But how is that different from the status quo? A serious of hacks posts without a common voice would not be what convinced me to use a particular set of tools. That’s what Hacks, or A List Apart, or whatever is for—and they’re great resources. But when I, as a developer, go to “How do I make web apps for Mozilla?” page I want not only guidance, but brief and instructive guidance. I don’t want to read twelve blog posts in twelve voices from twelve points in time on six frameworks or pieces. I want a README like this: https://github.com/gcollazo/brunch-with-ember-reloaded
I recently used this skeleton for a personal app, and found it AMAZING. It’s a no-nonsense, get-started approach that had me at a functioning app in no time. Plus: although it made choices FOR ME, it allowed me to change things I felt opinionated on. Part of our messaging has always been “it’s the web and you can do what you want”. Developers who don’t like our choices can try to convince us of better ones and will either change our minds (great!) or won’t (that’s fine), but they are the ones who already have opinions. There are lots of devs who don’t care whether it’s stylus or SCSS or SASS or Less or CSS—I’m one of them. We should have solutions that cover a LOT of ground at once and are no-assembly-required, but I’m cool if we build in ways advanced people can make select choices. I don’t want readers taking any of our recommendations as “stale”. - tofumatt On February 19, 2014 at 18:26:08, Janet Swisher ([email protected]) wrote: I can see this being done simply as a category of posts on Hacks. That way, it's individual developers, who may or may not be staff, endorsing a collection of tools for a particular purpose. If their views change, they can make an update or a new post. Readers could view the whole collection of recommendations, with the implicit understanding (since it's a blog) that older posts are staler than new ones. On 2/19/14 3:51 PM, Stormy Peters wrote: On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 9:20 AM, Bill Maggs <[email protected]> wrote: Adding to Kumar's voice here, we can be more opinionated, but can't just say it's MoCo that is doing the recommendations. I think Mozilla has a good track record of the community being clearly identified as the source, and we can do that here, too. Especially since in the framework-crazy world of today, we are sure to piss some developers off with any choice, however well thought through. I think we can make recommendations in a non-exclusive way. We can say "Hey, you need an offline solution, here's one we tried that works well." If people have suggestions or recommendations to make, we have writers that can help frame it appropriately. Stormy And: If we can just come up with a innovative solution for list scrolling that combines components with platform changes that will be easy for the other browsers to adopt, then we will get a ton of good will. I have been talking about this one for some time. Some progress now? Maybe we should document on MDN all the approaches taken by potch, Arron, and others, the good and the bad? It's a worthy effort. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kumar McMillan" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: "apps" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:03:18 AM Subject: Re: Strong recommendations to help developers make better apps On Feb 18, 2014, at 5:52 PM, Fred Wenzel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everyone! > > For developers, building apps on the Web platform can pose a > fragmentation problem: For every development concern, there are often a > dozen or more possible options to consider, without clear pros or cons. > Web developers can feel intimidated not simply by their choices, but by > how _similar_ their choices are. > > While this openness and community is a virtue, it leads to "choice > paralysis" and the wrong impression that the Web is a harder platform to > develop for than more restrictive alternatives. > > However, by making strong, informed recommendations to developers, we > can help turn the variety of development tools available on the Web from > a daunting proposition into an empowering one. > > A great example of this is the significant attention[1] tofumatt's > localForage[2] project has received. It provides a cross-platform, > asynchronous storage library that "just works". With its straightforward > API, it _removes_ an entire monotonous development choice for > developers. The community honored this drastic simplification with > almost 2000(!) "stars" on github in just a few days. > > Furthermore, we have a responsibility to our developers to ensure that > certain frameworks, libraries, etc., have been tested and work well with > our own and (eventually) other target platforms. > > Our developer-facing groups (Apps Engineering, Developer Relations and > Developer Tools in particular) are collaborating to expand this effort > systematically across the various parts of the development experience. > > > Some projects that are already in flight include: > > - web-components-based (featuring Brick) app templates that work out of > the box > - additional such components for hard, yet common problems such as > scrolling of large lists Sounds like a fantastic idea! > - Mozilla-endorsed framework and tool chain for apps Instead of Mozilla-endorsed might we consider community-endorsed? i.e. endorsed by a community of experts. If we want to make Mozilla the central authority we just need to plan for what to do when our ratings go stale. For example, should we revisit each endorsement periodically? The state of tech changes so fast; this makes me think crowd sourcing it might be more effective. > - using the Firefox App Manager to start a new project from a template > and allow developing on it right then and there, no other tools needed > - submitting an app straight to the Marketplace from the App Manager > - an updated "MDN Apps Zone" experience focusing on developer concerns > and our materials and recommendations for each case > > > If this whetted your appetite, great! 2014 is an exciting year to be an > apps developer! All this and more is coming--step by step--to a > developer experience near you. > > If you have any question or comments, speak up, or step by #apps on IRC! > > Thanks, > Fred Wenzel > > > [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/localforage-offline-storage-improved/ > [2] https://github.com/mozilla/localForage -- Janet Swisher Mozilla Developer Network Developer Engagement Community Organizer _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
