Data

Firefox 31 for Android is the first release where we collect telemetry data on user interactions. We created a simple “event” and “session” system, built on top of the current telemetry system that has been shipping in Firefox for many releases. The existing telemetry system is focused more on the platform features and tracking how various components are behaving in the wild. The new system is really focused on how people are interacting with the application itself.

I updated Zippity, our crowd sourcing data collection system, to add support for memory and CPU data telemetry. What is memory and CPU data telemetry you ask? Basically, we send data about the current Firefox Mobile memory and CPU usage patterns to Zippity. There are two ways to send the data:

Firefox 3’s offline capabilities have been getting some attention lately: Chris Double’s post on porting Zimbra to use offline shows-off the potential. Robert O’Callahan and John Resig give details on the different pieces of the capabilities, namely: Offline Cache, Offline Events and DOMStorage.

I couldn’t help but get caught up in the recent threads about data lock-in. I have become quite a “data-snob” recently which, I’m finding, is quite abnormal for a developer. Developers are all about the code. On one side you have the Mark Pilgrim & Jon Gruber (& Mark’s reply) discussing Apple’s data lock-in problems. On the other side you have Stewart Butterfield’s not-so-positive comments about allowing Flickr to export to Zooomr or Google’s new online Photo Ablums.