As been the case on every Friday, yesterday Adrien (aka Pulkomandy) posted his latest blog update regarding his work on the WebKit development contract. If you've been following his updates, you'll know he recently started working on HTML5, which is great news. In this update he not only goes over the HTML5 bit but also the work he's done on some other pieces of the WebKit port.

Unfortunately Adrien at the moment is only working part-time for Haiku, having to take another part-time job with another company. Having bills to pay and having to eat sucks. But, this could change with your donations, so don't forget to contribute so his development contract can not only be extended but go back to full-time.

Very good news out of the Haiku camp this morning, Adrien's contract, focusing on the WebKit port and WebPositive has been extended for another month. This was made possible thanks for your generous donations, which for the past 4 weeks reached $1200USD and €900. Not only that, but Haiku is now raising over $1000 USD in monthly recurring donations, which is amazing.

Adrien's work and progress over these past 6 months has been clearly visible to any of us who were using Web+ before and who try it now, and you can read his latest weekly update right here, But continuing for a seventh month won't be easy, according to the same post. A further $2150 USD will be needed to fund another month, so once again Haiku needs your help. Head over to the donation page and contribute to the project.

Great news everyone. Just 3 minutes ago Google announced the mentoring organizations for this year's Google Summer of Code and we're happy to say Haiku's been accepted!

After not making the cut last year, Haiku's again part of GSoC. Hopefully it'll be a good one, with great students taking part and helping the project while improving their skills as well.

On the coding side, Adrien (no accent) has continued his work on the WebKit port, posting his 19th blog update on Friday. In it he details his work for the past week, which include for example, working on css shadows support and, something that might have a very nice impact in browsing speed, gzip/deflate compression support.

Still coding related, this year's Google Summer of Code page is now up, including the ideas page. After several years as a mentoring organization, Haiku unfortunately wasn't picked last year, so here's hoping we're back in for 2014. Not long to go now till we find out, Google will announce the chosen projects on February 24th, just 9 more days!

On the financial side of things, there was a post detailing 2013's money situation. Haiku saw an increase in donations, which allowed several development contracts and more recently allowed Adrien to keep on working throughout this month of February. And we, all of us, can do even more. Be sure to keep on donating and we can help Adrien continue his excellent work on WebKit and Webpositive for another month(s).

This is just a reminder to everyone who uses is just interested in Haiku. Now that the holidays period is over and payday is coming around the corner, how about donating what you can to Haiku? Every bit helps and who knows, might even help extend Adrién's development contract for a while longer. In case you're unaware, he's been doing some terrific work on the Webkit port and WebPositive. Who knows? With enough money, Haiku might even be able to get a second development contract going!

So what do you say? Head over to Haiku's donation page and contribute.

Some are already hard at work, some may still be experiencing the effects of too much partying, but to everyone, have a happy 2014.

And what better way to start the new year than to have the two development contracts extended? Pawel is getting two more weeks while Adrien is getting one more full month. Awesome stuff. And as always, if you want them to keep going, please donate to Haiku and help make it happen.

We here at ICO would like to wish everyone out there happy holidays. Hope you're all having a good time with your loved ones or by yourself, if that's the case. And in between opening gifts and stuffing yourself full of delicious treats, why not read the latest updates from Adrien and Pawel, regarding their respective dev contracts?

Happy holidays everyone!

Though ICO's been quiet, it doesn't mean things have been quiet in the Haiku world, not at all. I'm sure you've been following Adrien's progress with the WebKit port, as well as Pawel's work on the scheduler. Unfortunately those contracts were to end now, at the end of November...

But great news came out of California today, via the Haiku website. Google has donated $5000 USD which has allowed both contracts, Adrien's and Pawel's, to be extended for another month, allowing them keep improving on their projects.

This isn't the first time Google has donated money to Haiku, as you'll recall, and it's great to see Haiku being noticed by one of the biggest corporations in the world. It could be that they've donated money to other organizations left out of this year's GSoC, but it could also be that someone at Google really likes Haiku. If that's the case, I would love to know who. Any clues?

Big thanks to Google.

Being a Haiku user/developer/tester (or all of the above), you'll know one of the things where it's lacking, it's an up-to-date browsing experience. And with that in mind, Adrién (aka PulkoMandy) has been working on updating WebPositive and WebKit, under a development contract. Ealier this morning Adrien posted his weekly update number 3. This week he's been making good progress, fixing issues with POST data, cookies handling (with a few more commits this morning) and even had time to write some documentation. He even found some time to make available packages for other software, such as Caya!

I know I'm not the only one following his progress, anxiously waiting for the final result, so head over to Haiku's website and read his full update. No preview build though, we have to wait a bit longer for that.

As you're well aware, for the past few months Ingo and Oliver have both been working for Haiku, under their development contracts, specifically working on package management. And though a bit later than originally planned (which was just before BeGeistert), Ingo has now merged the PM branch into Haiku's master branch. I'm sure they're both happy of this milestone, especially as they were being asked about "the merge" every 5 minutes while in Dusseldorf.

Not only that, but work is being done on HaikuDepot, an application which will be the frontend for the package manager. René did some work during the coding sprint at BG and also a Google Code Project has been created by Stephan, to tackle the web application side of things. The group has 4 other members, along of course with Stephan.

Things are moving along and it's great to see progress being made (also see Adrien's first weekly report about his work on WebPositive). Hopefully, if no "blockers" are found, we should have a new release in the near future.

The current nightlies are all pre-merge, but according to Matt, new images should be available soon, so once they're ready for download, get them, install them, test the hell out of them and make sure to report any bugs found.

Great job everyone!!