Once a month, web developers from across the Mozilla Project get together to talk about our side projects and drink, an occurrence we like to call “Beer and

Tell”.

There’s a wiki page available with a list of the presenters, as well as links to their presentation materials. There’s also a recording available courtesy of Air Mozilla.

Osmose: PyJEXL

First up was Osmose (that’s me!), who shared PyJEXL, an implementation of JEXL in Python. JEXL is an expression language based on JavaScript that computes the value of an expression when applied to a given context. For example, the statement 2 + foo , when applied to a context where foo is 7, evaluates to 9. JEXL also allows for defining custom functions and operators to be used in expressions.

JEXL is implemented as a JavaScript library; PyJEXL allows you to parse and evaluate JEXL expressions in Python, as well as analyze and validate expressions.

pmac: rtoot.org

Next up was pmac, who shared rtoot.org, the website for “The Really Terrible Orchestra of the Triangle”. It’s a static site for pmac’s local orchestra built using lektor, an easy-to-use static site generator. One of the more interesting features pmac highlighted was lektor’s data model. He showed a lektor plugin he wrote that added support for CSV fields as part of the data model, and used it to describe the orchestra’s rehearsal schedule.

The site is deployed as a Docker container on a Dokku instance. Dokku replicates the Heroku style of deployments by accepting Git pushes to trigger deploys. Dokku also has a great Let’s Encrypt plugin for setting up and renewing HTTPS certificates for your apps.

groovecoder: Scary/Tracky JS

Next was groovecoder, who previewed a lightning talk he’s been working on called “Scary JavaScript (and other Tech) that Tracks You Online”. The talk gives an overview of various methods that sites can use to track what sites you’ve visited without your consent. Some examples given include:

Reading the color of a link to a site to see if it is the “visited link” color (this has been fixed in most browsers).

Using requestAnimationFrame to time how long it took the browser to draw a link; visited links will take longer as the browser has to change their color and then remove it to avoid the previous vulnerability.

Embed a resource from another website as a video, and time how long it takes for the browser to attempt and fail to parse the video; a low time indicates the resource was served from the cache and you’ve seen it before.

Cookie Syncing

groovecoder plans to give the talk at a few local conferences, leading up to the Hawaii All Hands where he will give the talk to Mozilla.

rdalal: Therapist

rdalal was next with Therapist, a tool to help create robust, easily-configurable pre-commit hooks for Git. It is configured via a YAML file at your project root, and can run any command you want to run before committing code, such as code linting or build commands. Therapist is also able to detect which files were changed by the commit and only run commands on those to help save time.

gregtatum: River – Paths Over Time

Last up was gregtatum, who shared River – Paths Over Time. Inspired by the sight of rivers from above during the flight back from the London All Hands, Rivers is a simulation of rivers flowing and changing over time. The animation is drawn on a 2d canvas using rectangles that are drawn and then slowly faded over time; this slow fade creates the illusion of “drips” seeping into the ground as rivers shift position.

The source code for the simulation is available on Github, and is configured with several parameters that can be tweaked to change the behavior of the rivers.

If you’re interested in attending the next Beer and Tell, sign up for the dev-webdev@lists.mozilla.org mailing list. An email is sent out a week beforehand with connection details. You could even add yourself to the wiki and show off your side-project!

See you next month!