I left Mozilla back in July, 2018. There are many reasons for this decision, and I’ll talk about just one here: I decided to Help People Get Jobs. The following text is from a blog post I wrote at work. I have reposted it here, edited for length and content (Internal Indeed systems are not referenced.) At Indeed, we now use a software development and deployment system called “Yamanote.” Yamanote takes its name from the Yamanote Line (山手線) in Tokyo, Japan.

I’m going to start the year off with a blog post, mostly to procrastinate on replying to the many e-mails that my very productive colleagues have sent my way 🙂 2017 was quite a year beyond the socio-economic, geo-political, and bizarre. I, and many of my colleagues did what we could: find solace in work. I’ve often found that in uncertain times, making forward progress on difficult technical projects provides just enough incentive to continue for a bit longer.

All of Mozilla is currently in San Francisco for the semi-annual All-Hands event. The Web Platform Layout team also meets here to discuss current work and future projects. Our team is responsible for the following browser rendering operations: Compute Style Size Position Animate Paint …in 2D, 3D, and Virtual Reality. Because we typically operate 7 days a week, 24 hours a day across the globe, it’s a rare opportunity to meet with everyone to share what we’ve been working on, and where we’re going next.

It’s been way too long since I posted on this blog. It seems I’ve fallen into the 140-character vortex like so many bloggers. I will endeavor to work on that in 2017. I’m often asked “What’s up with this bug?” or some variation. This is often the case when a reported software defect is stuck in a status other than “fixed.” I then have to get in there, figure out what’s stuck, and somehow get it unstuck.

This post is a follow-up to an earlier article I wrote about setting up a FirefoxOS development environment. I’m going to set up a Sony Z3C as the target device for Mobile OS software development. The Sony Z3C (also known as Aries or aosp_d5803 ) is a nice device for Mobile OS hacking as it’s an AOSP device with good support for building the OS binaries. I’ve set the phone up for both FirefoxOS and Android OS development, to compare and see what’s common across both environments.

I’m often asked “what are you working on?” Here’s a snapshot of some of the things currently on my teams’ front burners: Vertical Text (CSS Writing Modes) Shumway CSS Containment Image Downscale During Decode Webkit CSS Prefix Compatibility Media Source Extensions CSS Grid Encrypted Media Extensions JS Codecs FileSystem API SVG transform-origin Fira Fonts harfbuzz text shaping Web Animations WebVR Input Method Editors Runtime Hardware Rendering Validation unicode-range HTML5 Canvas Filters Off-main-thread HTML5 Canvas Rendering HTML5 Fullscreen Rust in Gecko I’m surely forgetting a few things, but that’s a quick snapshot for now.

I’m often assigned Firefox Rendering bugs in bugzilla. By the time a bug gets assigned to me, the reporter had usually exhausted other options and assumed (correctly) that I’m ultimately responsible for fixing Firefox rendering bugs. Of course, I often have to reassign most bugs to more capable individuals. Some of the hardest bugs to assign are the ones reported by our own Gaia team: the team responsible for building the user experience in Firefox OS.

Regular readers of my blog know that I also worked on the Macromedia Flash Professional authoring tool and the Adobe Flash Player for many years. I learned a great deal about the design of ubiquitous platforms, and the limitations of single-vendor implementations. At a recent meeting with the W3C SVG working group, I shared some of my thoughts on how Flash was able to reach critical mass across the Web, and how SVG can leverage those lessons for the future.

I’m posting the steps I took to create the FirefoxOS dev environment for the Flame device. We use the Flame as our reference device on the Platform Rendering team. I had to re-do this recently on a new computer and I figure this might help others in the same boat. These steps assume you can already build the desktop version of Firefox on your computer. Get ADB Turn on ADB debugging on your device.

I occasionally accept invitations to speak at conferences and events. Here’s the video from my recent talk at The Graphical Web in Winchester, England. I discuss how and why I now work on Web Platform Rendering, and how disruptive innovations are enabled by seemingly mundane key technologies that bridge gaps for developers and audiences.

Doing my small part to support the efforts today (September 10, 2014) https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/s/protect-net-neutrality

I’m at the NYC Indie Web Camp this weekend at the beautiful New York Times office in Manhattan. Tantek Çelik joined my team at Mozilla about six months ago to work on various Web Standards initiatives that we push forward on the Firefox Platform team. Although our bread and butter is Web Platform Rendering, Tantek is also passionate about advancing user-sovereignty to enable authorship outside of proprietary corporate silos (see POSSE.

My last two posts didn’t make it on to planet.mozilla.org due to a recent junglecode server move. I asked Robert Accettura to update the entries in the planet database so that server-side redirects aren’t necessary. This post is just testing those changes. It’s also a plug for Planet Mozilla, a most excellent public resource for the Mozilla community. If you missed these two posts on planet, here you go: Software Project Estimates: Go Fly a Kite!

Building Open Source software presents challenges to engineers and managers that differ greatly from proprietary systems. Open Source doesn’t eliminate the need for proper estimates and the predictability of costs that accurate estimates bring. Open Specifications like the W3C web standards add additional complexity to the estimation process. How are you supposed to know how long a project will take, when the specifications are frequently modified by authors and editors who aren’t under your control?