Community Member Interviews

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.

Hello! So, first of all, how old are you and where do you come from?

Hello. I'm 17 years old, and I was born in Bilbao (north of Spain). Right now, I live in Torremolinos, Málaga.

What do you like most about computing?

What I really like most is programing -I program in different languages- and I also like cryptography.

17 years old is really young. How long have you been coding in XUL, and how have you come to do this at such a young age?

I discovered XUL not long ago -about two months ago- when I started developing TuentiFox. I started programing in HTML and Javascript when I was 11 years old. At the time, I was living in a small village that didn't even have Internet, so I actually learned everything from a small guide that cost me 9€. A bit later, I learned PHP. When I moved to Málaga and finally had an Internet access, I was able to learn much more languages (C, C#, visual basic, java...), as well as improve a lot on Javascript. My school would regularly send us information through Tuenti (a Spanish social network), so I created myself a profile, and two days later I started collaborating in the development of Tuentifox. To my surprise it was completely composed from languages that I already knew, so I was able to start improving it really quickly. I was surprised with how easy it was to create an interface. I would often use HTML and Javascript because it was so easy to create interfaces with them. With XUL I can also do everything that HTML didn't support, thanks to XPCOM.

And how did you get to know Mozilla?

I only had Windows on my computer, and I found Internet Explorer 6 was really slow. That's why I installed Mozilla Firefox. Its speed immediately convinced me. And as time passed, I progressively started to realize and understand the importance of standards. Add-ons were what I really liked the most in Firefox, and later (more or less two months ago), I learned about Mozilla technologies, and was really impressed.

What attracts you most in XUL and in Mozilla applications?

I really like the fact that it's easy to learn and use, and that there is a vast number of XPCOM classes that you can use in whichever platform you want -without needing to change anything.

And what would you like to do later on?

I've been thinking about learning more C++, in order to create XPCOM components. I've been wanting to do this for a while now.

Do you have a favorite Add-on, that you use with Firefox?

My favorite Add-on is Ubiquity, because it's so easy to use and because it really simplifies certain tasks.