You are receiving this email as a group of people interested in and/or
working closely with Developer Relations to support app & web developers
worldwide. This is intended to provide highlights about what is
happening among web & app developers as well as to foster greater points
of collaboration among Mozilla to support them.
Archives of this monthly newsletter will be posted on theDeveloper
Relations wiki
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Engagement/Developer_Engagement>. We welcome
your feedback!
Welcome to the inaugural edition of DevPulse: a monthly glance at stuff
happening among developers & Mozilla!
Developer news.
*
Game Developer Conference (GDC).Mozilla had a strong presence at
last week's GDC conference in San Francisco. Firefox's ability to
power gaming on the web was demonstrated through various demos,
presentations and partner announcements. Highlights include:
o
Mozilla & Unity announcement
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/18/mozilla-and-unity-deliver-award-winning-game-engine-to-the-web/>of
new deployment tools bringing Unity-authored games to the Web
without the need for plugins, This builds onexisting work
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/12/mozilla-and-epic-preview-unreal-engine-4-running-in-firefox/>to
broaden the impact of gaming on the web.
o
Presentations by various Mozillians includingMartin Best
<https://twitter.com/sieth_mysix>,Angelina Fabbro
<https://twitter.com/angelinamagnum>,Bill Maggs
<https://mozillians.org/en-US/u/wmaggs/>,Vladimir Vukic'evic'
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vuki%C4%87evi%C4%87>,Luke
Wagner <https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/>andAlon Zakai
<https://twitter.com/kripken>ranging from a high level overview
of the state of the Web as a gaming platform to a deep dive into
game developer tools from Mozilla.
o
Constant browser and Firefox OS demos at the Mozilla stand,
reaching interested game developers, game publishers, and students.
*
One major step for open web apps! Last week Firefox for Android Beta
(Fx29)
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox_beta>was
released into the Google Play Store. This means that developers who
submit an app to the Firefox Marketplace
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Marketplace/Submission/Submitting_an_app>will
soon get the option of making their app available to Android.
Details are on MDN
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Marketplace/Publishing/Open_web_apps_for_android>and
Hacks
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/03/better-integration-for-open-web-apps-on-android/>!
*
Guest posts on Hacks. We've had some great guests post on the
MozillaHacks blog <http://hacks.mozilla.org>. A sampling:
o
Flambe Provides Support for Firefox OS
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/03/flambe-provides-support-for-firefox-os/%29>by
lead Flambe developerBruno Garcia
<https://github.com/aduros>addresses how this flexible
cross-platform 2D game engine now integrates easily with Firefox
OS (as demonstrated inNickeloden Games <http://nick.com/games>)
o
The Translation of the Firetext App
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/03/translation-of-firetext-app/>by
MozillianJoshua Smith
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/author/joshuasmith/>, who developed
this popular open source text editor for Firefox OS, and then
got it localized in 20 languages!
o
jsDelivr -- The advanced open source public CDN
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/03/jsdelivr-the-advanced-open-source-public-cdn/>byDmitriy
Akulov <http://www.jsdelivr.com/>outlines Dmitriy's free and
open source Content Delivery Network (CDN), jsDelivr, for
developers and webmasters
Recent & upcoming Mozilla projects & event highlights
*
Firefox OS video series. We recently launched
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/03/app-basics-for-firefoxos/>a
series of videos along
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Screencast_series:_App_Basics_for_Firefox_OS%20>with
our partner Telenor which outline the basics of Firefox OS and
getting an app onto Marketplace. These videos are all available on
YouTube and will also be downloadable for those wishing to use them
in their own training materials. The intended audience is web
developers who want to enter app development. The videos are kept
short and simple, and there is accompanying demo code for hands-on
learning.
*
MDN Work Weekend. TheMozilla Developer Network (MDN)
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/>team of staff & contributors
assembled in Paris earlier this month and did a lot of work.
Highlights include improvements to the overall platform (including a
"slaughter" of 137 bugs) and content (including categorizing content
by "Beginner," "Intermediate" and "Advanced" level) and process
(including guidelines and tools for new contributors and developer
events). Direct from staff and contributors wrote more inthis post
<https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2014/03/19/the-best-mdn-event-so-far-mdn-community-weekend-march-2014-paris/>,
and full details of the sessions arehere
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/MDN/Work_Weekends/Paris-March-2014#COMPLETED>.
*
MDN Learning Project <https://wiki.mozilla.org/MDN/Learning_Area>.
This year MDN is kicking off initiatives to improve experiences for
beginners. Most recently, this entailed a survey of 70 participants
providing actionable insights including enhanced organization of
content and providing live, editable content for code. View the full
reporthere
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/9/93/Learnin-area-survey-2014.pdf>.
*
Phones for PhoneGap apps. Mozilla's program offering developers of
great PhoneGap (which allows developers to quickly and easily port
existing apps to platforms like Firefox OS) apps is in full swing.
Learn more about the program and how to build apps in Cordova (the
underlying software in PhoneGap that allows mobile application
developers to access native device functions). More on using Cordova
(and the program)here
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-firefox-os/>,
and you can also check outa sample app
<https://github.com/JasonWeathersby/cordovasample>byJason Weathersby
<https://hacks.mozilla.org/author/jasonweathersby/>showing how to
port a Cordova App to Firefox OS.
App & web developer Perspectives
*
Stack Overflow. Learn from and participate in ongoing discussions
among Firefox OS app developers onStack Overflow
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/firefox-os>.
*
User research.Larissa Co and Cori Schauer in our UX group have met
with DevReland DevTools to establish a plan to get a better
understanding of how app developers work and what makes them
effective. They are meeting with app developers in both the San
Francisco Bay Area and Warsaw this month. Preliminarylearnings include:
o
Pain points exist around submitting an app to multiple
marketplaces, app discovery and a lack of information around
Firefox tools.
o
Casual meetup groups (and not conferences) are where most of the
Bay Area developers (especially the hobbyists) learn about new
technology. Participants specifically said they constantly hear
about what they can do with the Chrome browser and their dev
tools, but don't hear much about Firefox in their local communities.
o
Ongoing information on this research is being shared on the
[email protected].
*
Keep learning. We've also created a "MozAppDev-Alliance" group list
for Mozillians across various groups and functions who are
interested in the overall app developer experience. Sign uphere
<https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozappdev-alliance%20>.
*
Upcoming events. We sponsor developer events that support the open
web. Through our worldwide network of Mozillians, we participate in
technical events with highly engaged speakers and attendees. All of
our sponsored events have one or more engaged Mozillians, and our
presence is focused on helping developers create awesome content for
the open web. Of note:
o
PyCon <https://us.pycon.org/2014/>(April 9-17, Montreal,
Canada). Mozilla is helping sponsor one of the largest gathering
of the Python open source community. Let us know if you will be
there! <https://us.pycon.org/2014/>
o
Full details on upcoming events can be foundhere
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/events>.
"Geekery Highlights."We have a lot of data-lovers wanting to help app
developers, and that data often leads to actionable insights! Some from
this month:
*
Demographics. Google Analytics confirms a large percentage (61%) of
MDN & Hacks visitors are 18-34 years old. Action item: we plan to
focus on University outreach to help grow contribution.
*
Sign-ins. Only 1% of MDN visitors sign in, yet a full 7% of
signed-in MDN users contribute to the wiki. Action item: we are
working to improve MDN's sign-in flow.
*
More MDN site metrics & KPIsare available inthe February State of
MDN report
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.engagement.developers/QM88sL32CbM/H3cOQ-8fx9gJ>
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.engagement.developers/QM88sL32CbM/H3cOQ-8fx9gJ>
Supporting developers together.
*
Support community resources: Code Firefox. Contributor Brian Bondy
has builtCode Firefox <http://www.codefirefox.com/>, a one-stop
resource to learn everything about Firefox. Have a play, see what
you like about it and share what is missing.
*
Participate in a developer event.We have various opportunities to
participate in events worldwide. If you know of a developer-related
event that you believe Mozilla should participate in, please tell us
morehere <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/form.dev-engagement-event>.
*
Translate. Thevideo series with Telenor
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Screencast_series:_App_Basics_for_Firefox_OS%20>will
be distributed in emerging markets for developers in various
languages so help translating subtitles and transcripts is
appreciated. We will add a subtitling sectionto the wiki page
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Screencast_series:_App_Basics_for_Firefox_OS%20>once
the series is out.
*
Tell us what code you need. We've gotten feedback that having live,
editable code samples on MDN would be helpful. Please submit any
ideas for this here:https://etherpad.mozilla.org/mdn-code-samples
*
Share what developer-friendly things are coming up. We'd love to
hear about projects, events and other activities for developers, and
help out if we can! You can participate on ourdist list
<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/engagement-developers>, or send
this stuff directly to Diane ([email protected]).
*
Talk with us. We have an open meeting in the #devrel IRC each
Tuesday at 9am PST. Agendas and minutes arehere
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Engagement/Developer_Engagement/Meetings>.
--
*Diane (Bisgeier) Tate*
Program Manager, Mozilla Developer Engagement
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/>
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> -- @tbiz
<http://twitter.com/tbiz> -- US Mobile: +1-415-250-1724
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