Over in Headless SlimerJS with Firefox, fellowzillian Brendan Dahl writes about the work he’s been doing to support running Firefox headlessly. A headless mode for Firefox makes it easier to test websites with the browser, especially in continuous integration, to ensure Firefox remains compatible with the Web. It also enables a variety of other interesting use cases. Brendan started with Linux, the most popular platform for CI services like Travis, and focused first on SlimerJS, a popular tool for testing websites with Firefox (and scripting the browser more generally) that uses Firefox to run a different XUL application (rather than running Firefox itself). Now he’s working on support for full headless Firefox as well as Windows and Mac.

I recently blogged about discontinuing Positron. I’m trying a different tack with a new experiment, codenamed qbrt, that reuses an existing Gecko runtime (and its existing APIs) while simplifying the process of developing and packaging a desktop app using web technologies. qbrt is a command-line interface written in Node.js …

After some consideration, I’ve decided to discontinue development of Positron. Positron was an experimental runtime for creating desktop apps using web technologies. It was based on Firefox, and its principal feature was that it was Electron-compatible. …

Last month I blogged about Why Embedding Matters, and then I described a variety of Embedding Use Cases. Here are some projects that would address those cases. If you could choose, which would you do first? Embedding Framework for Headless Browsing An Embedding Framework for Headless Browsing would enable internal Gecko testing frameworks, scriptable browsers…

Recently the Node.js Foundation announced that Mozilla is joining forces with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and NodeSource on the Node.js API. So what’s Mozilla doing with Node? Actually, a few things… You may already know about SpiderNode, a Node.js implementation on SpiderMonkey, which Ehsan Akhgari announced in April. Ehsan, Trevor Saunders…

A couple weeks ago, I blogged about Why Embedding Matters. A rendering engine can be put to a wide variety of uses. Here are a few of them. Which would you prioritize? Headless Browser A headless browser is an app that renders a web page (and executes its script) without displaying the…

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what a new embedding strategy for Mozilla might look like. Mozilla has a great deal of history with embedding, and Gecko has long been (and still is) used in a variety of products besides Firefox. …

Last Friday, Brendan Dahl landed SpiderNode integration into Positron. Now, when you run an Electron app in Positron, the app’s main script runs in a JavaScript context that includes the Node module loader and the core Node modules. The hello-world-server test app demonstrates an Electron BrowserWindow connecting to a Node…

I’ve been experimenting with syndicating my blog posts to Medium. While I appreciate the syndicated, webby nature of the blogosphere, Medium has an appealing sense of place. It reminds me of the old Open Salon. And I’m curious how my posts will play there. If you’re curious too, this post should link to its Medium equivalent — at least if you’re reading it on my blog, rather than Planet or another syndicator. Otherwise, you can find my posts and follow me on my Medium profile.