Thinking About the Developer Experience for the Web

I’ve been working on developer tools for a while now, and I’m really proud of what we are shipping in Firefox today and the new features that are right around the corner. Browser tools are one of the most important parts of a web developer’s toolbox.

But, there’s a lot more that goes into web development than the browser tools. The video above and the text that follows are some thoughts on the whole of the web developer’s experience.

Web development is great because the platform is so high level and dynamic. That makes it easy to get started. There’s a massive collection of libraries, tools, books, tutorials and more to help web developers get things done once they’ve moved beyond the first steps. In fact, there’s so much out there that it can be hard for someone getting going to decide how to go from idea to done. The riches of the web ecosystem are both a blessing and a curse. It’s more blessing than curse, but that doesn’t make it any easier for newcomers and, in some instances, for experienced developers that are moving into a new area or applying a new technology.

Mozilla’s non-profit mission is to protect openness and innovation on the web. We want to make the web better for everyone, and I think we’re in a good position to help guide developers from idea to published app. Doing so is especially critical for our Apps initiative.

To that end, Daniel Buchner and I will be looking beyond developer tools in our product plans to include the whole of the developer experience. This will first show up in an Apps context, but we’re going to look for ways to apply what we do more broadly.