Real World Mozilla

Dive Into Mozilla Development: a one week crash course

Overview

Mozilla, creator of the popular Firefox web browser, is one of the largest collaborative open source projects in the world. Working on Mozilla is challenging, fun, and one of the best ways to gain real-world development experience. Getting involved with Mozilla means learning new skills, meeting new people, and having the opportunity to work on global software products with tens of millions of users. However, as exciting as it is, getting started can be intimidating and overwhelming—Mozilla has millions of lines of source code. This course will give you the knowledge you need to start building Firefox extensions by introducing you to the following topics:

Topic List

• What is Open Source?
• What is the Mozilla Project?
• The Mozilla developer community
• Using IRC to communicate with other Mozilla developers around the world
• Mozilla Platform and Technology overview
• How to build Mozilla from source code
• Using Revision Control Systems (CVS and SVN)
• Using Mozilla webtools (OpenGROK/LXR, Bonsai, Bugzilla, Pastebin)
• Finding your way around in the Mozilla source tree
• Learning how to develop and debug Mozilla (C/C++ and JavaScript)
• Using important developer tools (make, diff, patch, cl, etc.)
• Using Mozilla’s collaborative documentation tools (wikis, wiki markup)
• Bugs, Bugzilla, Testing, and QA
• Hands-on Firefox Extension Development (XPCOM and XUL)
• XULRunner application deployment

Cost

Free for School of Computer Studies students and Seneca faculty/staff

Prerequisites

It is assumed that those taking the course already have some knowledge of programming (e.g., C/C++, JavaScript), but enthusiasm is more important than experience. There will be no tests and no exam, only hands-on opportunities to learn. Upon completion of the course you will have an excellent sense of the Mozilla project and its community, practices, tools, and opportunities.

When

Classes will run from Monday February 26 to Friday March 2, 2007, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm (one hour break for lunch).

Location

Seneca@York campus room S1206

Registration

Registration is now closed!

Computer Studies students please register by sending an email from your learn account to Daman Panesar. Please include your student number. Faculty and staff please email David Humphrey