As you probably know now, my new role at Mozilla is all about Firefox OS. I’ll have opportunities to do broader Open Web stuff like the friends (and now co-workers) Christian Heilmann, and Robert Nyman do, but at the end, 99,9% of my time will be dedicated to the mobile side of the Open Web with our new OS. This assignment was a perfect fit for me as it combined many of my passions, and experiences: the Web, Open Standard, Open Source, and mobility.
As you also know, I like to help people, and I firmly believe that the role of an Evangelist is not just to promote stuff, but also to help others being successful. So part of my role is to help you, Web developers, to create, and deploy your application to the Marketplace (or not, as you don’t have to). It doesn’t matter if you are building a new application for Firefox OS, if you are porting a website, if you are porting a mobile application you did with web technologies (Windows 8, Blackberry, PhoneGap, WebOS…) or even if you are porting a native mobile app (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone…).
The process is simple, send me an email to fharper@mozilla.com with information about what you are trying to achieve, what is your problem, and with the code you tried, cause the error or isn’t working. If you even have code I can download/install, and try, it will make my work easier. A better way to do would be to ask your question on StackOverflow, and send me the link by email or on Twitter. If so, the question, and the answer will be public, and it’ll help more people. I highly encourage you to use the latter if nothing is private, and also, let’s be clear, there is no stupid question!
Last but not least, I just don’t want to hear from you if you are having a problem. If you get a good experience with the platform, please let me know. I, as well, would like to know if you successfully published your application to the marketplace! I also encourage you to share this post to everyone who could take advantage of it. So did you start to play with Firefox OS? Did you already build something? Do you have any plan to do so in the future? Share your thoughts!
