My O.1 Experience

What is the metrics extension you ask? Well, the general idea of the metrics extension is to collect browser usage data. Although the metrics extension is not yet complete, they want to keep track of UI interaction, Usage of Features (bookmarks, extensions, themes.....), Memory usage/effectiveness, system configurations, and other related subjects. It will not however, collect any personal data that is identifiable to the user; everything will just be appended to a non-identifiable unique ID to distinguish different browsers.

For most of my 0.1 release, I have to created a small server script to the metrics extension. This basically involved my server script to recieve requests from the metrics extension and do the following - recieve uploaded data, or send back a config file. Currently, the data sent to the server is just uncompressed and saved into a file to read manually; however, in the future, it will be stored in a database infrastructure and hopefully used to display the data in many ways. For a better understanding of my o.1 release please check out it's wiki - Metrics Server Collection Wiki and to get a working version of the extension please follow these instructions How to enable Firefox Metrics extension.

The experience I had working on my project was quite different from most of my other classes at Seneca. The project required me to work with a massive existing code base, creating patches, debugging, server scripting, and http response headers. The experience was something else and I believe I have gained a better understanding of how my future career experience will be like. In addition, the project has also given me the opportunity to learn about working in an open source environment and the real idea behind community. I would suggest that all student at least try to do something in the open source community once.