Articles
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Announcing a New Management Structure for Ecma TC39
In 2019, Ecma’s TC39—the standardizing body behind JavaScript/ECMAScript—will change its management structure to reflect the growth of the committee and the frequency of its meetings. TC39 will move away from single-chair and vice-chair roles to a flat hierarchy with three chairs sharing the responsibility. Congratulations to new co-chairs Aki Braun (PayPal), Brian Terlson (Microsoft), and Yulia Startsev (Mozilla).
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Web Design Survey Findings and Next Steps
In November, I wrote about my team’s work on experimental new web design tools and introduced a survey to rank the challenges of web design and development. The insights you shared continue to inform priorities for the Firefox DevTools' 2019 roadmap. Our main takeaway: developers and designers of every experience level want a better understanding of CSS debugging. We're on it.
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Fearless Security: Thread Safety
Multithreading allows programs to do more faster, but adds synchronization bugs and attacks. Programming languages have evolved different concurrency strategies to help developers manage both the performance and security challenges of multi-threaded applications. Diane Hosfelt explores the challenges of thread safety, and the approach that Rust takes.
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Anyone can create a virtual reality experience with this new WebVR starter kit from Mozilla and Glitch
Building a virtual reality experience may seem daunting, but it really isn’t. WebVR and frameworks like A-Frame make it easy to get started right. This is why we worked with Glitch to create a WebVR starter kit. Today we introduce a free, 5-part video course with interactive code examples that will teach you the fundamentals of WebVR using A-Frame.
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Refactoring MDN macros with async, await, and Object.freeze()
In January, the MDN engineering team landed a major refactoring of the KumaScript codebase, the underlying Node server that runs macros in Kuma, which is the wiki that powers MDN. This work included some modern techniques of interest to JavaScript programmers.
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Firefox 66 to block automatically playing audible video and audio
Unsolicited volume can be a great source of distraction and frustration for users of the web. So we are making changes to how Firefox handles playing media with sound and we want to make sure web developers are aware of this new audio autoplay blocking default. With the release of Firefox 66, now in Firefox Beta/Developer Edition, the browser will block audible audio and video, and will allow a site to play audio or video aloud via the
HTMLMediaElementAPI only once the user has initiated the audio. -
New in Firefox DevTools 65
We just released Firefox 65 with a number of new developer features that make it even easier for you to create, inspect and debug the web. Among all the features and bug fixes that made it to DevTools in this new release, we particularly want to highlight our brand new Flexbox Inspector and all the features and enhancements that deliver smarter JavaScript inspection and debugging.
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Firefox 65: WebP support, Flexbox Inspector, new tooling & platform updates
Firefox 65 ships today with some notable Firefox Devtools updates, including the release of the CSS Flexbox Inspector, a new changes panel, and more. We're shipping CSS platform improvements and updates to a variety of JavaScript APIs. Firefox 65 supports the WebP image format, and support for AV1, an open and royalty-free video compression format, is shipping now in Firefox 65 for Windows.
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Cameras, Sensors & What’s Next for Mozilla’s Things Gateway
With the release of Things Gateway 0.7, Mozilla's IoT team announces experimental support for IP cameras, along with support for a wider range of sensors that track temperature, leaks, and more. Ben Francis also shares plans for evolving the Things Gateway application in 2019, and exploring the value a trusted personal agent could provide to your whole home network.
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Fearless Security: Memory Safety
Memory safety violations leave programs vulnerable to security threats like unintentional data leakage and remote code execution. There are ways to ensure memory safety, including smart pointers and garbage collection. Research engineer Diane Hosfelt explains how Rust’s ownership system achieves memory safety while minimizing performance costs.
