Daniel Brooks — Mozilla Hacker

http://db48x.net/
db48x@yahoo.com

(832) 266-0859 home
(747) 263-8835 voip (SIP only)

2828 Rogerdale Rd
Apt. 85
Houston, TX 77042 , USA


Goals

My goal is the Singularity, and the means of achieving that goal is openness on the web and in our code. If that's too bombastic then my goal is the improvement of technology, and open source is the way to do that. Of course, this is a long term goal, and a pretty abstract one at that. However, it is my passion, and I've found that Mozilla related projects are probably the best way to engage that passion.


Relevant Skills

   1. UI code: XUL, XBL, JS, XPCOM
   2. Back-end code: C++, XPCOM
   3. Server side: PHP, Perl, Python, MySQL PostgreSQL
   4. UI design
   5. Webtools (mostly as a user, but also as a sysadmin): LXR/MXR, Bonsai, Bugzilla, Tinderbox, and Mercurial
   6. Version Control: CVS, Subversion, Mercurial, Git
   7. Other: JSON, XMLHTTPRequest, make, autoconf

Most of my work on Mozilla has involved the user interface code - my first major contribution was to rewrite the Page Info window from scratch. I did some work on some of the toolkit and xpfe widgets (XBL bindings), and corrected the UI code that used them. I've also had some experience in content code, and in writing both C++ and JS XPCOM components. At MozDev Group, I expanded on this to build entire xul apps, extensions and even an old-style NPAPI plugin. As part of much larger teams at Mozilla and Pioneers of the Inevitable, I've worked on major UI elements for Fennec (preferences) and Songbird (cdrip, video playback, device sync).


Work & Experience

Pioneers of the Inevitable

Aug '09 – March '10 Software Engineer — POTI's product is Songbird, a desktop media player. Built on top of the XulRunner platform from Mozilla, Songbird encompasses video and audio playback, library management and synchronization with portable mp3 and video devices. I extended the existing UI elements to add new features, fix bugs and provide better feedback to the user.

Mozilla Corporation

June ’08 – January '09 Software Engineer — Mozilla is the force behind Firefox, Thunderbird, and several other open source apps that have entered the limelight in the past few years. My job focused on Mozilla's new browser for mobile devices, Fennec. In addition to the typical tasks of finding and fixing bugs, I created the preference and shortcut user interfaces and assisted in implementing the Fennec side of a data-sync extension called Weave to allow users to sync their bookmarks, history and open tabs between their PCs running Firefox and their mobile devies running Fennec.

MozDev Group, Inc

March ’06 – May ’08 Software Engineer — MDG contracts for many companies who use Firefox or XulRunner as a platform for their own apps, or who wish to create extensions for apps such as Firefox and Thunderbird. Among the projects I worked on are a xul app for McDougal-Littell (bundled with their science and math textbooks), am NPAPI plugin for Microsoft (essentially just an xpcom wrapper around the activex interfaces to one of their apps), Nokia (performance improvements for their MicroB browser which runs on the N810) and the Brooklyn Museum of Art (I worked on their kiosk browser extension.)