Hello Everyone! I’m halfway through my Outreachy internship with Mozilla. I’ve been working on implementening localization feature for ‘Firefox Dev Tools Profiler’. Let’s have a look at how it’s been so far.
Expectations Vs Reality
When applying to the project we do submit a project timeline. It’s more like a planning out the internship tasks beforehand to demonstrate if you have a decent knowledge of what you’ll be doing during the internship. So mine so pretty elaborate and it seemed pretty doable at that moment.
According to my timeline I would have completed writing FTL files for all the components and localization will be all up and running. But have I completed it? NO!
When I started it I didn’t realize what the obstacles may come. After starting the project work, I found some of the Fluent Localization package was deprecated. So the tutorials were obsolete for some cases. I had to go through other projects to find out how it can be implemented. As it was only beginning I also started to freak out. Eventually I made it all working with the setup but it took a 3x time than I planned to do. This required an intensive review too as it was new package implementation, it had to follow the codebase convention. And then there came holiday season so it got a bit delayed. So finally in mid January the most important patch of localization was landed!
I had a bit of lack in my progress because my halted final exams took place a couple days back. It was not into my consideration when I did project timeline as it was uncertain for COVID-19 situation. So I had trouble coping up with my tasks and studies that time. Now that it’s done, I had modified my expectations and caught up with the work too.
Current Progress and Future Planning
Now that the localization is all ready to go we do need the static FTL files for different languages to make the Profiler translatable. Right now only the Home Page components are done with default en-US FTL file. Means the UI will be loaded fetching the strings from the static files for respective elements. This patch is under review. So expecting to complete all the FTL related patches 2 weeks before the internship ends so that I can work on strech goals and polish anything in Localization patches if needed. I’m also planning on different issues from the Profiler Github site while my patches are under review.
How it’s been working with Profiler so far?
It’s a great project. I have learned about many different tools working on this project such as Redux, Jest and Fluent for Localizations. The maintainers are so appreciating! My mentor is very supportive. Initally I had fear of talking to them but now it’s all gone. I feel comfortable joining the meetings and the chat. Don’t hesitate to ask for help anymore, even if it seems dumb. I did struggle balancing my studies and work a little bit during my exams, I overcame that eventually. Despite all the struggles, It’s been an amazing experience so far. My mentors are appreciating my work, guiding me through. So it’s all good!
