Accountapprovers, antispam, confirm, emeritus
4,925
edits
Changes
Created page with "Ten years ago, Netscape and Mozilla together put together a massive technical evangelism program to persuade an IE-focussed web to consider Gecko and other rendering engines. Tod..."
Ten years ago, Netscape and Mozilla together put together a massive technical evangelism program to persuade an IE-focussed web to consider Gecko and other rendering engines. Today, we need the same thing for a Webkit-focussed mobile web.
Here is what a kick-ass, successful Mobile evangelism program would involve:
==Site Evangelism==
The process goes something like this:
* Gather a list of sites to test (top 1700 worldwide, plus regional lists - Alexa?)
* Test several levels deep on each site, and file bugs for any parity problems
* Triage and assign to evangelism (site owner needs to change) or engineering (we need to change)
* If site needs to change, work out approximately how - the more detail, the better
* As appropriate, make contact with site owners to present suggested fix
Roles:
* Web site tester (QA ninjas)
* Problem diagnoser and fix suggester (web development ninjas)
* Communicating with sites (diplomatic, getting-to-yes types)
Today, frameworks are used much more than they used to be, so a high priority will be making sure JS frameworks and server-side libraries are all doing the right thing.
We need an army of people doing this. One way might be to ramp up community giving for mobile devices still further.
(Note: the focus is on parity problems, where the stock browser does better than us. It is a non-goal to improve sites which suck equally on all mobile browsers.)
==Documentation==
MDN needs to become the go-to destination for HTML mobile site development, with information about all browsers. We particularly need authoritative articles on:
* How to properly detect Desktop vs. Tablet vs. Mobile devices
* How to design a web site to support a Mobile or Tablet device
But also, our browser compatibility information needs to include the mobile web, and we need to make sure that angle is well represented in our writing.
The Hacks team needs to adopt a greater focus on mobile design and implementation - documenting best practices, pitfalls to avoid, best use of limited resources, etc.
==PR==
In the original push, we got some good press from major sites which had made the transition to cross-browser development, and the wins this gave them. We need to find similar example sites for the current push. (Interviews from that period: [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/espn-interview/01/index_en.html ESPN], [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2002/wired-interview/ Wired News], [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/media-farm/index_en.html Media Farm]). When the evangelism team comes across a particularly sympathetic site, they should put their name forward to the PR team.
==Tools==
Site testers need suitable tools. Venkman was built, in part, because some Netscape testers were having to use Visual Interdev from Microsoft to debug sites. We are in a much better place now than we were then, what with Firebug etc., but if the testers find they need extra tools, we need to build them.
In particular, we could do with
# an extension which makes Desktop Firefox behave as much like Mobile as possible (user agent, rendering changes, viewport, multitouch simulator). That way, we can leverage all sorts of existing desktop tools and large screens to debug mobile websites. And site authors will love it as well. (We leverage the fact that Gecko on mobile is the full web, same as the desktop, not some cut-down version.)
# an add-on which automatically detected certain common types of error (e.g. use of -webkit- CSS, use of constructs we don't yet support). This would save diagnosers a lot of time.
==Engineering==
We need to find an engineering base point from which to work. That involves deciding:
* what to do about the User Agent string in the short term (suggestion: remove Fennec/<ver> across the board, add "Mobile" for mobile version but not tablet)
* Whether and what -webkit- CSS to support (suggestion: get data on prevalence, but perhaps we could start by supporting their syntax for anything that we already support un-prefixed, as a backwards-compatibility measure)
==Allies==
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/ie_mobile_webkit_reversal/ Other vendors have the same problem], and they have significant resources at their disposal. Can we collaborate with them?
* Can we get influential web development blogs and sites to point to and recommend our resources?
<hr>
<br>
One of the people involved in the original Netscape Tech Evangelism program said:
<blockquote style="background-color: lightgray; border: 1px black solid; padding: 1em">
"Tech Evangelism was a thankless, never-ending task that was repetitive, intellectually draining, and a technical and career dead-end. The good things were that we had a great team and actually did have a positive effect and laid the groundwork for Firefox's success."
</blockquote>
So what are we waiting for? :-) Let's get stuck in!
Here is what a kick-ass, successful Mobile evangelism program would involve:
==Site Evangelism==
The process goes something like this:
* Gather a list of sites to test (top 1700 worldwide, plus regional lists - Alexa?)
* Test several levels deep on each site, and file bugs for any parity problems
* Triage and assign to evangelism (site owner needs to change) or engineering (we need to change)
* If site needs to change, work out approximately how - the more detail, the better
* As appropriate, make contact with site owners to present suggested fix
Roles:
* Web site tester (QA ninjas)
* Problem diagnoser and fix suggester (web development ninjas)
* Communicating with sites (diplomatic, getting-to-yes types)
Today, frameworks are used much more than they used to be, so a high priority will be making sure JS frameworks and server-side libraries are all doing the right thing.
We need an army of people doing this. One way might be to ramp up community giving for mobile devices still further.
(Note: the focus is on parity problems, where the stock browser does better than us. It is a non-goal to improve sites which suck equally on all mobile browsers.)
==Documentation==
MDN needs to become the go-to destination for HTML mobile site development, with information about all browsers. We particularly need authoritative articles on:
* How to properly detect Desktop vs. Tablet vs. Mobile devices
* How to design a web site to support a Mobile or Tablet device
But also, our browser compatibility information needs to include the mobile web, and we need to make sure that angle is well represented in our writing.
The Hacks team needs to adopt a greater focus on mobile design and implementation - documenting best practices, pitfalls to avoid, best use of limited resources, etc.
==PR==
In the original push, we got some good press from major sites which had made the transition to cross-browser development, and the wins this gave them. We need to find similar example sites for the current push. (Interviews from that period: [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/espn-interview/01/index_en.html ESPN], [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2002/wired-interview/ Wired News], [http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/media-farm/index_en.html Media Farm]). When the evangelism team comes across a particularly sympathetic site, they should put their name forward to the PR team.
==Tools==
Site testers need suitable tools. Venkman was built, in part, because some Netscape testers were having to use Visual Interdev from Microsoft to debug sites. We are in a much better place now than we were then, what with Firebug etc., but if the testers find they need extra tools, we need to build them.
In particular, we could do with
# an extension which makes Desktop Firefox behave as much like Mobile as possible (user agent, rendering changes, viewport, multitouch simulator). That way, we can leverage all sorts of existing desktop tools and large screens to debug mobile websites. And site authors will love it as well. (We leverage the fact that Gecko on mobile is the full web, same as the desktop, not some cut-down version.)
# an add-on which automatically detected certain common types of error (e.g. use of -webkit- CSS, use of constructs we don't yet support). This would save diagnosers a lot of time.
==Engineering==
We need to find an engineering base point from which to work. That involves deciding:
* what to do about the User Agent string in the short term (suggestion: remove Fennec/<ver> across the board, add "Mobile" for mobile version but not tablet)
* Whether and what -webkit- CSS to support (suggestion: get data on prevalence, but perhaps we could start by supporting their syntax for anything that we already support un-prefixed, as a backwards-compatibility measure)
==Allies==
* [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/ie_mobile_webkit_reversal/ Other vendors have the same problem], and they have significant resources at their disposal. Can we collaborate with them?
* Can we get influential web development blogs and sites to point to and recommend our resources?
<hr>
<br>
One of the people involved in the original Netscape Tech Evangelism program said:
<blockquote style="background-color: lightgray; border: 1px black solid; padding: 1em">
"Tech Evangelism was a thankless, never-ending task that was repetitive, intellectually draining, and a technical and career dead-end. The good things were that we had a great team and actually did have a positive effect and laid the groundwork for Firefox's success."
</blockquote>
So what are we waiting for? :-) Let's get stuck in!
