How I got started hacking on Firefox
By jet
One of the Gecko Layout & Rendering team’s main responsibilities is the continuing development of CSS in Firefox. I recently modified the CSS style system to allow nested rule parsing. This bug fix taught me a lot about the CSS parser and how styles cascade through the rest of the Layout engine. It took me a little while to set up a dev environment, understand the bug, write tests, get the code written, reviewed, and checked in. I now have a much better understanding of what it takes to move code through the Mozilla source trunk.
I suspect that there are other programmers out there currently lurking around the Mozilla community, intimidated by the scale of the source tree, and wondering where to start hacking on Firefox. I highly recommend starting with the Gecko Overview started by L.David Baron, Mozilla Principal Software Engineer, to help beginners understand the browser engine. Thanks, David!