This summer I mentored :flyingrub for a Google Summer of Code project to redesign about:telemetry. You can read his Project Submission Document here.

Background

Google Summer of Code is a program funded by Google to pay students worldwide to contribute in meaningful ways to open source projects.

about:telemetry is a piece of Firefox’s UI that allows users to inspect the anonymous usage data we collect to improve Firefox. For instance, we look at the maximum number of tabs our users have open during a session (someone or several someones have more than one thousand tabs open!). If you open up a tab in Firefox and type in about:telemetry (then press Enter), you’ll see the interface we provide for users to examine their own data.

Mozilla is committed to putting users in control of their data. about:telemetry is a part of that.

Then

When :flyingrub started work on about:telemetry, it looked like this (Firefox 55):

It was… functional. Mostly it was intended to be used by developers to ensure that data collection changes to Firefox actually changed the data that was collected. It didn’t look like part of Firefox. It didn’t look like any other about: page (browse to about:about to see a list of about: pages). It didn’t look like much of anything.

Now

After a few months of polishing and tweaking and input from UX, it looks like this (Firefox Nightly 57):

Well that’s different, isn’t it?

It has been redesigned to follow the Photon Design System so that it matches how Firefox 57 looks. It has been reorganized into more functional groups, has a new top-level search, and dozens of small tweaks to usability and visibility so you can see more of your data at once and get to it faster.

Soon

Just because Google Summer of Code is done doesn’t mean about:telemetry is done. Work on about:telemetry continues… and if you know some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript you can help out! Just pick a bug from the “Depends on” list here, and post a comment asking if you can help out. We’ll be right with you to help get you started. (Though you may wish to read this first, since it is more comprehensive than this blog post.)

Even if you can’t or don’t want to help out, you can take sneak a peek at the new design by downloading and using Firefox Nightly. It is blazing fast with a slick new design and comes with excellent new features to help be your agent on the Web.

We expect :flyingrub will continue to contribute to Firefox (as his studies allow, of course. He is a student, and his studies should be first priority now that GSoC is done), and we thank him very much for all of his good work this Summer.

:chutten