Articles for October 2017
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Saying Goodbye to Firebug
The most popular and powerful web development tool. Firebug has been a phenomenal success. Over its 12-year lifespan, the open source tool developed a near cult following among web developers. When it came out in 2005, Firebug was the first tool to let programmers inspect, edit, and debug code right in the Firefox browser.
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Add Progressive Web Apps to your Home screen in Firefox for Android
Nowadays, practically all websites are built with responsive web design principles at their core: truly a dramatic improvement over yesteryear’s desktop-focused web. Over the last two years, a similar and complementary evolution has been happening: Progressive Web Apps (PWA), an umbrella term for a new set of standardized browser technologies that combine the low-friction nature of the web with the reliability and capabilities we typically associate with native apps, are gaining ground on mobile and desktop.
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How we rebuilt the viewsourceconf.org website
There are a lot of interesting challenges when working with legacy code at a large scale, but rebuilding from scratch usually isn’t an option. Recently we had the chance to start fresh and rebuild Mozilla's View Source website for the upcoming conference in London. Here are a few highlights of the architectural decisions we made to make the site faster, more secure, and more reliable.
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An Introduction to CSS Grid Layout: Part 1
CSS Grid Layout is completely changing the game for web design. It allows us to create complex layouts on the web using simple CSS. Part 1 of this 2-part primer introduces the vocabulary of CSS Grid and the new Firefox DevTools playground, and shows you how to start coding.
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An Introduction to CSS Grid Layout: Part 2
In Part 2 of this 2-part introduction Dan Brown walks you through three different methods for creating the same layout and points you to the Firefox DevTools Playground to continue learning and exploring.
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Remaking Lightbeam as a browser extension
You may have heard of browser extensions — the technology for building extensions in Firefox has been modernized to support Web standards, and is one of the reasons why Firefox Quantum will be the fastest and most stable release yet. This post looks at conceptual differences between a browser extension and a traditional web application, illustrated with some practical examples and tips from the author's experience developing Lightbeam.
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The whole web at maximum FPS: How WebRender gets rid of jank
The Firefox Quantum release is getting close. It brings many performance improvements, including the super fast CSS engine that we brought over from Servo. But there’s another big piece of Servo technology that’s not in Firefox Quantum quite yet, though it’s coming soon. That’s WebRender, which is being added to Firefox as part of the […]
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Firefox 56: Last Stop before Quantum
Here at Mozilla, we’re extremely excited about next month’s release of Firefox Quantum, with massive speed improvements, a brand new UI, and many Developer Tools upgrades -- available now in Developer Edition. But last week's general release of Firefox 56 features good news for developers now - including "headless mode" across all OSes, our modern new debugger, and much more.
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An overview of Containers for add-on developers
Containers work by giving users the ability to place barriers on the flow of data across sites by isolating cookies, indexedDB, localStorage, and caches within discrete browsing contexts. This in-depth introduction to Containers and Container extensions explores the capabilities of Containers and contextual identity for developers.
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Multi-user experiences with A-Frame
Salva de la Puente describes the
sharedspacecomponent he's built, which brings the power of WebRTC to A-Frame users. The component provides a collaboration model where participants can join or leave a named space, share audio and state, and send JSON-serializable objects to other peers. Check it out!
