Featured Articles
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Iodide: an experimental tool for scientific communication and exploration on the web
Meet Iodide, an experimental open source tool to help scientists write beautiful interactive documents using web technologies, all within a browser-based iterative workflow that will be familiar to many scientists.
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Real virtuality: connecting real things to virtual reality using web technologies
WebXR meets the Web of Things when two developers build a prototype that applies 3D visualisation to power an IoT interface. In this post they demonstrate how open, accessible web technologies make it possible to combine software from different domains to create engaging new interactive experiences. And how you can get started too!
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Implications of Rewriting a Browser Component in Rust
There have been 69 security bugs in Firefox’s style component since the browser was first released in 2002. If we'd had a time machine and could have written this component in Rust from the start, 51 (73.9%) of these bugs would not have been possible. Rust isn't foolproof, but by removing the burden of memory safety, Rust lets programmers focus on logical correctness and soundness.
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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
HTMLMediaElement
API 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.