Browser Architecture Newsletter 4

[Richard Newman]

Welcome to the fourth Browser Architecture Newsletter!

A lot of the issues that the Browser Architecture team are digging into are
larger than our team. Our goal is to discuss and review entire product
level architecture issues and build consensus around solutions. We’re
interested in engaging with engineers around the organization. We’re
actively reaching out to folks but if you want to talk to us we’d sure love
to hear from you. You can find us in #browser-arch on IRC or Slack.

XBL Removal

Since our last update, we've completed the design review for a plan to move
away from XBL in Firefox
<https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/text/0007-xbl-design-review-packet.html>.
Thanks to the long list of people who guided the creation of that plan, and
the chair and panel for putting it through its paces. We're working through
some follow-up investigations; expect a separate email with more details
soon.

Storage and Sync

We've been doing lots of writing on this topic. Emily has documented
<https://github.com/fluffyemily/cross-platform-rust> and blogged about
getting Rust libraries up and running on multiple platforms (iOS
<https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/experiments/2017-09-06-rust-on-ios.html>,
Android
<https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/experiments/2017-09-21-rust-on-android.html>),
which will pave the way for shared storage implementations across mobile
and desktop products. Richard has published the first in a series of blog
posts about sync
<https://medium.com/@rnewman/thinking-about-syncing-part-1-timelines-7f758e2bd676>
.

A roadmap review
<https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/text/0006-architecture-review-process.html>
is planned for this quarter; thanks to everyone — a dizzying array of
engineers, managers, product folks, and Deep Syncers — who've been
contributing to that process. Let rnewman know if you're not involved and
would like to be.

Front-end Developer Survey

We sent out a survey for front-end developers to try to understand how to
target our architecture and workflow improvements. The results will be
published soon, but one thing this survey revealed was that a lack of
documentation is holding developers back. We'll be digging into this more
in the future.