Five weeks ago I joined the Web Compatibility team at Mozilla, its a small and relatively new team. Considering this isn't an ordinary job the title thing was kind of loose, but we've settled on Web Opener and it works for me. My hope is to provide some insight on what it's like to get involved in webcompat. From a high level the goal of webcompat is to promote an open web, where a user can receive a great experience regardless of the device or browser they choose. Sometimes web sites will use techniques which make it impossible to view on certain devices. This problem has become more complicated with the amount and diversity of mobile devices on the market, so we focus most of our efforts on mobile. What I love about this team is the individuals I work with and their commitment to a truly open web. There are great people, both volunteers and employees who are focused on not only making the web usable to Firefox users, but all users. They go out of their way to test other browsers and recommend solutions that are compatible to the max.
So what does the team do exactly? It can be broken down into 5 areas:
Bug Reporting: Finding and reporting compatibility issues around the web. Bugs can come from anyone who finds and wants to report a problem. The Mozilla community is particularly active in looking for problems to report, which is great. There are also cool tools being made to automate some of the discovery. Anyone can get involved and report a bug.
Bug Analyzing: Why is this site broken. Someone digs into the code to figure out what’s causing the compatibility issue and suggests a fix. Sometimes this can be more difficult than it sounds.
Getting Contacts: Find the right person to contact. To get any bug fixed you need a good contact. There are many ways to find a contact at a company or website, sometimes this can be easy. Other times it requires some creativity and luck.
Reaching Out: Make contact and help resolve the issue. Send a positive message to someone and hope they respond. When you get responses, most people are awesome and willing to help make changes to support other browsers and devices. It’s also challenging when communicating in a language you don’t speak but a pretty cool experience.
Promoting: Blogs, reports, conferences, tools and process refinements. Provide insight to the challenges with compatibility, inspire others to participate and make it easier to understand and get started.
What’s my role in all this? I mostly focus on the contact and outreach process. So if I’m not contacting a website to fix a bug, I’m trying to make the process easier for others to join in. The web is massive and the more involvement we can get the better it will be for everyone. I think it’s important and couldn’t be happier that I’m moving the web forward one small win at a time. Don’t be afraid to get involved, it’s easier than you might think!