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  1. A Wall Powered by EventSource and Server-Sent Events

    • by • Demo, Event, Firefox Aurora • 23 comments

    EventSource landed in Aurora 6. It is a new and simplified way to open long-lived connections to a server, and let the browser create events as the server streams messages to the client. It is also available in Chrome and Opera and there are fallback solutions for other browsers.

    Creating a wall/feed for a social app…

    …in a few lines of code (full project available on Github).

    The messages

    The server will send two kinds of messages:
     ● simple messages, starting on a new line prefixed with “data:”
     ● messages with specific event names, similar to simple messages but with “event: <anEventName>” on the previous line

    In this case, simple messages are treated as users’ statuses and specific events will be inserted in the timeline with specific colors, although they could appear in different places on the page. The message data will be sent as JSON, although it could be flat text strings.

    The server

    The server will be a dummy .php script that reads sample statuses from a text files and stream them, one at a time, to the client, using appropriate headers.

    The Client

    The client will create an event source and register event handlers for each specific event name, as well as an onmessage handler for simple messages.

    The missing pieces of the code are available on Github.

    Fallbacks

    Here is a short list of polyfills/fallbacks available for other browsers:
     ● Remy Sharp’s polyfill
     ● Yaffle’s polyfill
     ● Rick Waldron’s jquery plugin

    Have you got examples of EventSource based Web app to share?

  2. DOM MutationObserver – reacting to DOM changes without killing browser performance.

    • by • Add-ons, DOM, Event, Firefox, Firefox Nightly • 19 comments

    DOM Mutation Events seemed like a great idea at the time – as web developers create a more dynamic web it seems natural that we would welcome the ability to listen for changes in the DOM and react to them. In practice however DOM Mutation Events were a major performance and stability issue and have been deprecated for over a year.

    The original idea behind DOM Mutation Events is still appealing, however, and so in September 2011 a group of Google and Mozilla engineers announced a new proposal that would offer similar functionality with improved performance: DOM MutationObserver. This new DOM Api is available in Firefox and Webkit nightly builds, as well as Chrome 18.

    At it’s simplest, a MutationObserver implementation looks like this:

    // select the target node
var target = document.querySelector('#some-id');
 
// create an observer instance
var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
    mutations.forEach(function(mutation) {
        console.log(mutation.type);
    });    
});
 
// configuration of the observer:
var config = { attributes: true, childList: true, characterData: true }
 
// pass in the target node, as well as the observer options
observer.observe(target, config);
 
// later, you can stop observing
observer.disconnect();

    The key advantage to this new specification over the deprecated DOM Mutation Events spec is one of efficiency. If you are observing a node for changes, your callback will not be fired until the DOM has finished changing. When the callback is triggered, it is supplied a list of the changes to the DOM, which you can then loop through and choose to react to.

    This also means that any code you write will need to process the observer results in order to react to the changes you are looking for. Here is a compact example of an observer that listens for changes in an editable ordered list:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<ol contenteditable oninput="">
  <li>Press enter</li>
</ol>
<script>
  var MutationObserver = window.MutationObserver || window.WebKitMutationObserver || window.MozMutationObserver;
  var list = document.querySelector('ol');
 
  var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {  
    mutations.forEach(function(mutation) {
      if (mutation.type === 'childList') {
        var list_values = [].slice.call(list.children)
            .map( function(node) { return node.innerHTML; })
            .filter( function(s) {
              if (s === '<br>') {
                return false;
              }
              else {
                return true;
              }
        });
        console.log(list_values);
      }
    });
  });
 
  observer.observe(list, {
  	attributes: true, 
  	childList: true, 
  	characterData: true 
   });
</script>

    If you want to see this code running, I’ve put it up on jsbin here:

    http://jsbin.com/ivamoh/53/edit

    If you play with the live example, you’ll notice some quirks in behaviour, in particular that the callback is triggered when you press enter in each li, in particular when the user action results in a node being added or removed from the DOM. This is an important distinction to be made from other techniques such as binding events to key presses or more common events like ‘click’. MutationObservers work differently from these techniques because they are triggered by changes in the DOM itself, not by events generated either via JS or user interaction.

    So what are these good for?

    I don’t expect most JS hackers are going to run out right now and start adding mutation observers to their code. Probably the biggest audience for this new api are the people that write JS frameworks, mainly to solve problems and create interactions they could not have done previously, or at least not with reasonable performance. Another use case would be situations where you are using frameworks that manipulate the DOM and need to react to these modifications efficiently ( and without setTimeout hacks! ).

    Another common use of the Dom Mutation Events api is in browser extensions, and in the next week or so I’m going to publish a follow-up post on how MutationObservers are particularly useful when interacting with web content in a Firefox Add-on.

    Resources

  3. Join Us for Firefox OS App Days

    • by • Apps, Event, Featured Article, Firefox OS • 15 comments

    Firefox OS App DaysIf you’re a developer interested in web technologies, I’d like to invite you to participate in Firefox OS App Days, a worldwide set of 20+ hack days organized by Mozilla to help you get started developing apps for Firefox OS.

    At each App Day event, you’ll have the opportunity to learn, hack and celebrate Firefox OS, Mozilla’s open source operating system for the mobile web. Technologists and developers from Mozilla will present tools and technology built to extend and support the Web platform, including mobile Web APIs to access device hardware features such as the accelerometer. We’ll also show you how to use the browser-based Firefox OS Simulator to view and test mobile apps on the desktop.

    Firefox OS App Days are a chance to kick start creation of apps for the Firefox Marketplace, and represent a great opportunity to build new apps or optimize existing HTML5 apps for Firefox OS, as well as demo your projects to an audience of peers, tech leaders and innovators.

    We’re exciting to be working with our Mozilla Reps, who are helping organize these events, and with our partners Deutsche Telecom and Telefónica, who are supporting a number of them across the world.

    We look forward to seeing you there!

    Event Details

    The agenda for these all-day events will be customized for each locale and venue, but a typical schedule might include:

    • 08:30 – 09:30 Registration. Light breakfast.
    • 09:30 – 11:30 Firefox OS, Firefox Marketplace & Mozilla Apps Ecosystem.
    • 11:30 – 12:00 Video. Q&A.
    • 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
    • 13:00 – 17:00 App hacking.
    • 17:30 – 19:00 Demos & party.

    Signing Up

    Firefox OS App Days launch on 19 January and continue through 2 February, with the majority of the events taking place on 26 January. This wiki page has a master list of all the events and their registration forms, from Sao Paulo to Warsaw to Nairobi to Wellington — and many more. Find the App Day nearest you and register. (N.B. Venue capacities vary, but most are limited to 100 attendees so don’t delay.)

    Getting Ready

    Plan on bringing your Linux, Mac or Windows development machine and an idea for an app you’d like to develop for the Firefox Marketplace. If you have an Android device, bring it along, too. You can see the Firefox Marketplace in action on the Aurora version of Firefox for Android.

    If you want to get started before the event, review the material below and bring an HTML5 app that you’ve begun and want to continue, get feedback on or recruit co-developers for.

  4. Announcing Firefox OS App Workshops

    • by • Apps, Event, Firefox OS • 12 comments

    Madrid, Bogotá, Warsaw & Beyond


    blaze_your_fxosFirefox OS phones will be available to consumers in several countries this summer, and they will be looking for great apps to install from Firefox Marketplace. If you know how to build mobile app experiences with HTML5 and JavaScript, we’re looking for you—especially if you’d like to develop apps in Spanish, Polish or Portuguese! If you’re fast and focused, this is the time to take first-mover advantage.

    Our first three hands-on technical workshops for skilled web app developers take place in Madrid, Spain, on Saturday, April 20; in Bogotá, Colombia on Saturday, May 18; and in Warsaw, Poland on Saturday, June 1. We hope to announce more workshops in more locales later in the season.

    You must apply to attend: We’ll ask you to show us your JavaScript expertise and/or past experience building web apps and working with web APIs.

    Who Should Apply


    We’re looking for small teams or solo developers with solid ideas and strong web development skills. If you’ve already built a successful PhoneGap, Chrome, webOS, Blackberry WebWorks app, or other open web app for mobile or desktop, we’d love to work with you on migrating your existing app or building a new one. Mozilla engineers and tech evangelists will help participants complete an app or port an existing one to the Firefox OS phone and into the Firefox Marketplace.

    Please apply now if you’d like to attend any of these workshops. We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in, with a focus on our first locations. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

    Moz_Ldn

    What We’ll Offer

    • A great place to hack.
    • Hands-on help from Firefox OS developers.
    • Food, drink and demos. And t-shirts, of course.
    • More code, less talk.
    • Firefox OS Developer Preview phones, really!

    How to Prepare

    There’s more than one way to start building Firefox apps. Here are a few resources to get you started:

    Firefox OS Workshop application form.

  5. Ask MDN: Our experts are ready to answer your questions

    • by • Ask MDN, Event, HTML5, JavaScript, Learning, MDN • 8 comments

    [Update] The panel of experts and time of the first event have been added below.

    Something amazing is starting next week. No, not pay day. It’s more important than that. Got it yet? No? It’s Ask MDN, silly! Still no idea what that is? Don’t worry, it’s new and I’m here to tell you all about it.

    Introducing Ask MDN

    Ask MDN is a new initiative from MDN and the Developer Engagement team here at Mozilla.

    For one hour a week on Twitter we will get a panel of experts together to answer your questions about a specific topic related to Web development.

    Every week we choose a different topic, which will be announced in advance so you have plenty of opportunity to send in a question for our experts (who also change each week).

    After each week we will archive the questions and answers so you can search through them and continue learning long into the future. We see this as being just as valuable a resource for learning as the documentation is on MDN.

    Engaging with the developer community on Twitter

    We’re starting Ask MDN because we believe that there isn’t much help for developers on Twitter outside of questions and answers between friends.

    With Ask MDN we want to bring together the developer community and our long-standing relationship with experts. We want to make it super easy to get a trusted and valued opinion on something that’s been bugging you, no matter how simple.

    Announcing the first topic: HTML5 gaming and creative JavaScript

    The first Ask MDN hour on Twitter is next week and it will be focussing on HTML5 gaming and creative JavaScript (animations, graphics, etc).

    We’ve already got a great panel of experts lined up ready to answer your questions. They include game developers, authors, JavaScript ninjas, and Flash heavy-weights (there is a still a lot that we can learn from the Flash guys).

    We’ll announce the next topic after the HTML5 gaming hour is over.

    When and where?

    The live HTML5 gaming and creative JavaScript Q&A will take place on Friday the 29th of July at 6pm in the UK (BST), and will be moderated through the @AskMDN Twitter account. Make sure to follow that account to keep up-to-date with what’s happening.

    We chose 6pm in the UK because it’s a time that the majority of the world will be able to access; it’s morning in the US, and evening in Europe. We appreciate that this isn’t perfect for everyone, but we haven’t gotten around to building a time machine just yet.

    The first event will occur at the following times around the world:

    • 10am in San Francisco (PDT)
    • 1pm in New York (EDT)
    • 7pm in Paris, Berlin and Madrid (CEST)

    Find the time where you live to make sure you don’t miss out.

    Who are the experts?

    We’re really proud to bring you an astounding panel of experts, each carefully chosen to give a fascinating insight into the tech surrounding HTML5 gaming and creative JavaScript.

    You don’t get a chance like this often, so make sure you submit a question to the panel.

    Seb Lee-Delisle

    Seb (@seb_ly) is an internationally recognised creative coder best known for his award-winning Flash work. He has recently been teaching developers the delights of creative JavaScript through his workshops in the UK and US.

    Seb was recently interviewed as one of our People of HTML5.

    Rob Evans

    Rob (@IsogenicEngine) is the developer behind Isogenic Engine, one of the most promising HTML5 gaming engines out there today.

    Dominic Szablewski

    Dominic (@phoboslab) is the developer behind the Impact HTML5 gaming engine, one of the most popular publicly-accessible engines out there right now.

    Andreas Røsdal

    Andreas (@andreasrosdal) is the developer behind Freeciv.net, which is a HTML5 version of the strategy game Freeciv.

    Tom Schuster

    Tom (@evilpies) is a core contributor to Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. His knowledge with JavaScript performance and optimisation will be invaluable.

    Michal Budzynski

    Michal (@michalbe) is the developer behind onGameStart, the first large-scale HTML5 gaming conference in the world.

    Benoit Jacob

    Benoit (@BenoitJacob) is a Software Developer here at Mozilla who works on graphics and WebGL. As a result of this he has in-depth knowledge about hardware acceleration in these kinds of environments.

    Rob Hawkes

    Rob (@robhawkes) is me. I am a Technical Evangelist at Mozilla with experience developing games and creative experiments with HTML5 and JavaScript. I will be on the panel, but my main role will be moderating the discussion and keeping things running smoothly.

    Getting involved

    It’s going to be a great experience so I encourage you to get involved by following @AskMDN on Twitter.

    Submit your questions about HTML5 gaming and creative JavaScript in an @ reply to our account. Nearer the hour itself we’ll announce a hash-tag that can also be used to submit questions.

    Got a topic that you want us to cover in a future Ask MDN hour? Send it as an @ reply on Twitter, or reply in the comments below.

    Taking things forward

    This is just the beginning. We have big plans for Ask MDN, but we won’t be able to do any of it without you.

    Get involved today and help us make the Web a better place.

  6. Mozilla Vision 2012: The Future of HTML5 and Web Technologies

    • by • Drumbeat, Event, Games, HTML5 • 6 comments

    We are currently in Tokyo, Japan for the Mozilla Vision 2012 conference and hack day. For two days Mozilla Japan with friends from the other locations are putting up an amazing effort to encourage people to help us educate the next generation of web makers.

    Chibi and Jono showing off a platform game

    Being in Japan, all of this is of course wrapped in quite some amazing tech like voice activated robots with emotional responses, but also good old dinosaurs you can take your tourist shots with:

    Chris Heilmann, Mozilla Godzilla and Mark Finkle

    My part of the play was to give a talk about HTML5 and how we can use it now to give our users a better web experience. The slides are available.

    There is an audio recording of the talk on archive.org:

    The demos I showed in the talk were:

    Today we are at a hack day – stay tuned for some more of the information on that soon.

  7. Firefox OS App Days: It’s a Wrap!

    • by • Apps, Event, Firefox OS, hackdays • 5 comments

    Over the last few weeks, Mozilla sponsored a worldwide series of hack days for developers to learn about creating apps for Firefox OS. Dubbed “Firefox OS App Days,” the events took place in more than 25 locales around the world, starting on 19 January in Mountain View, California and ending on 2 February in Berlin, Germany. The events were organized with the support of our Mozilla Reps, the Mozilla community and Firefox OS partners Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom in Africa, Asia, Europe, New Zealand, as well as North and South America.

    Hacking

    Hacking at a Firefox OS App Day

    2,500 New Developers for Firefox OS

    Our goals were to educate developers around the world about Firefox OS and open web apps and inspire them to start building apps for the Firefox Marketplace.

    We engaged with over 2,500 developers worldwide. Hundreds of apps were demonstrated at the events, and many of them have already been submitted to the Marketplace. Some of the apps developed include:

    • Bessa – An image editor for Firefox OS, demonstrated in Berlin
    • Web Sliding Puzzle – a sliding puzzle game made from the Firefox OS App Days logo, demonstrated in Paris by Mathieu Pillard
    • Ash’s Rising – a strategy game, demonstrated in Toronto
    • Travel Saver – a local travel app, demonstrated in Warsaw
    • FoxKehCalc – a Fox-themed calculator, demonstrated in Tokyo

    In addition to apps, we saw over two million impressions of the #firefoxosappdays hashtag on Twitter, and hundreds of photos from the events were posted on Flickr, Facebook and other social media sites.

    Sample of Apps Developed at Firefox OS App Days

    Sample of Apps Developed at Firefox OS App Days

    Going Forward

    Thanks to everyone who participated in the App Days, and if you haven’t submitted your app to the Marketplace yet, please do so as soon as you can. If you have a website or github repo hosting your app or a post about your App Day experience, please add your links to the comments below. We’d love to hear from you and check out your apps in progress. If you missed the events, or there wasn’t one in your area, stay tuned — our Mozilla Reps team plans to enable more in the near future.

    And if you are just hearing about Firefox OS, and want to get started developing apps on your own, the Developer Hub, the Hacks Blog and the Mozilla Developer Network are excellent places to start. To stay in touch with upcoming App Days, developer phone releases, and app development news, subscribe to our monthly Firefox Apps & Hacks newsletter.

  8. Mozilla MDN Hack Day on Tour, Heading South

    • by • Event, hackdays • 5 comments

    The MDN spring tour continues with a trip into autumn in the Conosur – the southernmost region of South America. We’re heading south to participate in MozCamp, a gathering of the Mozilla Hispano community, and to meet web developers in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; São Paulo, Brazil; and Santiago, Chile. We’ll introduce some exciting new Mozilla projects like Boot-to-Gecko (B2G), Apps, Persona, and WebFWD and show some of our work on developer tools, Firefox, and the Add-ons SDK. We’d like to spend time hacking with web developers and sharing Mozilla’s vision of the open, user-centric Web.

    Our message: The Web is the platform and it’s built from open technologies. Learn how you can collaborate with MDN on browser-agnostic documentation for the Web as a whole, or contribute to the Mozilla mission and Open Source initiatives through coding and evangelism. There many, many ways to get involved.

    If you’re a developer, designer, documentation writer, technologist, entrepreneur, or open source enthusiast in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Sao Paolo, or Santiago, you’re invited to sign up, stop by and share what you’re working on. If you’re just curious to meet Mozillians or want to learn more about our work, we’d love to meet you. Never forget the Web is made de todos, para todos.

    The web is the platform, presented by @canuckistani

    Buenos Aires

    Friday, April 20: In Buenos Aires, we’ve partnered with Mozilla Hispano, the Buenos Aires Hacks/Hackers group and Blue Via for a day-long event on Friday, April 20, at the NH City & Tower Hotel in the heart of the city. We’ll open with short talks about HTML5 and friends, Javascript APIs, the Add-ons SDK, developer tools, and our newest offering: Apps and Persona.

    Registration for MDN Hack Day, Bs As 2012 is now open and we still have space. Please register here.

    Montevideo, Uruguay

    Tuesday, April 24: We kick off our whirlwind tour of 3 Southern cities in 5 days, with a developer evening in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. We are grateful for the kind hospitality of the folks at La Diaria, an innovative daily newspaper with a strong web presence and a wonderful venue that’s popular with Uruguay’s tech and business community. Also a big thanks to the crew at Cuboxlabs, a forward-looking software development shop, who are “Available for Awesomeness,” and have definitely been awesome and available in guiding us Norteamericanos in how to set up an developer evening from far-off Mountain View, more than 10 thousand kms away. Joining the MDN crew to speak in Montevideo: Dan Mills (@thunder), product lead for Persona; Shane Caraveo (@mixedpuppy) from Mozilla Labs; and Andres L. Martinez from BlueVia (@davilagrau), an MDN Hack Day Tour sponsor in Montevideo and Santiago, as well as Buenos Aires. Vamanos!

    Registration is now open for the Montevideo MDN Hack Day Developer Evening.

    São Paulo, Brazil

    Thursday, April 26: Robert Nyman (@robertnyman), Mozilla technical evangelist from Sweden (not Switzerland!) will visit São Paulo, Brazil to represent MDN at an evening event organized by Mozilla community member and Caelum software developer and jack-of-all-trades Paulo Silveira (@paulo_caelum) on Thursday, April 26. Robert’s talk is titled “JavaScript APIs – The web is the platform” – and he’ll describe how HTML5, Boot-to-Gecko, and other new APIs inspire a new era of innovative development on the open Web. Big thanks to Paulo and the folks at Caelum for hosting this event in their auditorium, and making Robert welcome in São Paulo.

    Registration is now open for the São Paulo MDN Hack Day Developer Evening, hosted by Caelum.

    Santiago, Chile

    Saturday, April 28: We wrap up our MDN Hack Day tour of the Conosur on Saturday evening with a developer evening in Santiago, Chile, hosted and organized by Jano Gonzalez (@janogonzalez) at the Escuela de Economía y Negocios – Universidad de Chile. This time we’ll be joined by Hernan Colmeiro (@peregrinogris), Firefox intern and Jetpack evangelist; as well as Shane Caraveo, Robert Nyman, Andres L. Martinez from BlueVia, and as always, the one and only Shezmeen Prasad, who makes sure everything is perfect.

    Registration is now open for the Santiago MDN Hack Day Developer Evening.

    Here we come!

    Photo credits: Look, a mouse pointer on the screen! ;-) (Jeff Griffiths Presents..) and Websites and Technology Evangelism team by Nitot.

  9. Add-on Con 2010

    • by • Add-ons, Event • 4 comments

    This is a cross-post from Dan Horner of our Add-ons team, who would like to invite any web developers interested in Add-ons and browser extensions in general to Add-on Con.

    Hi All – wanted to use my first post on the Mozilla Developer Network blog to remind you all about Add-on Con which is taking place next Wednesday and Thursday (December 8th and 9th) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

    Add-on Con, as it’s name might suggest is dedicated to Add-ons, and is the only conference focused on Browser’s API’s. As one of the sponsors, we will be hosting Training Sessions on the 8th of December. Learn about Add-ons SDK and how to build restartless add-ons with Myk Melez. Jorge Villalobos will present a session on how to update Add-ons so that they’re ready for Firefox 4, and Mark Finkle will fill you in on everything you need to know about creating and porting Add-ons for Firefox onto mobile devices.

    During the conference on the 9th of December, we will see Keynotes from multiple industry analysts as well as Justin Scott, who will present key learnings from across Mozilla’s Add-On ecosystem. There will be a presentation by Dave Townsend, Jennifer Boriss and Justin Scott, on Firefox 4 & Add-ons from a UX and technical perspective including the new Add-ons Manager. Justin will also present a session giving tips on how to make Add-ons that will delight users.

    Finally our own Jay Sullivan, VP of Products will be on the closing keynote panel discussing the future of the browser.

    It’s not too late to register for the conference and attend our training sessions!

    Building Together Event with Mozilla

    We are also having a social event on Wednesday, 8th of December from 5pm to 9pm, where you can let your hair down, and share your development experiences and ask questions with other likeminded developers and the team from Mozilla. The theme for the social event this year is around “building together” which represents our determination to help developers to continue to build Add-ons, brands, userbases, and presence on mobile platforms.

    Join us for some food, drinks, activities and socializing, please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/addons/calendar/15494798/

    Hope to see you all there!

    Dan Horner
    Product Marketing Manager, Add-Ons

  10. MDN Hack Day Tour would like to thank…

    • by • Event, hackdays • 3 comments

    Attention UK hackers: MDN Hack Day London takes place this Saturday May 12, at the newest Mozilla Space, on lovely St. Martin’s Lane. Designers, developers, and friends are all invited to register. Hacky goodness guaranteed.

    Many Thanks Yous, One Mozilla

    It was a whirlwind week and a half for the crew of the Mozilla MDN Hack Day Tour in Latin America. Over the course of 10 days we visited four cities in four countries in the Conosur, the southern part of South America. We met hundreds of developers in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Santiago, Chile. Thanks to everyone who took the time to listen, to talk with us, and make us feel welcome.

    Our message was well-received: The Web is the platform and it’s built from open technologies. On this trip, we were eager to introduce some of the new projects Mozilla is working on now to keep the Web open as more of the world goes mobile. As a non-profit committed to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web, Mozilla works best with inputs and participation from communities everywhere.

    Boot to Gecko Demo by Hernan Colmeiro

    In South America, we were a small team, carrying passports from Argentina, Canada, Sweden, Venezuela and the U.S. We spoke in a mix of Spanish and English. Personally I wish more of us had spoken Spanish, but because of my own language limitations, I was extra happy to listen to Spanish-speaking presenters at each of our events.

    We talked about HTML5 & friends and new Javascript APIs. We introduced exciting new Mozilla open source projects like Boot-to-Gecko (B2G), our open web phone project that’s just getting started; the soon-to-be-launched Mozilla Marketplace for HTML 5 apps (presented by Mozilla Labs’ Shane Caraveo), and Mozilla Persona, a new identity system for the Web (presented in Spanish by Dan Mills).

    In Argentina and Uruguay, Telefonica’s Andres Leonardo Martinez Ortiz introduced BlueVia, the developer program and platform from Telefonica, Mozilla partner and MDN Hack Day sponsor. In Buenos Aires, Kevin Dangoor spoke about the developer tools Mozilla is building and Buenos Aires-based add-ons developer and evangelist Hernan Colmeiro spoke about the beauty of add-ons. In Santiago, Chile, Hernan wowed developers with a Boot-to-Gecko demo.

    There were dozens and dozens of individuals who helped make our tour a success, including Mozillians I work with every day and people I’d never met till we arrived in their country. The big risk in writing long thank-yous is that I will unintentionally to forget to mention someone essential, so please accept my apology in advance and don’t hesitate to use the comments.

    Buenos Aires

    We came to Buenos Aires for MozCamp LATAM, Mozilla’s first community gathering held in Latin America, co-hosted by the amazing, multi-national Mozilla Hispano community and their Portuguese-speaking neighbors from Mozilla Brazil.

    Mozilla Hispano Community Day

    On the Friday before MozCamp we organized a day-long Hack Day for developers from Buenos Aires. Over 150 developers attended a morning of talks and demos, followed by an afternoon of project hacking. After lunch, a lively group gathered around Add-ons developer Jorge Villalobos, while other attendees were riveted by Philikon’s demo of the Boot-2-Gecko phone.

    MDN Hack Day would not have succeeded without the outreach, organizational support and hospitality of Felipe Lerena, Guillermo Movia, and Santiago Hollman of the Moz Hispano community. And I’ll add a special shout-out to the Mozcamp LATAM planning committee: Mary Colvig, Chris Hofmann, Santiago Hollmann, Gloria Meneses, Ruben Martin, Reuben Morais, Guillermo Movia, and the unflappable Katherine Naszradi. This couldn’t have happened without your support!

    MozCamp Latam

    Montevideo

    The crew left Buenos Aires on a sunny Monday afternoon, and crossed the Rio de la Plata by Buquebus ferry, arriving in Montevideo at nightfall, after a choppy 3-hour crossing.

    The next morning I met up with old friend and colleague Evan Henshaw Plath, and new friends Diego Algorta, Elena Vilar and the Cubox Labs team who’d been helping us organize, promote and host MDN Hack Day in Montevideo. They work together in a classic 1920s home converted to a co-working space in a leafy residential neighborhood. I met our evening’s speakers, along with Frenchman Jean-Paul Massonnier, an awesome designer, who’d created a poster that was pure Mozilla. I drank delicious coffee and chatted with developers in the kitchen overlooking a garden where coders kicked a football around in the sunshine.

    MDN Hack Day 2012 - Montevideo Poster

    We headed over to Cafe La Diaria. La Diaria is a subscription-based independent newspaper that is now the 2nd most widely read paper in Uruguay. It is run cooperatively and distributed by employees, with a commitment to the highest journalistic standards. Cafe La Diaria is a venue and community space in the old downtown of the city. Here we met our hosts Damian and Antonieta, who cooked up delicious pizza at the break. Cubox’s Nicolas Barrera gave an entertaining and enlightening talk about responsive design, and Fernando Briano, Cuboxer and noted tech blogger served up a presentation on the web as a tool for Social Change.

    In addition, there were two lightning talks: On his last night in Montevideo before moving to Berlin, MDN demo contributor and Developer Derby winner Alvaro Mourino (aka Tuxie) stopped by to talk about our Dev Derby and encourage people to participate. Dario Clavijo, a tech blogger and IT professional in Montevideo, spoke passionately about the importance of free and open software. It was his first ever lightning talk and we were honored to hear from him!

    Sao Paulo

    Robert Nyman, El Sueco, made the trip to Brazil by himself, since the rest of us yanquis were lacking visas. Here’s his report:

    “The next leg of the tour, helpfully organized by local company Caelum, [was] a Mozilla one-man show from me giving two talks in Sao Paulo:

    • HTML5, the Open Web and what it means to you
    • JavaScript APIs – The web is the platform

    In addition to that, local developer Gabriel Oliveira spoke about CSS3, and from what I could understand, he showed some really interesting things!

    There were about 40+ attendees this very rainy night in Sao Paulo, and while there weren’t many people, I was really happy to see the nods of approval in the audience during my talk, when I expressed Mozilla’s values and approach to the web and moving forward. After my presentations, we stood around for a long time discussing the web, -webkit prefixes, H.264 support and more. People seemed to be understanding and pragmatic, and I believe there were some really talented people there.

    Additionally, I got to spend some time being guided around by local community members Fábio Magnoni and Clauber Stipkovic, who I got to know in person at MozCamp in Buenos Aires, and had interesting discussions!”

    Santiago, Chile

    Our final Hack Day of the LATAM tour took place in Santiago, Chile on an overcast Saturday evening. We met in a comfortable classroom at the University of Chile’s Escuela de Economía y Negocios. Jano Gonzalez, a Ruby blogger and all around nice guy made the arrangements. His friends Paulina and Rodrigo took some of the team on a tour of the city.

    More than 50 attendees came out to hear from us. Pizza Hut (!) delivered pizza during the break. Hernan Colmeiro came out from Buenos Aires to introduce Add-ons and to demo Boot-to-Gecko. And Jonathan Gonzalez, no relation to Jano, introduced the Monkey Project, a fast and scalable web server for Linux.

    Monkey Project, presented by Zeus

    We had a strong showing of lightning talks: including presentations delivered in English, with slides in Spanish; presentations in Spanish, with slides in English; a compelling pitch by Ricardo about why you should overcome your shyness and get up at events to give talks about the stuff you know; a hilarious parody of a framework that was probably NSFW, but I didn’t understand enough of the Chilean slang so I can’t be sure; and an introduction to Poderopedia, a database that aims to map the relationships between political and financial power in Chile. We also met some entrepreneurs from the Startup Chile accelerator, and on Monday a couple of us had a chance to visit their lively space.

    In conclusion

    Huge thanks to the rest of the team – everyone was upbeat, professional, collaborative, and more fun than a barrel of monkeys: Shane Caraveo, Hernan Colmeiro, Dan Mills, Robert Nyman, and a special shout-out to Shezmeen Prasad, event organizer extraordinaire, who invited me along. Props also to Jeff Griffiths, who put it all together behind the scenes, from somewhere in Canuckistan. Gracias!

    Photo credits: Prima Limon, thunder, and freshelectrons.