Hi Pablo, I’m Chris Mills from the MDN team, and I’ve been reading this thread with great interest. Thanks for the insights - anything that can help us make MDN better is much appreciated.
So in terms of making the situation better in the App Center, I’m seeing these things: * Provide a clear idea of what Firefox OS versions developers should be developing for. We haven’t got this, and I agree we should say something about it. We should advise 1.1, imo, or at least tell developers to provide fallbacks for 1.1 if they are including >1.1 styling of script features, if possible. * Provide more obvious ideas of what features work on Firefox OS. I’ve added in Firefox OS support info to a lot of our API pages, but I think I need to be more vigilant about this. Another idea I had was to include an icon bar at the top of each page so that readers can quickly see what browsers/devices support that feature, without having to go all the way to the bottom of the page. I’ll write up some specs/mockups for this soon. * Provide more guidance for those starting out than just the single quickstart. We are working on a series of dev recommendations, tutorials and tools that should help a lot with this. More soon! Is there anything else I have missed? If you have more ideas about improving Apps/Firefox OS content on MDN, please feel free to sent them to me. Best regards, Chris Mills Senior tech writer || Mozilla developer.mozilla.org || MDN [email protected] || @chrisdavidmills On 5 May 2014, at 13:23, Pablo Brasero Moreno <[email protected]> wrote: > On 4 May 2014 18:52, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> First of all, you speak about FxOS 1.2+. I think you're mistaken, you >> wanted to speak about FxOS 1.3+ >> yes, the simulator exists for 1.2, but the differences between 1.1 and 1.2 >> are not big, while the support for flexboxes arrives in 1.3 (and Gecko 28) >> see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/B2G_Landing >> and https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/28.0/releasenotes/ >> > > You are correct, perhaps I should have said 1.3 instead of 1.2. I mentioned > 1.2 because it implements single-line flexboxes, and I thought I had seen > it performing better in some flexbox examples, but maybe I got confused at > some point. Let's say 1.3+ then. > > >> the categories you've given are still developers ;) So, it's our work to >> know which technology is available or not (moreover, the MDN is very clear >> on it! see >> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=CSS%2FTutorials%2FUsing_CSS_flexible_boxes#Browser_compatibilityfor >> the flexbox example) >> > > Sure they are all developers, but I wanted to separate them into categories > based on how they may become aware of the limitations. > > I actually disagree that MDN is very clear on it. MDN does make an effort > to be clear, but it is not necessarily always successful. In the example > you mention, that page displays the compatible Gecko versions. From there > to FxOS version there's another research step, as developers won't > necessarily know the mapping by heart, or even be aware of it. > > The way I see it, new developers will arrive and follow the steps outlined > on the Quickstart guide: > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/QuickstartAt some point > they'll follow the links on it and visit > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Design, which encourages the use > of flexboxes. A newly arrived developer is not going to even be aware of > these problems, and probably won't even realise until they test the app on > their own device (assuming they have a 1.0.1/1.1 handset). > > Yes, MDN makes an effort to list support levels for each feature, but also > suffers from: > > * Lack of a clear route for new developers to follow. Instead there's a > quickstart page that then sends them off to unrelated, generic pages on MDN > that explain things, but not from the perspective they need. > > * Information density. There's so much that newly arrived developers will > have difficulties knowing what to look at, and what is actually relevant to > them. > > I don't mean to say that MDN is not a great resource: it is great indeed. > It's just that it doesn't necessarily fulfill those specific needs. This is > in the same way as Wikipedia is not great as a standalone history course > because you'd not even know where to start from. > > Yes and no. You can find some applications that have in their description >> "only run on FxOS 1.3 or above". If you specify it, the reviewer will test >> your application with a compatible version of FxOS ;) >> > > Yeah, that's actually great. It has the problem that some developers won't > even be aware of their incompatibility with old versions, but hopefully > reviewers will catch those. > > >> And to answer Pablo Brasero Moreno: >> >> I completely agree with you, and the system of autodetection of Mozilla is >> a good idea (an app that needs geolocation will not be installable on a >> device that doesn't have it). >> HOWEVER, this detection is only on JavaScript APIs. I use flexbox in my >> app, so my app is only available for 1.3+, but there is no detection for >> it, nor the user will be told that the app won't run on its device! >> unless the user know its current version of FxOS and read the complete >> description of the app. You know lots of people that are not in IT that >> even know what's the name of their phone OS? >> > > Sure, I think we have a misunderstanding here. Of course there does need to > be that filtering. People can't be expected to know or not whether their > device supports this API or that CSS property. > > When I asked what kind of users have FxOS phones, I was wondering whether > there are actually any users who are not tech savvy. Simply because I can't > see the marketing angle to sell these devices to non-techies at the moment. > There perfectly can be one, but since I don't know the markets, I can't see > it myself. > > The reason for my asking that is that, if there are no "real" end users > yet, all this may not be a problem yet. We have time to develop apps and > catch up in terms of apps, functionality, etc, to make the phones appealing > to markets. > > -- > Pablo Brasero Moreno > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > dev-webapps mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
