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It's great to see any company going into detail about their technical implementation, so I'm extremely hesitant to be critical, but I'm really curious who the t

It's great to see any company going into detail about their technical implementation, so I'm extremely hesitant to be critical, but I'm really curious who the target audience for this one particular article is. It's a very very odd mix of language that sounds like it's directed at a very young child and standard technical speak. Not the usual for the Hacks blog. Not to fault the article too much, but I just found the tone a bit confusing. Even veering towards condescension in some parts, though I'm certain that's entirely accidental and wasn't the author's intent at all.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
I found the clear explanations quite nice; it doesn't assume deep knowledge of CSS or Rust or the history of the various projects involved. The Stylo project has been extremely visible, being part of the latest Firefox Nightly, so it makes sense to explain it for a very broad audience. And personally, I loved the illustrations, as well.
ChrisSD 9y ago
Presumably it's trying to bring technical details to the widest possible audience. So some details may fly over the heads of some folk, whereas more domain knowledgeable people might think some parts sound condescending. It's a hard square to circle. I think Chrome tried something similar when they were introducing the chrome browser, although maybe with a different balance.
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  You're probably thinking of this Chrome comic: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    When you said "Chrome comic" I assumed it was this one http://i.imgur.com/bhfYx6R.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bhfYx6R.jpg
rbanffy 9y ago
Open source depends on people wanting to work on it. Firefox is a very intimidating beast under the hood. Making it interesting is a vital important goal.
- lucideer 9y ago
  I get that, and that's exactly what the Hacks blog is for (it has always done this masterfully). The recent posts on Hacks and Mozilla Tech on Medium have done this really well I think. I don't think the tone here necessarily does anything for generating interest though. This is highly subjective, but at least for me it made for a jarring read and I lost interest pretty quickly. As I said above, I respect the intent behind the article, but I just found it very odd.
  - nindalf 9y ago
    Different strokes I guess. There's plenty of documentation out there on CSS engines that you'd find readable while others lose interest pretty quickly. The diversity in approaches ensures that the pool drawn into Firefox development is diverse.
acemarke 9y ago
Lin Clark's "Code Cartoons" series is intended to take a potentially complex programming topic, and break it down into easy-to-understand terms, using a combination of simpler language and the cartoons. She has previously written Code Cartoons entries on topics such as Flux, Redux, hot module reloading/time travel debugging, and the "React Fiber" rewrite of React. She's also written several entries specifically for the Mozilla Hacks blog on topics such as WebAssembly.
lambda 9y ago
Huh, I had the opposite reaction. I thought that it was a very nice, clear article, which is phrased to be approachable by as many people as possible with some amount of technical background. That technical background may not be as programmers. It may be power users, or web developers, or the like. And I thought the analogies and illustrations helped out with giving some context that people who aren't systems developers might be missing.
matt_kantor 9y ago
There were only two small parts that rubbed me this way, and they may just be related to my own knowledge/interests/biases: 1. The brief diversion about registers vs RAM and the brain analogy seemed a bit silly. I feel like anyone who would be interested in this article would find it completely unnecessary. It was just a tiny paragraph and one doodle though so it didn't really detract from the article. 2. Going the other way, Lin could have spent another few sentences talking about the compositing step and how GPUs enter into the picture (also why some CSS properties are "compositor-only"). I know compositing is tangential to the core of the article, but there were other brief tangents like the Rust stuff so a similar blurb about compositing wouldn't have been out of place (plus I find it super interesting). Those are my only two nitpicks and the rest of the article did an excellent job threading the needle between informativeness and approachability without being too fluffy or verbose (e.g. Lin rightly didn't waste words explaining what the DOM is).

JoshTriplett 9y ago

I found the clear explanations quite nice; it doesn't assume deep knowledge of CSS or Rust or the history of the various projects involved. The Stylo project has been extremely visible, being part of the latest Firefox Nightly, so it makes sense to explain it for a very broad audience. And personally, I loved the illustrations, as well.

ChrisSD 9y ago

Presumably it's trying to bring technical details to the widest possible audience. So some details may fly over the heads of some folk, whereas more domain knowledgeable people might think some parts sound condescending. It's a hard square to circle. I think Chrome tried something similar when they were introducing the chrome browser, although maybe with a different balance.

Stratoscope 9y ago
You're probably thinking of this Chrome comic: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  When you said "Chrome comic" I assumed it was this one http://i.imgur.com/bhfYx6R.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bhfYx6R.jpg

rbanffy 9y ago

Open source depends on people wanting to work on it. Firefox is a very intimidating beast under the hood. Making it interesting is a vital important goal.

lucideer 9y ago
I get that, and that's exactly what the Hacks blog is for (it has always done this masterfully). The recent posts on Hacks and Mozilla Tech on Medium have done this really well I think. I don't think the tone here necessarily does anything for generating interest though. This is highly subjective, but at least for me it made for a jarring read and I lost interest pretty quickly. As I said above, I respect the intent behind the article, but I just found it very odd.
- nindalf 9y ago
  Different strokes I guess. There's plenty of documentation out there on CSS engines that you'd find readable while others lose interest pretty quickly. The diversity in approaches ensures that the pool drawn into Firefox development is diverse.

acemarke 9y ago

Lin Clark's "Code Cartoons" series is intended to take a potentially complex programming topic, and break it down into easy-to-understand terms, using a combination of simpler language and the cartoons. She has previously written Code Cartoons entries on topics such as Flux, Redux, hot module reloading/time travel debugging, and the "React Fiber" rewrite of React. She's also written several entries specifically for the Mozilla Hacks blog on topics such as WebAssembly.

lambda 9y ago

Huh, I had the opposite reaction. I thought that it was a very nice, clear article, which is phrased to be approachable by as many people as possible with some amount of technical background. That technical background may not be as programmers. It may be power users, or web developers, or the like. And I thought the analogies and illustrations helped out with giving some context that people who aren't systems developers might be missing.

matt_kantor 9y ago

There were only two small parts that rubbed me this way, and they may just be related to my own knowledge/interests/biases: 1. The brief diversion about registers vs RAM and the brain analogy seemed a bit silly. I feel like anyone who would be interested in this article would find it completely unnecessary. It was just a tiny paragraph and one doodle though so it didn't really detract from the article. 2. Going the other way, Lin could have spent another few sentences talking about the compositing step and how GPUs enter into the picture (also why some CSS properties are "compositor-only"). I know compositing is tangential to the core of the article, but there were other brief tangents like the Rust stuff so a similar blurb about compositing wouldn't have been out of place (plus I find it super interesting). Those are my only two nitpicks and the rest of the article did an excellent job threading the needle between informativeness and approachability without being too fluffy or verbose (e.g. Lin rightly didn't waste words explaining what the DOM is).