In the recent years, web development changed drastically. The emergence of the mobile web and the new form factor of smart phones created the demand for different solutions than the former desktop-only web.

Since then a lot of frameworks and tools have been created, with new ones being added almost weekly. Now, we web developers are faced with a different problem: for every development concern, there are multiple options to consider, without clear pros or cons. It is easy to feel intimidated not only by the choices available, but also by how similar those choices are.

Every day, web developers have to successfully overcome this issue and turn this diversity from a daunting proposition into an empowering one.

But why reinvent the wheel all the time?

A set of solid recommendations for app developers

Mozilla is putting together a core set of tools and recommendations that we believe are the most useful for making Web apps.

The key considerations for what we might recommend are:

• Sufficiently well-documented and straightforward to use for an average developer (we will concisely document the required knowledge one needs in order to engage with the technology).
• Loosely coupled and as modular as possible (so you can follow one recommendation but not another if you are so inclined).
• Tested on Mozilla products (i.e. the UI components will perform well on Firefox OS, etc), but with cross-platform apps in mind

The upcoming, initial set of recommendations involves a toolchain that’s core to any modern web app, like a JavaScript framework, templating interface, UI framework and task runner. We will employ existing solutions wherever possible and write libraries or utilities to fill in the gaps.

On an ongoing basis, we’ll expand this systematically across the different parts of the development experience, such as offline handling or the use of various Web APIs.

All of this will be delivered in one central spot: The App Center on the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN), our established, renowned resource for web app development.

But I already have it all figured out!

We encourage you to share your success story with us. Heck, share your failures too. We need all the feedback we can get from everyday web developers. If you have a tool chain of your own, with your favorite JavaScript framework, etc., we’re not interested in converting you to something else. We’re trying to help developers who aren’t sure how to go about making these kinds of decisions.

Come join us!

In the Mozilla tradition, this is a community-driven process. This means your input is encouraged and appreciated, and we would like your help to make this a successful initiative!

The main discussions around this will happen in the following places:

• On the dev-webapps mailing list. If you’re a web app developer, you will find it useful to subscribe to that list.
• Additionally, feel free to join us in #apps on irc.mozilla.org.

For the initial tool chain recommendations, I started a thread on the mailing list already, go ahead and weigh in.

If you have ideas for topics worth exploring in future iterations, don’t be shy and open a new thread to get the discussion started.

What’s next?

If this whets your appetite, then great! 2014 is an exciting year to be a web app developer. We’ll keep you updated here on Hacks, as well as the MDN App Center over the coming months.