Education/ComputerScience

Overview

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Mozilla Platform

Firefox, Thunderbird and many more applications are built on a common Mozilla platform. This is where you can find the rendering engine, document parsers, JavaScript interpreter and cross platform methods of interacting with the local operating system.

Mozilla applications

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Extending

Mozilla based software is extensible through four types of add-ons: extensions, plug-ins, themes and now Jetpack. Learn how you can change the behavior of a Mozilla application without changing the code.

Embedding

Parts of Mozilla code can be separated from the platform and used inside your own applications. For instance, the Gecko rendering engine. For embedding basics and instructions visit the Embedding page at MDC.

Release engineering

A big part of getting a product like Firefox to market is the infrastructure for building and testing the code. Learn how Mozilla code is managed.

Tools used by Mozilla

Learn how to use the tools that Mozilla developers use. Using only a browser, it is possible to:

• browse and search source code for all Mozilla projects
• see older versions the Mozilla source code
• track bugs reports and submit patches
• see the status of the latest patches to the Mozilla source code
• share snippets of code

Research

Learn about research and experiments. For instance, participate in developing static analysis tools, or creating experimental technology through Mozilla Labs.

Survival skills

How to get help from the community

Learn how to get help directory from other Mozilla contributors using

• Wikis
• Mailing lists
• Blogs and Planets
• IRC
• Mentors

Working with the source code

Learn how to get Mozilla source code, edit it and compile it.

Testing

If you want to submit a patch and see it accepted you will probably need to write a test to go with it. Learn about all the different kinds of tests there are for Mozilla code.

Debugging

Learn how to use tools available for any operating system to debug Mozilla.

Language reference

Tutorials and reference for C++ and JavaScript, the languages of the Mozilla platform.