New Mozilla.org Website Beta

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sgarrity
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New Mozilla.org Website Beta

Post by sgarrity »

The team at <a href="http://www.silverorange.com">silverorange</a> has been working on a redesign of the mozilla.org website. We’re keeping most of the content as it is (especially historical content, like documentation, etc.). We have a new visual template and redesigned some of the key top-level pages. We call the new style <em>Cavendish</em>.

Please take a look through the site with your favourite web browser and post any issues/bugs on this MozillaZine thread. We’re most concerned about technical issues and bugs (rendering problems, etc.).

See the website beta now at <a href="http://website-beta.mozilla.org"><strong>website-beta.mozilla.org</strong></a></a>.

This is still a beta, so there are some outstanding issues. Some in particular that we’re aware of (so don’t bother pointing them out):
<ul><li>The home page has not been updated yet (except for the template, of course)</li><li>Round box corners not appearing in Internet Explorer (this is a known and accepted issue, we’re using :before and :after pseudo-elements, which aren’t supported in IE, but degrade gracefully)</li><li>The main logo/wordmark shows sporadically in IE5</li><li>Some extra margins in left menus in IE5/5.5</li><li>Main site tabs to not indicate current section</li><li>Mozilla Store is not included in the template</li></ul>
Aesthetic feedback is welcome, but we reserve the right to respectfully ignore it. We have no illusions of being able to please everyone. Rather, we’re aiming for a clean, simple, and professional overall look and feel.
andy2kuk
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Post by andy2kuk »

Feedback:

- News & Shop needs to be moved off the front page. The front page should be about getting people to download the products, not getting them to donate etc.

- It is my belief that the main content area of the web page should be a short text about each product, along with the icon and a link to the product page. (The mozilla section on that page is the best one) The product page should heavily 'sell' the product, as well as giving download links and further information (extensions, themes, etc.)

- Many areas of the site that people will want to visit are not clearly visible. Say I wanted to look at the extensions that I heard so much about. Where would I click? There should be a sidebar in place of the current donate/store/news sidebar which give links to things like extensions, themes, end-user support.

I must say that the aesthetic portion is nice, although it could do with more structure in the content area. I think a vertical bar in between the sidebar and content area would improve things a lot.
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Post by doron »

The left hand menu at http://website-beta.mozilla.org/developer/ is about 1/3 of the width on 1024x resolutions - it really should be less wide.
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sgarrity
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Post by sgarrity »

andy2kuk: as I mentioned in the original post, the home page has not been updated yet.
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dburka
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Post by dburka »

Doron: I've worked with Steven on this whole design. We got some similar feedback from a number of developers about the width of the left menu. We're trying a smaller percentage on the left column. It should be updated on the Beta in about 10 minutes as it's already committed to the CVS.
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Foxtrot
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Post by Foxtrot »

Thank you! \:D/
At first, I was gonna lynch you because you hadn't done exactly what I told you to do. I would've made a complete fool out of myself (again) if I did, because I'd only seen the front page. This is great. You've made proper navigation, you've made CSS-based design, you've made a proper structure for the site... amazing!

It's still a beta, though, I can see that. First priority would be to make the front page up to stratch, following the style of the rest of the site. Right now it has advertisement that doesn't belong, it doesn't describe the Mozilla Foundation, and it gives crappy descriptions of the products.

My advice:
1) Remove the advertisement on the front page.
2) Move every product into a content div with a concise description of the product.
3) Change the task of the front page into describing the Mozilla Foundation and being a portal to the products, instead of trying to be everything and failing.
4) Make the site compatible with all browsers.
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developer.mozilla.org

Post by bsmedberg »

Knowing the devmo is coming along really soon now, can we have a navigation tab for developer information go there?

And what's with the dinasour? IMO there are too many icons hanging around, with the firefox world, tbird bluebird, Mozilla "M", and the weird old red dinasour.

Finally, is mozilla.org going to link to NVU? It's a really cool mozilla-based project.
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Re: New Mozilla.org Website Beta

Post by rj_keller »

This looks pretty bad: http://website-beta.mozilla.org/project ... /index.php

The border problem is my fault, but the top part shouldn't be a different color.
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dburka
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Post by dburka »

rj_keller: Yup, that's a missed template. We'll get on it later today. Thanks.
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andy2kuk
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Post by andy2kuk »

I think some things need to be moved off the product page. Namely, the "Submit Crash Data", and "Contact web sites that don't work properly in Mozilla" links. They give a very bad impression, especially as they are on the page where people download the software.
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Post by chengkhoon »

Suggestions (in random order):
1. For specific product pages, the features listed should include screenshots which popups when clicked.
2. Even better still, clicking on the screenshots gives an introduction to the specific feature (can be a short Flash introductory).
3. Headings should stand out (a different color).
4. The right column is better off with a different typeface (perhaps a different color) to distinguish from the left column.
5. The footers can be of a smaller fontsize and the line-height can be reduced.
6. Below the 'Featured Mozilla Projects' section, a small link 'Other Projects' won't hurt.
7. Hovered tabs could be of a lighter color. (because I found it hard to distinguish)
8. Isn't Firefox's official tagline 'Take Back the Web'?

That's all I can think of right now. Other than that, great job! The layout is cleaner and the navigation is clearer! Kudos to the silverorange team!
richwklein
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Post by richwklein »

I like the look so far. It looks like the get source, and build tools pages are shifted to the right slightly.

Edit: it also looks like /projects/firefox/qa is shifted as well.
Last edited by richwklein on August 20th, 2004, 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MXN »


Edit: Corrected the URL that the Sunbird link should go to.
Last edited by MXN on August 20th, 2004, 12:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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dburka
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Post by dburka »

Minh: Good feedback. Yes, I'm planning on adding screenshots to each of the product pages. Likely a thumbnail. I'll look into the other two issues.

richwklein: I'll look into that.
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Post by Flexer »

IE6 SP2

Image Image

Olso there is a big gap betwean 'Mozilla 1.7 / 1.7.1' section and 'Technology Previews' you can see a screenshot here: http://www.cutephp.com/images/other/whole.png
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