GuysBlog

MozillaZine announced on Monday that Ben Goodger has accepted a job at Google. They pointed to Ben’s posting which says, in part:

As of January 10, 2005, my source of income changed from The Mozilla Foundation to Google, Inc. of Mountain View, California. My role with Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged, I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I’m sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.

This probably came as a surprise to the authors of the cover article in the February issue of Wired, who reported (in the third chunk of this article):

Goodger has gone from low-profile programmer to internationally beloved code fu master with a crush of job offers. To get his head sorted out, Goodger set off in December for a "mind-clearing" drive from Silicon Valley to Seattle along the Pacific Coast Highway in his beloved Caribbean blue Infiniti G35 coupe. "It’s my way of resetting the brain," Goodger says. "I like to go on long drives during the transitions between big projects. If you don’t take a good break, you can crash and burn."

When he returned from the open road, Goodger declared he’d stay with the Mozilla Foundation. He has already posted the development roadmap for Firefox 2.0, beginning with version 1.1, codenamed Deer Park and scheduled for release in March.

c|net’s News.com picked up the story and expanded on the topic with links to stories or rumors about what Google’s plans are.

Mitchell Baker, President of the Mozilla Foundation, blogs about Ben Goodger’s new relationship.

We’ll have to keep an eye on this….

Tog (Bruce Tognazzini) is bugged.  Tog is "is a principal with the Nielsen Norman Group, the ‘dream team’ firm specializing in human-computer interaction."  Before that, he was Lead Designer at Web MD, and before that was a hotshot, user-focussed engineer at Sun. 

Until today, Tog had a list of 7 items labeled the "10 Most-Persistent Design Bugs."  Today, he added the final 3 and reports many, many more on the main page of The BugHouse.

#10 appeals to me a lot.  Tog calls it "Focus-stealing." Say I have three IM windows open and am typing in one of them.  I click Enter and suddenly realize that at some point during my typing, another IM window suddenly grabbed the focus away, and I find I have sent part of a message intended for person A to person B.  That can get downright embarassing.

In point of absolute fact, as I started this posting TypePad had not QUITE completed drawing its window, and when I had typed the first letter in the Title block, TypePad suddenly switched my focus to the Post Continuation block. 

Do have a look at all 10, and the additional categories: Pandemic Bugs, Application Bugs, Websites & Browsers, OS-X, Window, Multiple OSs, Networks, Security Bugs, Hardware & Drivers, and Programming & Command  Lines.   Pack a lunch and some beverages — you might be there a long while.