Mozilla Balkans 2010 event took place on May 21^st and 22^nd in the capital city of Macedonia, Skopje. It was a first gathering of the Mozilla communities’ representatives from the Balkans region. Our community was represented by Kerim Kalamujić, Muris Herak and Aleksandar Savić. On our way to Skopje we went to Niš where we picked Miloš Dinić and Ivan Milenković up – guys from the Serbian community. We use this chance to say hi to them and thank them for all the nice memories we brought back from Skopje.

First day of the event was reserved for a closed session attended only by the invited community representatives. The main objective was to fully introduce Mozilla project to the attendees and have them exchange their experiences in order to improve their communities. A morning started off with everyone introducing himself/herself to the crowd. After the introduction, several presentations were held: Firefox and Thunderbird roadmap for 2010 by Brian King, Seth Bindernagel and Zbigniew Braniecki (aka Gandalf), SUMO by Kadir Topal, and Mozilla Communities presentation by Seth Bindernagel. After a lunch break we had another set of presentations held: AMO localization by Seth and Zbigniew, Mozila Mission for newcomers by Alina Mierlus, and a Get Involved presentation by William Quiviger and Alina Mierlus. Then we had a short coffee break to prepare our brains for the toughest part: goal-setting and a brainstorming on improving inter-community collaboration. All attendees were split into four groups and every of them had to think of three goals which should be achieved in six months period (before the next Balkans communities gathering). After the event, we had a dinner and did some sightseeing around Skopje. Partying was continued back in our hotel rooms :)

Second day of the Mozilla Balkans event was open for everyone. Pascal Chevrel from Mozilla Europe had the honor to open the event with his The Mozilla Project presentation. After Pascal, Brian King, Zbigniew Braniecki and Seth Bindernagel held their Firefox and Thunderbird presentation telling people about the past, present and the future of these products. Next, we had a pleasure to see Mozilla communities from the Balkans presenting themselves and their work to the attendees, but also to the entire world since the entire event was streamed live over the internet. After a lunch break we had a chance to listen to Zbigniew speaking about new creations coming soon from the Mozilla Labs, followed by a SUMO presentation held by Kadir Topal and David Tenser. Brian King discovered the world of add-ons to us and Seth Bindernagel spoke about translating Mozilla products in any language in the world.

After a short coffee break, the program was continued by a Drumbeat given by our community leader, Kerim Kalamujić. He talked about the Open Web standards and how Drumbeat is supposed to help promoting the values of the Open Web and make the internet a better place for all of us. This presentation served as an introduction to the Drumbeat workshop held by Alina Mierlus. The goal of this workshop was to get everyone involved into the discussion why internet matters and why we should stand for the Open Web vision. After the workshop, William Quiviger closed the event with his short talk. But, everything was not finished! We all watched the Champions League finals together and had a dinner which lasted until the dawn :)

We somehow managed to wake up in the morning and get our luggage packed. We were very sad to leave the beautiful city of Skopje and having to say goodbye to our old and new friends. We use this opportunity to thank them all for a great time we had and wonderful memories we brought from Skopje. We can’t wait to meet them again!

The Mozilla Balkan Inter-Community Meetup is the second of a series of community gatherings aiming to bring together lead contributors of different communities for a day of presentations, discussions and workshops. The aim of the event is to enable Mozilla communities in the Balkans to share and learn from each other's experience working on the Mozilla Project and improve collaboration in the future. All participants are asked to help each other define joint quarterly goals for the year.

The meetup will take place in Skopje, Macedonia and will begin on Friday 21st and finish on Sunday 23rd of May, 2010

For more information, please visit https://wiki.mozilla.org/Balkans:2010

It's been quite a while since we last wrote about our community activities. So, here's a brief review of what's been going on lately in Mozilla Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mozilla BiH in cooperation with Mozilla Creative Collection has started a Logo Redesign Contest in order to get our logo redesigned. Current logo has served us well over the past year but it's time to move on and get an even cooler logo which will help us in building our community as a brand. If you haven't sent your logo proposal you still do have some time. But hurry ;)

Due to the launch of the "Browser Choice screen" as a part of the settlement between European Commission and Microsoft, Mozilla has started an Open to Choice campaign whose goal is to educate Web users about browsers and the importance of their browser choice. Mozilla BiH joined this project and was played an active part from its very beginning by spreading the word about the Browser Choice screen and by localizing blog posts and other promotional materials (affiliate buttons, flyers, posters etc.). Join us in spreading the word and educating people about Web browsers and other important things every Web user should now. For more information on how to get involved, visit opentochoice.org

Mozilla BiH attended jubilee first TEDx event in Sarajevo on March 21st. It was fun but also a great pleasure to meet around 200 TED-addicts and talk to them about the Web and our projects. We set up a booth where we shared goodies with TEDx attendees and we were very pleased to see people approaching us. We also made some new acquaintances with guys from other open source projects/initiatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina and we all agreed on mutual cooperation in spreading the word about free and open source software.

These guys invited us to attend April's Open Coffee event in Sarajevo. Open Coffee is an event where geeks gather to talk about computers, free and open source but also have fun. It was our pleasure to be there on April 1st and we met new people who are involved in various open source projects and initiatives. Once more we confirmed our will to work together with them in order to spread the word about open source alternatives. Some of them showed an interest in joining Mozilla BiH so it seems we are getting new reinforcements :)

All in all, March was a very dynamic and succesful for Mozilla BiH...

The Mozilla Foundation, who created and administers the open-source Firefox browser, has begun a campaign to educate web users about alternative options to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The move comes in advance of Microsoft launching a ballot screen that allows users of IE to pick which browser they want to use.

In an open letter on the front page of the OpenToChoice.org website, Mozilla's CEO John Lilly says: "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".

There's a box to put in your email address, and when the ballot screen is rolled out you'll get a note in your inbox explaining the strengths of different browsers. To some of you, that'll seem a little ridiculous - surely no-one's still using Internet Explorer 6 out of ignorance, right? Well, there's still plenty of people out there who think Yahoo is a browser...

• redesign a logo

In order to redesign our logo, you can choose one of two options: redesign current dino head or design an entirely new logo. This choice is yours.

If you choose to redesign only the dino head, then you must design it in a way which doesn't hurt Mozilla's trademark rules (http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/). Design requirements for dino head redesign: the dino head should be neither scary nor too smiled. Designes we like are Mozilla's Gecko (which is currently on our logo, but we can't use it) and Mozilla Italia dino head (http://www.mozillaitalia.it/home/). You can grab our current logo in layered PSD (get PSD file) or EPS (get EPS file) format.

If you choose to design an entirely new logo, then the requirements for new logo are: it must contain "Mozilla BiH" text right to the graphics part; it must be somehow associated with Bosnia and Herzegovina whether by national flag colours or something else, we leave that to you (have a look at our current logo); finally the most important part is to get an original and representative logo which we'll be proud of.


Submission:

• upload your proposals to Mozilla Creative Collective and tag it with "BiH" (you MUST use this tag, otherwise your submission will not be considered)
• the winner will have to provide us with original working file(s) upon the end of the contest (original working files MUST be in vector format)

Deadline:

The deadline for submitting your proposals is March 15, 2010. In case we do not receive enough submissions, the deadline will be extended.


Reward:

• winner will receive a winner's certificate
• winner will be publicly credited through our website and other Mozilla-related channels
• winner will receive a Mozilla BiH t-shirt

Contact info:

If you have any questions, please feel free to write to Kerim Kalamujic (kerim@mozilla.ba).

Help us make Internet a better place for everyone and create your own Internet Explorer voodoo doll.

Click here for instructions :)

Ooh happy day! New Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is here and it is as fast as a rocket! For a review of new features check: http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is about to be released today, Jan 21. It brings lots of new exciting features, like 20% faster perfomances than Firefox 3.5, Personas (dynamic theming), and lots more.

We suggest you to grab it the moment it's published!

P.S. If you are not using Firefox, please stop hurting the Web and get Firefox!

After recent Google's decision not to censor China's search results Chinese hackers used security hole in Internet Explorer (IE) to attack human rights activists' email accounts. Following these attacks French and German governments decided to advise their citizens to use other browsers insted of IE. This bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share.

According to web analytics company StatCounter Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share. In some markets Firefox has now overtaken IE. So, this might seem like a good news for Mozilla.

On the other hand this is  a right moment to ask ourselves how secure Firefox is. Some will say it is the least secure and some will say it is the most secure browser. Whatever the correct answer would be it is still a good idea to check your web browser security with some online security tests you can easily find via search engines. Chinese hackers decided to attack IE, not only because it's vulnerable, but because it's still the most popular browser in the world. When the day comes when Firefox is the world's No1 browser we can surely expect it to be the next target for hackers, so this is a good topic to think about for the future development.

Hi guys!

For the past 2-3 days our website might be inaccessible to you as it was infected by some trojan. The computer of our team member was infected by it and he unintentionally infected our server while uploading some content via FTP. Thanks to up-to-date ESET Smart Security the problem was spotted at once and we managed to fix the issue in no time.

We are sorry to all of you who experienced problems visiting our website!

Thank you,
Kerim Kalamujic
Mozilla BiH Founder/President

Year 2009 has been very successful for Mozilla in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have managed to increase Firefox's browser market share, having IE lost almost 15% of it. After launching our website, holding our events and starting a Facebook group we have noted an increased interest in Mozilla's products. This increase in interest is going to be the foundation for our year 2010 marketing strategy.

This year is going to be very exciting as we have planned several events and fun activities to spread the word and potentialy get people involved. We are also looking forward to Firefox 3.6, 3.7 and 4.0 for which we hope will help us achieve our goal: increase Firefox's market share in Bosnia and Southeastern Europe.

Finally, we plan to work together with other communities worldwide, so if you are interested, send us an email RIGHT NOW! :)

Mozilla Bosnia and Herzegovina wishes you a Happy New Year! We wish you good health, happiness, love and success. We also wish this year to be the year of Firefox becoming world's browser no1 ;)

Here is the latest update of the Firefox 4 mockup design. Tell us what you think!

It's been almost 2 seeks since we started Mozilla BiH Facebook group and we already have more than 150 members. The good news is every new member brings his/her friends and spreads the word about Mozilla. Mozilla is considered to be very cool over here ;) Not only we get new members on our FB group every day, but there is also a huge increase of interest in Mozilla BiH and Mozilla in general. My inbox is flooded with emails from Mozilla fans with questions how they can get involved. Dear God, I can't wait for us to finish our online community portal and release it. When that happens, Microsoft and Google are gone. Forever!

I've also been following the web browser market share in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Well, I must be honest with you so prepare your self for what's following. According to latest data we have managed to gather: IE is losing market share even more! With current trend, in few months IE won't be even a second most popular browser in Bosnia. Chrome and Opera managed to slightly increase their market share but no big deal. Firefox is dominating in Bosnia and Herzegovina!

As time goes by it seems like Microsoft is starting to realize they are loosing popularity. So, naturally, they started a marketing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are promoting new Windows 7, Office 2010 and IE8. Yes, you read it well - IE8. There is no need to worry, at least when it comes to IE, as no one is going to switch to IE. Everyone knows how crappy it is.

Mozilla BiH crew is working hard on creating strategy for the next year. We plan so many cool things to do and events to organize, and we are already looking forward to those. Everyone is welcome to join us, so follow our website, Facebook group and Twitter. If you want to help us spread the word about Firefox and Mozilla, you are more than welcome ;)

Mozilla BiH successfuly organized an event called "Firefox 5th Birthday Celebration". It was our way of saying "Thanks!" to Mozilla for creating such a wonderful product.

The celebration party took place at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo. They were so kind to let us use a big room with a projector and even provide Wi-Fi access. Thank you ETF Sarajevo! We also want to thank everyone who showed up last night.

The celebration consisted of two parts: a Firefox-related presentation and a party. Our *captain*, Kerim Kalamujic, held the presentation. He told a Mozilla Firefox life story. Honestly speaking, we didn't expect that level of interest for the topic (people mostly dislike history :)). You could literally hear the crickets chirping  (when Kerim wasn't speaking :)). A few people from the audience had questions so it turned out not to be just a pure presentation, but an interactive one. It was very interesting to see everyone's faces when they found out that Internet Explorer was based on Mosaic (a predecessor of Firefox), that Opera *stole* the user scripts idea from Firefox, that Google Chrome *borrowed* its name from Firefox's Chrome, etc.

The level of excitement in the room reached its peak when Kerim showed mockup designs of Mozilla Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 versions. While having drinks and chatting with our visitors after the presentation, we found out that they loved the Firefox's new look. Way to go Firefox designers! We also did a small survey on the presentation and Firefox in general and the results of this survey will be sent to Mozilla as soon as we summarize them.

This year celebrating Firefox's birthday was a local event. Next year we want it to be international. So, grab the calendar and make a reminder for next year's Firefox Birthday Celebration in Sarajevo.