Following up from the Firefox Plus Summit here is the presentation that Christian Sejersen and I gave last week about localizing Fennec (the code name for Firefox for the mobile device).
I think the presentation went well. We had a packed room and got some good feedback and positive comments. Feedback centred around issues for which we are still working on the answers to, like fonts and testing. These will be challenging areas to address, and I'm sure we'll collectively find a solution that works :). Thanks very much to Philippe Dessante of the French team who has already localized Fennec and blogged his step by step how to (we posted a link in the presentation).
I was excited by the translate.org.za guys - Dwayne Bailey, Adel Zaim, and Friedel Wolff - reaction to the presentation. Dwayne immediately saw the potential to more easily localize and thus reach African communities. My understanding from Dwayne is that in Africa, communities will share a cell phone to access the internet, email, etc. And, because Fennec, at this stage anyway, requires a much lighter effort for translation it holds the potential for greater impact by getting to more African languages and thus communities. Awesome!
As always, please send me feedback. I hope the presentation provides some good information on where we're at currently towards localizing Fennec and how to start localizing it.