Engagement/Developer Engagement/Technical Evangelism/Firefox OS App L10n

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Overview

  • Project leader: Christie Koehler (User:Ckoehler)
  • Contributors:: Jason Weathersby

Developer Engagement has specific goals around increasing Firefox OS apps accepted to the Firefox Marketplace. Because we want apps to be available in as many locales as possible, we need to support developers in their localization efforts. This support has two components:

  1. Documentation: provide useful documentation instructing developers about how to localize their apps.
  2. Platform: provide an easy mechanism for developers to collect localized content for thier apps.

Component: Documentation

  • Status: On-track
  • Outstanding tasks:
    • port Jason's article to MDN
    • document localization of Firefox OS boilerplate
    • tbd

Jason Weathersby has started the documentation effort with a blog post on hacks, titled Localizing Firefox OS Apps.

Additional Hacks articles are planned as each of the platform component phases are completed (see below). Content from Hacks will be consolidated and posted on MDN.

Component: Platform

Requirements

  • Status: Complete

The platform component has the following requirements:

  1. Whatever solution we offer should be considerate of both our existing localizer community, as well as to new localizers.
  2. Ideally, the platform could support volunteer and paid localizations with minimal changes in workflow. The reason we want to support paid localizations is two-fold: a) to give developers a choice, and b) to minimize the burden on volunteer localizers, particularly since there is no constraint that Firefox OS apps be open source (and localizers may not be interested in unpaid localizations for closed-source apps).
  3. Because there are many ways to localize web apps, the platform should support multiple localization formats (including gettext-based formats, key-value JSON and Mozilla properties).
  4. Easy of use for both developers and localizers. This is difficult to quantify, but generally means that both a command line and web-based interface be available and that the platform be flexible enough to fit within a variety of development workflows.
  5. Ability to inter-operate with open badges.

Possible Solutions

  • Status: Complete

The following platforms were considered:

We've selected Transifex as the platform to use in our proof of concept, because it:

  • offers both web-based and command-line tool that can integrate into almost any project workflow
  • supports a wide range of file formats
  • has team coordination features that will allow us a dashboard view of apps wanting localization
  • is already used by a large community of translators
  • supports paid translations

Proof of Concept

  • Status: On-track
  • Outstanding tasks: Merge localized code into upstream repository (from christi3k to robertnyman).

Using the method Jason documents in his Hacks article, Robert Nyman's Firefox OS Boilerplate app is now localizable and strings are available on Transifex.

Recruit "Seed" Apps + Translations

  • Status: In-progress
  • Outstanding tasks:
    • Merge localized code for Firefox OS Boilerplate into upstream repository (from christi3k to robertnyman)
    • Continue gathering translations
    • Identify 3-6 developers and invite them to localize their apps
    • Help invited developers complete localization in a few locales

Before a full launch, we want to have a handful of apps, including the Boilerplate, on Transifex and ready for localization and with some translations submitted.

Launch

  • Status: Not started
  • Outstanding tasks: TBD

Continuing Recruitment

  • Status: Not started
  • Outstanding tasks: TBD