Community:SummerOfCode08:Brainstorming

Projects with a confirmed mentor and approved by the Mozilla project SoC administrator will be moved to Community:SummerOfCode08. Potential students should look at that page to find project ideas for which we'd like submissions.

Ground Rules

• Be specific. It's hard to understand the impact of, or the size of, vague proposals.
• Consider size. The student has eight weeks to design, code, test and document the proposal. It needs to fill, but not overfill, that time.
• Do your research. Support the idea with well-researched links.
• Don't morph other people's ideas. If you have a related idea, place it next to the existing one, or add a comment.
• Insert only your own name into the Mentor column, and then only if you are willing to take on the responsibility. Potential mentors sign up here.

(More thoughts on making a good list)

Suggestion List

Last year's ideas: Confirmed, Brainstorming

Please use this format for submitting ideas.

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Remote Cookies	Write a Firefox extension that stores/retrieves cookies on a server instead of locally. This will enable Firefox users to use the same cookies on all their computers and Firefox profiles.	Eric H. Jung	Eric H. Jung	Think of never having to authenticate against all of your websites again! For security reasons, users should be able to choose which cookie(s) can/cannot be stored server-side (e.g., you don't want to store a banking site's cookie remotely) If the student runs out of time, I can contribute towards writing the server-side components (e.g., server-side contents encrypted, database schema, SSL delivery/retrieval mechanism, etc). Student definitely needs to write the client-side (extension GUI, cookie hooks). To keep the scope reasonable for one Summer, only cookies will be initially supported. Server-side storage of full profiles -- places, bookmarks, etc -- are out-of-scope unless time permits. However, extension should be written so other artifacts can be stored server-side later... perhaps as next Summer's project. This is similar to Google Browser Sync, but is open-source (including server-side code so users can run their own servers if they like) and doesn't require the user to sign a privacy waiver. Algorithm for resolving merge conflicts should be pluggable, but can initially be simple: latest revision overwrites older ones. Multiple cookies for same site can be supported by establishing server-side "accounts". This implies a credentials/login system on the server-side with which I can assist.
Metalink support	Native support for the Metalink XML format (bug 331979) which lists mirrors and checksums, along with other useful metadata such as mirror location. Listing multiple URLs for a file increases availability while the checksums guarantee integrity and let downloads be repaired automatically. You can also filter downloads by location and other things. Metalink is currently supported by most download managers including DownThemAll!	Ant Bryan
Locale strings verifier	Guidelines - Nearly every extension today provides locales which ship as different languages with the extension. At the moment, where is no tool which can automatically validate the existing locales if all files and string exists.	Archaeopteryx		If not every string exists or the files are wrong encoded, the application will only start up with an error message and the user has to uninstall the extension in safe mode. Wanted features: Setting default locale, export of valid ones, warnings if strings equal etc.
Support maildir in TB	Bug 382876 Implement the possibility to store Tunderbird mails in Maildir format.	KAMiKAZOW	?	Losing mails is a constant problem with TB. This seems largely due its inefficient mail storage. Storing mails as individual files and using SQLite for the index file should increase data safety.