MDN Web Docs

MDN Web Docs
A website screenshot started in: "Resources for Developers, by Developers Documenting web technologies, including CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, since 2005."
Screenshot of MDN Web Docs, screenshot in May 2025
Native name
Mozilla Developer Network
Former nameMozilla Developer Center
Website type
Wiki
Available in
  • English
  • Chinese
  • French
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
OwnerMozilla
Industryopen-source software development
Websitedeveloper.mozilla.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional, required to edit content
Launched2005; 21 years ago (2005)
Current statusOnline
Content license
CC BY-SA v2.5+ et al.
Written in

MDN Web Docs, previously Mozilla Developer Network and formerly Mozilla Developer Center, is a documentation repository and learning resource for web developers. It was started by Mozilla 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, Open Web Docs, and a volunteer community of developers and technical writers. It also contains content contributed by Microsoft, Google, and Samsung who, in 2017, announced they would shut down their own web documentation projects and move all their documentation to MDN Web Docs. Topics include HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Web APIs, PWAs, Django, Node.js, WebExtensions, MathML, WebAssembly, accessibility/ARIA, security, and others.

History

In 2005, Mozilla Corporation started the project under the name Mozilla Developer Center, and still funds the servers and staff of its 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 to MDN.

In 2019, Mozilla started Beta testing a new reader site for MDN Web Docs written in React (instead of jQuery; 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, 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 employ technical writers to work on MDN. As of January 2026, the top financial contributors of OWD are Microsoft, Sovereign Tech Agency, Igalia, and Google.

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

In August 2025, MDN launched a second major front-end rebuild, replacing the React-based single-page application architecture introduced in 2020 with server-side HTML templating and web components built using the Lit library. The redesign was undertaken to address slow build times and styling maintenance issues in the previous architecture, and prioritized Baseline "Widely available" web features when selecting which browser technologies to use for the new interface.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Mitchell Baker (February 23, 2005). "DevMo and DevEdge updates". Archived from the original on December 1, 2008. Retrieved May 31, 2008.
  2. ↑ Willison, Simon (September 15, 2005). "The Mozilla Developer Center". SitePoint. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Tung, Liam (October 19, 2017). "Developers rejoice: Microsoft, Google, Mozilla are putting all their web API docs in one place". ZDNet. Archived from the original on October 21, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2019.
  4. ↑ "Ten Things Developers should know about the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. December 14, 2012. Archived from the original on October 13, 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2023.
  5. ↑ "About". Mozilla Developer Center. Archived from the original on November 13, 2008. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  6. ↑ "DevEdge". Mozilla Developer Center. Archived from the original on October 15, 2008. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  7. ↑ Deb Richardson (February 10, 2006). "Digging through the DevEdge archives". mozilla.dev.mdc. Google Groups. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved May 31, 2008.
  8. ↑ "Brave Browser 0.12.3 Release Note". Github. Archived from the original on October 4, 2016. Retrieved August 16, 2017.
  9. ↑ Knox, Dru (October 18, 2017). "Building unified documentation for the web". Chromium Blog. Archived from the original on October 19, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2019.
  10. ↑ Erika Doyle Navara (October 18, 2017). "Documenting the Web together". Windows Blogs. Archived from the original on October 18, 2017. Retrieved July 29, 2019.
  11. ↑ R, Bhagyashree (July 17, 2019). "Mozilla's MDN Web Docs gets new React-powered frontend, which is now in Beta". Packt Hub. Archived from the original on July 18, 2019. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Welcome Yari: MDN Web Docs has a new platform – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. Archived from the original on May 6, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  13. ↑ "An update on MDN Web Docs' localization strategy – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. Archived from the original on January 28, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  14. ↑ "OWD Steering Committee call, 2021-01-20". GitHub. January 20, 2021. Archived from the original on September 20, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2021. OWD will go public on Monday, January 25th.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  15. ↑ "Welcoming Open Web Docs to the MDN family – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog". Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog. Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2021.
  16. ↑ "Open Web Docs - Sponsors". opencollective.com. Archived from the original on May 19, 2026. Retrieved May 19, 2026.
  17. ↑ "A new year, a new MDN". hacks.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on November 18, 2022. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  18. ↑ "Introducing MDN Plus: Make MDN your own". hacks.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on November 18, 2022. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  19. 1 2 "Launching MDN's new front end". MDN Web Docs. Mozilla. Retrieved August 21, 2026.