Summary

  • SeaMonkey's Fishcam shortcut survived a removal proposal when Lou Montulli brought the camera to fishcam.com; the fix reached the 2.0a3 development milestone.
  • The restored feature depended on a separately maintained website and aquarium. A May 2009 maintenance post reported four territorial bannerfish being moved out.

Please hold while we find your fish

A browser shortcut with one delightful job had acquired a rather poor sense of direction. Press Ctrl-Alt-F and, according to the opening report in Mozilla bug 454847, you reached netscape.aol.com. The intended destination was a fish tank. The distinction matters to anyone who has ever needed five minutes away from the internet while remaining on it.

The ensuing discussion gave this tiny feature a surprisingly lively set of possible futures. Delete it. Send people to information about brine shrimp. Find another aquarium. A participant also reported that a different camera URL still worked: the broken journey and the state of the camera were already separate questions. A removal patch appeared. Fishcam was approaching the point in a software project at which affection has to find someone prepared to do the work.

Lou Montulli supplied that someone on the aquarium side. His history of Fishcam dates the project to late summer 1994 at Netscape, where a personal fishkeeping hobby became a vehicle for trying browser features. The early SGI Indy and Indycam arrangement captured an image, added its overlay and posted it in nearly 20 seconds of CPU time. It refreshed once a minute. Watching fish was restful; putting them on the Web gave the computer something to do.

The same account records the service going offline in 2008 and returning in early 2009 with a new 600-gallon tank at Zetta. This was a substantial piece of furniture for an Easter egg.

A reprieve, with paperwork

SeaMonkey developer Robert Kaiser told his side on 21 February 2009. After exchanging emails with Montulli, he had redirected the shortcut in trunk nightly builds to fishcam.com during the previous week. A new camera had improved the picture the previous night. The browser supplied the route; Montulli supplied the site, camera and underwater programming.

The bug's removal proposal became obsolete. The replacement patch passed through review, super-review and approval, and the issue closed as fixed with a SeaMonkey 2.0a3 milestone. Even a nostalgic diversion had to take its turn through the release machinery.

Then the restored aquarium made the 24 February SeaMonkey meeting, whose minutes were posted the next day. Alongside the familiar business of browser development, the notes recorded the Fishcam fix as landed for 2.0a3. They also assigned Kaiser a promotional errand: ask for a SeaMonkey button on the Fishcam page, or replace its Firefox button. A browser that delivered the audience wanted a little recognition at the destination. The minutes preserve the request; they leave the eventual button arrangement open.

A suggestion in the bug discussion to use a video element exposed the division of labour just as neatly. The answer directed that ambition towards Montulli, who ran the camera and tank. A browser patch could change the address quickly. A different presentation of the fish required cooperation from the person providing the pictures.

The inhabitants declined to be a static asset

By May, maintenance had moved well beyond hyperlinks. An operator's post dated 22 May 2009 explained that the decorations had been removed temporarily and that four bannerfish had been transferred out. They had become territorial and were attacking newly introduced fish. The decorations were scheduled to return on 26 May.

There is a pleasing change of scale here. The browser had a release milestone. The website had a camera. The aquarium had residents who considered newcomers a property dispute.

Fishcam survived because people kept tending these different parts. SeaMonkey could preserve a small piece of browser culture by keeping a route open. Montulli's work gave that route something living to arrive at. The charming feature in the menu was backed by hosting, hardware and, occasionally, the delicate business of persuading fish to live somewhere else.