davidascher

done.

Yup, thanks for jumping in, that's a good summary.

I think I said this in another comment, but the gamification levels were really just to test our gamification APIs, the levels are not at all right, or useful. We'll remove that ASAP.

We care, we really do -- just haven't gotten around to that part yet!

Filed as https://github.com/mozilla/appmaker/issues/387, thanks.

We're actually very interested in mobile browsers, so much so that in fact we've got plans (with no code to back them up yet) to let people author apps wholly on a phone.

Yeah, we need to do a better job of distinguishing "really early" from "ready for use". Expect a change in the landing page within a few hours (the team is currently scattered over three countries).

Thanks, that's very kind!

Hey HN, if you're curious about this, I suggest you watch this video (http://youtu.be/RaRIdLgZTPI) which shows a quick demo, and/or:

- opt out of the levels thing on first load, it's not ready. - instead, jump straight in the designer and run through these few steps:

- drag & drop a button, click on it, notice it sends out messages on the blue channel - D&D a counter, notice that it listens to a blue channel, and that the button clicks cause it to increment (that's how we "program" these components - D&D another button, make it emit on a different color, and configure the counter to "count down" on that color. That way one button increments, the other decrements

- D&D the fireworks component, configure its "shoot this many rockets" to a third color (and clear "shoot rocket); make the counter emit on that color. Enjoy the fireworks show.

- Other components that work well for understanding things are:

- ratings widget - input widget connected to a map widget will center the map on a place name (although HN will likely exceed the limits on our usage of the OSM server; need to setup another one =() - flickr widget can do both topic and location searches

Let us know if you have ideas for components we should build (or submit a PR!).

The publish button will create "hosted apps" which can be installed on FirefoxOS, Firefox for Android, and incidentally recent builds of Firefox desktop, although the focus for Appmaker is very much mobile apps).

Whoa. Definitely wasn't ready for HN-style exposure.

As bmoskowitz pointed out we have some rough words about the project. For this group, I'd in particular point out the roadmap and CONTRIBUTORS.md documents on the github repo:

  https://github.com/mozilla/appmaker/blob/master/ROADMAP.md 
  
  https://github.com/mozilla/appmaker/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

I wrote some earlier words at https://github.com/mozilla/appmaker-words/wiki, but that's quite possibly out of date.

At the highest level, we're exploring whether it's possible to make a tool that lets non-devs (_not_ you folks!) who currently see their phones as a pure engine of consumption, as a place where they can create something fun or useful.

It's very, very early software, and it's public mostly because a) we kinda don't know how to do anything else, and b) we're going to use early and frequent user feedback to correct the aim on the product.

If people are interested, we're more than happy to entertain questions either here or on github, irc, the mailing list, etc.

Oh, and yeah, many of the components are broken, brittle, etc. This is still just a prototype.

That said, we're getting positive reactions from people close to our target audience, such as high school teachers, people teaching others how to make their first app, etc.

I'm sure we have loads of x-browser compatibility bugs, as well as known issues with respect to accessibility, absent localization, no great mechanism for contributing new components, and many more.

Oh, and the gamification bits in particular were really just testing the gamification APIs -- the levels we have in place are deeply unuseful =).

Is the NPS measured with visitors to the site, customers on site, or people being charged? I'd wager for some companies the differences could be telling.

File a bug?

The server is fairly trivial. It's mostly there to make it easy to try. If you want to host the server, go ahead (source is on github).

Please file github issues, this is the feedback the project needs.

[mozilla employee here] There's no catch except an absence of a commitment to keep running it. Mozilla Labs is charged with figuring out how to make the web better. We think this could help make more apps collaborative. You tell us if we're right.

If it's Good for the Web, I at least am happy to chat, give advice, mentor, to the extent that I have free time. I do that on a regular basis for local companies, but that's just because it's more convenient. I expect many Mozilla folks do the same.

(and if it's a thing that should/could be a Mozilla consumer product someday, then yes, check out the Hatchery, that's a more structured program w/ a bunch of coaches).

See my answer above. We should tweak the site to make it clearer, thanks for the feedback.

Good question. In the normal process, we offer no funding, and take no equity. We give advice and coaching to companies we think are likely to move the web in a positive direction. Keeping money out of it at this stage keeps things simple.

David Ascher here, I oversee WebFWD. I'm happy to take questions here if the HN crowd has them.

Impressive performance and clean design. /me interested.

I don't understand the need to claim such a broad copyright license on content submitted.

"When providing us with content or posting content on Moot’s site or related third-party sites, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right AND LICENSE to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future."

The "Why do we have this clause" link doesn't feel like it answers that either.

Also, the "Following is guaranteed" bit needs work. It sounds good, but is legally worthless, I expect.

FYI, that bug has now been closed, and "Close other tabs" will be in TB3 final (and nightlies before that).

In Thunderbird 3, we use a combination of the two models, as some mail providers (Yahoo! for example, IIRC) strip away the right headers. Thunderbird 3's threading is way better than Thunderbird 2's.

TB3 doesn't support conversations out of the box, but I'm thinking about doing an add-on to experiment with that. With our new global database, it should be possible to do something interesting.

That's a really funny cautionary tale. I filed it at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=517489 so we can think about ways to avoid or mitigate...