Apps
Web App Developer Initiative
In 2015, Mozilla launched an initiative to energize web app development. The initiative invites the participation of browser makers, web frameworks, cloud service providers, and content providers. What unites all these disparate parties is a belief in the power of web apps that work reliably with bad networks, reengage users with notifications, and can be installed like native apps. We believe developers will use these technologies to deliver experiences that will redefine the role of the web.
In the short term, we are focused on the combination of several API's -- service workers, web push, and the W3C app app manifest.
Communications
Team
WADI is the work of many hands across Mozilla in many different groups. Among those spending most of their time on WADI are Thomas Elin, Program Manager; Harald Kirschner, Engineering Manager; Myk Melez, Software Architect; Bill Walker, Senior Manager. Engineers in Harald's team working on WADI include David Walsh, Brendan Dahl, Piotr Zalewa, Marco Castelluccio, Tim Abraldes, and Salvador de la Puente González.
Find us on IRC
- We use the #apps channel on Mozilla's IRC server
Mailing Lists
- apps@mozilla.com - Broader opt-in list for those interested in regular WADI updates.
- marketplace-content-ecosystem@mozilla.com - Internal WADI members. Used for brainstorming and general conversation.
Reading List
- Paul Kinlin, "Living with Web Apps"
- In this post, Paul gives an hour-by-hour journal of a day using only web content on his smartphone. Along the way he offers a list of "ten deadly sins of a mobile web app" along with other reflections on his experience.
- Alex Russell, "Progressive Apps: Escaping Tabs without Losing our Soul"
- Alex lays out his best practices for modern web development based around responsive design and single-page apps, and moves on to how the addition of offlining and "save to home screen" capabilities enrich the mobile web.
- Alex Komoroske and Elisabeth Morant, "The Next Generation Mobile Web"
- In this 40 minute Google I/O talk, Alex and Elisabeth show examples using these new API's, especially concentrating on how web push creates exciting new opportunities for user reengagement.
Projects
Oghliner
Ship v1 of Oghliner, a library/tool to offline web apps using Service Workers and deploy them to GitHub Pages. We will base this on top of several existing open source projects, including sw-precache from the Chrome team (https://github.com/GoogleChrome/sw-precache).
- Oghliner v1 - https://github.com/mozilla/oghliner
Platatus
Ship MVP of at least one serious offline/progressive web app. We need to explore the space of possible use cases – to help developers, to find bugs in the implementation, to expand our own understanding. Much of the work of building even simple demo apps is app-related and not related to the underlying technologies. The leading candidate is Platatus, an app that offers a detailed, data-driven view of Mozilla's progress on delivering the technologies behind Progressive Web apps.
- Platatus MVP - https://github.com/mozilla/platatus - minimal viable prototype of reference app that describes standardization/implementation status of web platform features
Service Worker Cookbook
Create a cookbook of self-contained code snippets showing how to use Service Workers to achieve various kinds of cacheing and push notification use cases.
History
2015 Q4 Deliverables
In Q4, we prepared for the launch of both Web Push and Service Workers in Firefox 44 by building Oghliner, the Service Worker cookbook, and the Platform Status page.
2015 Q3 Deliverables
In Q3, our goals for WADI engineering were (1) to transition off our legacy projects, (2) to educate ourselves about serviceworkers and web push, and (3) to plan for Q4. We had roughly a month of Q3 to work with. We accomplished these goals by encouraging each engineer to build small prototypes and sharing what we learned in a daily standup. These prototypes led to our presentation in the Firefox OS all-hands, a Github Universe talk, as well as the filing of several important platform and product bugs (and fixing of one!).
- https://firekey.org/
- https://brendandahl.github.io/pdfcollection/
- https://marco-c.github.io/watchy/#/series
- https://mozilla.github.io/high-fidelity/#/podcasts
Bug tracking
These are bugs we've identified as critical to our ability to deploy these technologies to developers. We use bug 1201717 to track them.
| ID | Summary | Priority | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 997779 | [Meta] Implement Web Manifest spec in Gecko | P3 | NEW |
| 1183625 | support fetch window option | P5 | NEW |
| 1203274 | Service worker wakeup and lifetime telemetry | P3 | NEW |
| 1221965 | Allow manually triggering a push subscription change | P2 | NEW |
| 1228309 | 'online' event triggered when WiFi is turned on, before connecting to any network | P3 | NEW |
| 1253377 | [meta] Ember devtools support | P3 | NEW |
6 Total; 6 Open (100%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);
Other Resources
Program Plan tracking goal progression and key activities
(this page previously contained information about Firefox OS Apps)