Mozilla

Firefox for Android has a UI Telemetry system. Here is an example of one of the ways we use it.

Since Apple released iOS9 with Content Blocking extensions for Safari, there has been a lot of discussion about the ramifications. On one side, you have the content providers who earn a living by monetizing the content they generate. On the other side, you have consumers who view the content on our devices, trying to focus on the wonderful content and avoid those annoying advertisements.

I’ve been an Engineering Manager for a while now, but for many years I filled a Developer role. I have done a lot of coding over the years. I still try to do a little coding every now and then. Because of my past as a developer, I could be oppressive to senior developers on my teams. When making decisions, I found myself providing both the management viewpoint and the technical viewpoint. This usually means I was keeping a perfectly qualified technical person from participating at a higher level of responsibility. This creates an unhealthy technical organization with limited career growth opportunities.

I have ended up managing people at the last three places I’ve worked, over the last 18 years. I can honestly say that only in the last few years have I really started to embrace the job of managing. Here’s a collection of thoughts and observations:

The latest release of Firefox for Android is filled with new features, designed to work with the way you use your mobile device.

Firefox 31 for Android is the first release where we collect telemetry data on user interactions. We created a simple “event” and “session” system, built on top of the current telemetry system that has been shipping in Firefox for many releases. The existing telemetry system is focused more on the platform features and tracking how various components are behaving in the wild. The new system is really focused on how people are interacting with the application itself.

Firefox for Android Nightly builds now support casting HTML5 videos from a web page to a TV via a connected Roku streaming player. Using the system is simple, but it does require you to install a viewer application on your Roku device. Firefox support for the Roku viewer and the viewer itself are both currently pre-release. We’re excited to invite our Nightly channel users to help us test these new features, share feedback and file any bugs so we can continue to make improvements to performance and functionality.