Mozilla is known as a large community of builders, thinkers and technologists from around the world. Its projects have always been user-oriented. Mozilla is best-known for its extremely popular Firefox, Thunderbird and FireZilla projects. However, it is also developing other project such as Persona which provides users with a much better and easier way to sign in to various websites.
Mozilla has also launched a new project recently, called Webmaker. This seems like a very promising thing with a big future ahead of it. Webmaker is again made with users in mind and it aims to help people create cool things on the web regardless of their coding knowledge. According to their own words, the idea is to help people understand how the web works and use that knowledge to make a web with no limits.
But what does Webmaker offer?
The things that people can take advantage of with Webmaker are divided into three sections:
- Tools
This is one of the best things about Webmaker. For now it only offers 4 tools that people can use, but we can expect the list to grow very soon. Each tool gives people the option to create something from scratch or remake something that someone else has published. Here are the 4 tools you can play with:
- X-Ray Goggles
Have you even clicked the right button and then “Inspect Element”? This tool is similar, except it shows you the elements of any web page in real time when you hover over them with your mouse. Needless to say, you can edit each of those elements to your liking and even publish the page that you have edited.
- Thimble
Thimble lets you create your own HTML web pages and work on the CSS right from the browser in a quick and easy way. It shows you the results of the code you are writing in real time and you can host and share all of your projects with a couple of clicks.
- Popcorn Maker
With Popcorn Maker, everyone can edit web videos, images and audio and embed the end product anywhere they like. You can use this tool to drag and drop all kinds of content from around the web, combine, cut and skip parts of videos, add different layers of audio and much more from your browser.
- Appmaker
Perhaps the best of the 4 tools, Appmaker allows you to create your own mobile apps with simple drag and drop actions. This is extremely easy to use even if you have absolutely no coding knowledge at all. With this tool you just drag different “bricks” from simple headers and buttons to more advanced chat rooms and media players and drop them on the screen of a mobile device. It’s as easy as that.
- Resources
Webmaker offers much more than just 4 tools. People who want to learn or learn how to teach can use the many available resources which include useful and easy to understand information about web mechanics, security, design and accessibility, coding/scripting, collaborating, sharing and more.
- Events
On the Events page of the Webmaker website people can find out about different events around the world and how they can join. Currently there are 2,098 events and you can either search for one or create one of your own. These events are also known as Maker Parties and they are all about celebrating the web. People who join such Parties will be able to learn anything from making a video on the web to why privacy matters.
Overall, Mozilla has started another great project and we can only imagine what it has in store for us. Webmaker is already a lot of fun and offers people with minimal or no coding knowledge at all to learn something new and basically to understand the web.
