Engagement/Developer Engagement/DevPulse/August2014

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Welcome to the 6th edition of DevPulse: a monthly glance at stuff happening among and for developers, sourced by many. Our goal is to create greater transparency and collaboration around the various efforts at Mozilla to support mobile, web & app developers.

Developer world news

Developer survey. Each quarter, consultancy Vision Mobile surveys 10,000 app developers regarding tools, platforms and strategies they use. Mozilla was a sponsor of the Q3 survey, whose results were announced late last month. Key findings include:

  • HTML5 is the most widely used language at 42% of developers; Java, the native language on Android, is the next most popular at 38%.
  • A surprisingly high 47% of iOS developers and 42% of Android developers are using something other than the native language on their platforms.
  • The majority of app businesses are not sustainable at current revenue levels. 50% of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers are below the ‘app poverty line” of $500 per app per month.

Developer Relations is working with the Insights & Strategy group to develop intelligence and Mozilla-specific action plans from the survey results. Expect to hear more.

App & Web Developer Perspectives

Developer contributor profiles. See how app developers have contributed to Mozilla in Developer Relations' July 29 Town Hall presentation:

Firefox OS 2.0 redesign. Contributor Elio Qoshi provides a nice introduction to some upcoming features in the new redesign in Firefox OS 2.0

Developer feedback.

  • Developers continue to provide constructive ideas for Developer Tools on our UserVoice channel. We have also how shipped two versions of Firefox Aurora with feature suggestions from developers through UserVoice baked into the product (specifically, Firefox 32 and Firefox 33). The Developer Tools team also had a 99% response rate to all submitted ideas!
  • Developers can also provide feedback and ask questions and provide feedback on Mozilla's Stack Overflow pages. These cover Firefox, Firefox OS, Firefox developer tools and HTML5 apps. Recent activity has increased, with 26 questions gaining activity vs. 18 in June.

Project & Event Highlights

At OSCON in Portland this year Mozilla had five speakers, multiple press interviews, two birds-of-a-feather sessions, an OSCON Kids Day Webmaker workshop, a booth with Firefox OS and Developer Tools demos, and a social event at the Mozilla Portland office. Whether partaking in free giant Firefox donuts or receiving free Firefox airbrush tattoos, the OSCON attendees knew Mozilla was there in a big way. Preliminary results include over 36K Twitter impressions, doubling the weekly rate of Flame sales, and very significant increases in views and interactions with Mozilla developer tools content.

Chris Heilmann has been busy! He delivered a keynote at the inaugural ForwardJS conference, "The Next Challenge of the Web Is Us", and wrote a post on the Medium blogging platform titled "Bearable Wearables" that questions the utility of smart watches and suggests how they can be improved. Mozilla developer Solédad Penades talked about "Embracing Failure" at Cascadia JS.

MozFest happens every year (this year October 24-26) in London to raise public awareness of the open web and increasing web literacy. MozFest draws a spectrum of innovators, makers, educators, parents, kids with varying technology knowledge and is very participatory with hands-on sessions and interactive workshops. Ali Spivak is soliciting proposals to help us get and share ideas for the web with non-developers e.g. ideas for apps, web literacy, teaching web development skills, etc. Final proposals for sessions must be submitted by August 22; when submitting, please note if the track is for/by developers by indicating "Mozilla Developers" in either in the description or the Affiliation fields.

New on MDN!

"Geekery" Highlights

Mozilla Hacks seeks to have a diverse set of authors representing Mozilla employees, community and the outside world (e.g. Adobe, Opera) writing about both Mozilla initiatives and products as well as topics useful for any developer building for the Open Web. Here is a breakdown of this in action during Q2 + July:

  • July: 9 authors (22% external)
  • June: 14 authors (14% external)
  • May: 12 authors (33% external)
  • April: 12 authors (41% external)

Here's a sample from app developer Mahmoud Nouman: "Turn your Facebook Page into a Firefox OS Mobile App".

Engaging with Developers Together

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