Weave 0.2 Release Notes

Release Date: June 30th, 2008

As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.

Weave is the Mozilla Labs' project to develop a coherent framework and platform for deeply integrating online services with the browser. Our goals are to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.

This third milestone release is being made available for testing purposes only and will give you a taste of Weave, but there's still more to come, and much of what you'll see may still be a bit rough around the edges.

Please see below for an extensive list of features and enhancements found in this release, as well as known issues and frequently asked questions.

As always, we appreciate your feedback either through the Weave discussion forum or by filing a bug in Bugzilla.

Getting Weave 0.2

1. Backup your Firefox profile. (See Backing Up Your Information.)
2. Download and install the latest version of the Weave experimental prototype. Restart Firefox.
3. Weave will launch a Setup Wizard that will guide you through the installation process. (Note: Both new and existing users will be required to create a new Weave account.)
4. Follow the instructions presented by Weave.
5. Tell us about your experience in the Weave forum or by filing a bug.

What's New in Weave 0.2

You may also view the feature requirements and bug list for this development milestone.

User Experience

• Significant reworking of the startup experience, including a new Setup Wizard that performs account creation in chrome and allows for customization of settings.
• Improved error detection and handling.
• Notification dialog added to the status bar for displaying error, status and asynchronous events with or without required actions, e.g. authentication errors, notification of shares, etc.

Data Synchronization

• Intelligent scheduler for synchronization to improve performance.
• Expanded set of supported browser settings and metadata, including:
  • Bookmarks
  • Browsing History
  • Cookies
  • Saved Passwords
  • Saved Form Data
  • Tabs

Data Sharing

• Initial framework for data sharing with XMPP-based notifications of shares.

Privacy And Security

• Support for NSS, the crypto library used by Firefox.
• End-to-end encryption, with support for secure sharing of data with a 3rd party.
• RSA public/private keys, AES encryption.

Performance And Reliability

• Support for retrying failed network operations.
• New server format performs better when there are frequent changes (e.g., for history sync).

Known Issues

Setup Wizard does not always run on install.

If you have run Weave before, it's possible the Setup Wizard might not run and so you will be unable to successfully install this release. A workaround is to invoke the Setup Wizard manually by clicking on the Weave icon on your status bar (or in the Tools menu), and selecting the "Preferences..." option. Selecting the "Create an Account" button should launch the Setup Wizard.

Weave does not yet support OS X on PowerPC (Officially).

There is an unofficial build of Weave 0.20 available on this thread: forum

The more adventurous might try building the extension from source, see Labs/Weave/Building.

Weave does not yet support 64-bit Linux distributions.

Installing a Firefox build from getfirefox.com might fix the problem as Mozilla builds are compiled as 32-bit binaries that are compatible with Weave.

Incompatibilities with certain Linux distributions.

Unfortunately, we're still tracking down the exact nature of the problem, but please try a Firefox build from getfirefox.com as that might fix the problem. On Ubuntu systems, you might also try installing the libnspr4-dev and libnss3-dev packages. See bug 442788 for more information.

Some addons conflict with the "New Account" setup process.

At least three addons are reported to prevent captcha verification: Adblock, Noscript and Torbutton. Setting up a new account with Firefox in "safe-mode" or turning off the offending addon(s) should work.

See the FAQ for a solution to the Adblock problem, without using "safe-mode" or turning the addon off.

Using a space in the username makes the account creation wizard hang.

Spaces are not supported in usernames, but the client is currently not validating that. This will be fixed in the next release, but meanwhile please do not put spaces in your username.

Some add-ons cause sync problems

Undo closed tabs button 3.0.3 seems to prevent Weave logging in to the server, therefore unable to sync.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please see the Weave FAQ.