MDN Web Docs

From HandWiki
Short description: Cross-browser documentation center on web technologies
MDN Web Docs
MDN Web Docs logo.svg
Type of site
Wiki
Available in
  • English
  • Chinese
  • French
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
OwnerMozilla
Websitedeveloper.mozilla.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional, required to edit content
Launched2005; 19 years ago (2005)
Current statusOnline
Content license
CC BY-SA v2.5+ et al.
Written in

MDN Web Docs, previously Mozilla Developer Network and formerly Mozilla Developer Center, is a documentation repository and learning resource for web developers. It was started by Mozilla in 2005[1] as a unified place for documentation about open web standards, Mozilla's own projects, and developer guides.[2]

MDN Web Docs content is maintained by Mozilla, Google employees, and volunteers (community of developers and technical writers). It also contains content contributed by Microsoft, Google, and Samsung who, in 2017, announced they would shut down their own documentation projects and move all their documentation to MDN Web Docs.[3] Topics include HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, Web APIs, Django, Node.js, WebExtensions, MathML, and others.[4]

History

In 2005, Mozilla Corporation started the project under the name Mozilla Developer Center.[1] Mozilla Corporation still funds servers and employs staff working on the projects.

The initial content for the website was provided by DevEdge, for which the Mozilla Foundation was granted a license by AOL.[5][1] The site now contains a mix of content migrated from DevEdge and mozilla.org, as well as original and more up-to-date content.[6][7] Documentation was also migrated from XULPlanet.com.

On Oct 3, 2016, Brave browser added Mozilla Developer Network as one of its default search engines options.[8]

In 2017, MDN Web Docs became the unified documentation of web technology for Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and Mozilla.[3][9] Microsoft started redirecting pages from Microsoft Developer Network to MDN.[10]

In 2019, Mozilla started Beta testing a new reader site for MDN Web Docs written in React (instead of jQuery; some jQuery functionality was replaced with Cheerio library).[11] The new site was launched on December 14, 2020.[12] Since December 14, 2020, all editable content is stored in a Git repository hosted on GitHub, where contributors open pull requests and discuss changes.[13]

On January 25 2021,[14] the Open Web Docs (OWD) organization was launched as a non-profit fiscal entity to collect funds for MDN development.[15] (As of March 2023), the top financial contributors of OWD are Google, Microsoft, Igalia, Canva, and JetBrains.[16]

In March 2022, MDN launched a redesign with a new logo[17] and a paid subscription called MDN Plus.[18]

See also

  • WebPlatform.org

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Mitchell Baker (2005-02-23). "DevMo and DevEdge updates". http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2005/02/23/devmo-and-devedge-updates/. 
  2. Willison, Simon (2005-09-15). "The Mozilla Developer Center". SitePoint. http://www.sitepoint.com/devmo/. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 Tung, Liam (2017-10-19). "Developers rejoice: Microsoft, Google, Mozilla are putting all their web API docs in one place". https://www.zdnet.com/article/developers-rejoice-microsoft-google-mozilla-are-putting-all-their-web-api-docs-in-one-place/. 
  4. "Ten Things Developers should know about the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog" (in en-US). 2012-12-14. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/ten-things-developers-should-know-about-the-mozilla-developer-network-mdn. 
  5. "About". Mozilla Developer Center. https://developer.mozilla.org/Project:En/About. 
  6. "DevEdge". Mozilla Developer Center. https://developer.mozilla.org/Project:En/DevEdge. 
  7. Deb Richardson (2006-02-10). "Digging through the DevEdge archives". Google Groups. http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.mdc/browse_thread/thread/d8cdf5d09f1544d6/1b99a30a311ad11b?lnk=st&q=#1b99a30a311ad11b. 
  8. "Brave Browser 0.12.3 Release Note". https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/releases/tag/v0.12.3dev. 
  9. Knox, Dru (2017-10-18). "Building unified documentation for the web". https://blog.chromium.org/2017/10/building-unified-documentation-for-web.html. 
  10. Erika Doyle Navara (2017-10-18). "Documenting the Web together". https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-web-together-mdn-web-docs/. 
  11. R, Bhagyashree (2019-07-17). "Mozilla's MDN Web Docs gets new React-powered frontend, which is now in Beta" (in en-US). https://hub.packtpub.com/mozillas-mdn-web-docs-gets-new-react-powered-frontend-which-is-now-in-beta/. 
  12. "Welcome Yari: MDN Web Docs has a new platform – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog" (in en-US). https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/12/welcome-yari-mdn-web-docs-has-a-new-platform. 
  13. "An update on MDN Web Docs' localization strategy – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog" (in en-US). https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/12/an-update-on-mdn-web-docs-localization-strategy. 
  14. "OWD Steering Committee call, 2021-01-20" (in en). 2021-01-20. https://github.com/openwebdocs/project/blob/main/steering-committee/meetings/2021/2021-01-20.md. "OWD will go public on Monday, January 25th." 
  15. "Welcoming Open Web Docs to the MDN family – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog" (in en-US). https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/01/welcoming-open-web-docs-to-the-mdn-family. 
  16. "Open Web Docs - Sponsors" (in en). https://openwebdocs.org/sponsors/. 
  17. "A new year, a new MDN" (in en). https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/03/a-new-year-a-new-mdn/. 
  18. "Introducing MDN Plus: Make MDN your own" (in en). https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/03/introducing-mdn-plus-make-mdn-your-own/. 

External links