MDN Web Docs, previously Mozilla Developer Network and formerly Mozilla Developer Center, is a documentation repository and learning resource for

web developers A web developer is a programmer who develops World Wide Web applications using a client–server model. The applications typically use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the client, and any general-purpose programming language in the server. is used f ...

. It was started by

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, w ...

in 2005 as a unified place for documentation about open web standards, Mozilla's own projects, and developer guides. MDN Web Docs content is maintained by Mozilla, Google employees, and volunteers (community of developers and technical writers). It also contains content contributed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, and

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

who, in 2017, announced they would shut down their own documentation projects and move all their documentation to MDN Web Docs. Topics include

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

, CSS,

Web API A web API is an application programming interface for either a web server or a web browser. It is a web development concept, usually limited to a web application's client-side (including any web frameworks being used), and thus usually does not ...

s, Django,

Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code o ...

WebExtension Add-on is the Mozilla term for software modules that can be added to the Firefox web browser and related applications. Mozilla hosts them on its official add-on website. Browser extensions are the primary type of add-on. In 2017, Mozilla enacted ...

MathML Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is a mathematical markup language, an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide W ...

, and others.

History

In 2005,

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...

started the project under the name Mozilla Developer Center. Mozilla Corporation still funds servers and employs staff working on the projects. The initial content for the website was provided by DevEdge, for which the Mozilla Foundation was granted a license by AOL. The site now contains a mix of content migrated from DevEdge and mozilla.org, as well as original and more up-to-date content. Documentation was also migrated from XULPlanet.com. On Oct 3, 2016, Brave browser added Mozilla Developer Network as one of its default search engines options. In 2017, MDN Web Docs became the unified documentation of web technology for Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Microsoft started redirecting pages from

Microsoft Developer Network Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...

to MDN. In 2019, Mozilla started Beta testing a new reader site for MDN Web Docs written in React (instead of

jQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is u ...

; some jQuery functionality was replaced with Cheerio library). The new site was launched on December 14, 2020. Since December 14, 2020, all editable content is stored in a git repository hosted on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

, where contributors open pull requests and discuss changes. On January 25 2021, the Open Web Docs (OWD) organization was launched as a non-profit fiscal entity to collect funds for MDN development. As of March 2022, the top financial contributors of OWD are

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

, Coil, and

Igalia Igalia is a private, worker-owned, employee-run cooperative model consultancy focused on open source software. Based in A Coruña, Galicia (Spain), Igalia is known for its contributions and commitments to both open-source and open standards. Igal ...

. In March 2022, MDN launched a redesign with a new logo and a paid subscription called MDN Plus.

References

External links

MDN at 10: The History of MDN
{{Mozilla community Mozilla Creative Commons-licensed websites Computing websites Internet properties established in 2005 Wikis about programming

History

See also

References

External links