Learning Articles

Interested in learning how to create fantastic Firefox add-ons with the Add-on SDK and Builder? Join the Jetpack team in London, UK on September 29th for an evening of workshops that will get you started hacking on compatibility-proof, re-startless, testable addons using the many features of the SDK.

The workshop will include a general introduction to the Add-on SDK and the online Builder tool, followed by 3 tracks of breakout sessions. The breakout sessions will be help for smaller groups of 30-40 people to allow for more interactivity. Each breakout session will be given 3 times to ensure that all attendees can participate in each session. The sessions are as follows:

1. Interacting with Web Content
   The SDK includes a powerful module for interacting with and modifying page content. In this workshop you wil learn how to use popular JavaScript libraries like jQuery to dramatically alter the look and behaviour of a web page, as well as manage communications between your add-on and the modified pages.
2. Adding to the Firefox UI
   A key part of many Firefox add-ons is their ability to integrate with the Firefox UI. This session will guide you through the various techniques the Add-on SDK exposes to integrate your add-on with Firefox.
3. Libraries & Modules: The Key to Generativity
   The Add-on SDK uses the CommonJS format to allow developers to easily create and share re-usable modules. This workshop guides you through hands-on exercises designed to illustrate usability and security concerns when creating re-usable code.

Note: All sessions are meant to get you writing code straight away! Please ensure you bring a Wifi-capable laptop to really benefit from the hands-on format.

When & where

The workshop is being held at City University in London starting at 6PM, initially in the Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre (OTLT). We expect the breakout workshops to conclude around 10:30PM.

Register Now!

Registration is free on a first-come, first serve basis:

• Register now on Eventbrite
• Track this event on Lanyrd

[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.

If you’re looking to improve your Web development skills, we have compiled some great resources from around the Web to help every level of developer dig into their favorite open Web technologies. Our new MDN Learning space serves as a starting point for anyone interested in learning more about Web development. While there is already awesome documentation on MDN, not everyone knows how to find it — or other great tutorials and examples scattered around the Web. There is just so much content out there, we felt it was time to create a central place developers can go to quickly find the best resources.

Our initial set of pages focus on documentation, tutorials, and other content for learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We will continue to add new content, including MDN Learning pages for topics like video, audio, webGL, etc. We also plan to use this new space to share more information about our collaboration with other organizations and projects that are developing open models around education, like P2PU’s School of Webcraft.

This launch of MDN Learning is just the beginning of what we hope will become a permanent place on MDN for everything related to educating people about Web development and the resources available to them on not just MDN, but around the Web. We look forward to feedback and suggestions on how we can improve on this first step towards expanding MDN to cater to those getting started with developing for the Web.