the time.

I read on your blog that you are a supporter of Web standards. Why do you think they are important?

They're essential ! I don't know how we could hope having a "real" Internet without standards to support it. If any software vendors tries to do it's own stuff, it's just not going to happen. I mean, it's like trains : if every region in France were to have its own type of rails, nothing would work anymore.

Having supported standards (having standards alone is useless) is more than important : it allows us to provide the users with a more complete and agreable experience, it allows for innovation to thrive, and thus security and confort are even more advanced.

You take part in organizing a series of events called "W3cafe". What is the concept behind the events and what are your goals?

The W3Cafe is organized by the three members (for France) of the International Liaison Group of the W'SP (Web Standards Project). Aurélien Levy and Thierry Regagnon are the other two. The goal of the W3Cafes is to provide accessibility and standards minded people with a place to unite and talk about the web, its technologies and evolution, trade tricks and tips, debate on important questions, and this in the form of conferences or workshops.

But nothing too academic. We try to have an open discussion between the speakers and the audience, so that both get to take something home from the meeting. We try to have them regurlaly and are planning another one before the next Paris Web 09, and we have some interesting topics planned ! So stay tuned

Tristan Nitot recently gave a presentation at one of your meetings. Can you tell me how it went?

Yes that's true ! To be honest, I'm sure it was absolutely fantastic but I was giving a workshop on CSS with Thierry during Tristan's conference... but I caught the end of it. The audience was totally raptured and involved, which is always a good sign And I got a really cool T-shirt that I keep bragging about, so for me the conference went great

Seriously though, Tristan is a great talker, he gets people's attention, and he explains to them in ways that they can understand, and most importantly, relate to. It involves them. And that guy has an amazing experience and culture, so he's always fascinating to listen to.