Apps/Mortar
Mortar is a collection of templates to kickstart app development, brought to you by the friendly people from the Apps Engineering team.
Elevator Pitch
We provide templates that either provide the bare minimum framework for app development or demonstrate how to perform a certain task, so developers can quickly get started and not bother about setting up file structures, manifests and other 'administrivia'.
Overview
- Repository: https://github.com/mozilla/mortar
- Bugs are tracked in Github
- IRC Channel: #apps on irc.mozilla.org
Current status: v2
After feedback from the first iteration we're now focusing in two goals:
- revamping the existing templates to make them easier to use, and
- provide 'privileged' templates
Revamping
V1 templates required an additional build step before they could be used, and were too complicated for newcomers, apart from being excessively opinionated. We're now simplifying them and converting them into something that just works--you can clone the repository and you already have a working template, no need to install node or bower or run any build process. Similarly they can be easily distributed in a self contained ZIP file.
Privileged
The new 'privileged' templates are the result of the experience we've gathered after a year of hackdays and listening to Firefox OS app developers.
We are going to provide good polished templates that demonstrate access to more involved APIs in Firefox OS and work perfectly right after they have been obtained, so newcomers can focus on playing with the code, learning and adding functionalities rather than getting frustrated because some minor detail in the manifest is missing.
To make it even easier to get started, we're working with the DevTools team to provide a way to start building apps directly from DevTools's AppManager. Developers will be able to clone templates directly from within DevTools and start editing or pushing to the device right away, thus making use of all the existing functionality already built-in.
The reason for this differentiation is that these templates cannot be installed with an "install" button as the 'hosted' templates can: their entire folder contents are pushed to a simulator or device using AppManager, therefore they need a special approach.
