New Mozilla.org Website Beta

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
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Canuck
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Joined: January 17th, 2004, 2:54 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Post by Canuck »

The new site is a big improvement!

You still need to make the Products page simpler for those new to Mozilla. First, the product selection is confusing; there needs to be more distinction between the separate products and the suite. ("Which of these browsers are better? 'next generation browser' or 'Web-browser built for 2004'? Bah, I'll just stick with Explorer.") And by the way, Web browser isn't hyphenated.

Furthermore, the M icon is rather jarring below the elegant Firefox and Thunderbird icons.

Also on the products page, "Featured Mozilla Projects" is rather ambiguous. Bugzilla needs to be separated from the consumer products. ("If these are featured projects, are there more? Where are they? And why on Earth is there yet another Web browser? Why are these projects, not products?")

Finally, the Firefox and Thunderbird body copy needs to be interspersed with images to break it up a bit and make it look less daunting. Check out the Apple <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a> site for a very good example of this, and a few other concepts you should be following. Note that they don't stick to just screen shots; they also have some icons and a graph.

You're finally getting on the right track again, it seems. Keep up the good work. Hopefully, we'll see your work in the Mozilla Update site. Also, this design must make it into Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Japan; these sites currently are only fragmenting the Mozilla brand.
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Cyrris
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Post by Cyrris »

Jason_P wrote:There's also no real seperation between the sidebar and the main content. This can also make the site look a bit cluttered. Some kind of subtle seperation here might help. :)


This is also my main issue with the current design of the front page. Even just an ever-so-slightly-darker shade of grey would make the page just look more well-organised overall. At the moment my eyes just sort of run into a wall of cluttered text.
dialate
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Joined: August 20th, 2004, 7:57 pm

Post by dialate »

The nav bar and the bottom horizontal rule overlap if there isn't much main content, such as http://website-beta.mozilla.org/project ... nload.html <br> If you don't see it, try adjusting font size (CTRL +-)<br><br>Probably the best way to deal with that is make the HR less wide, it seems too big anyway.<br><br>Also, minor polish nitpick - the "Go" button by the search field doesn't indent when you are clicking it.
Reality
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Post by Reality »

You should see the IE page. It's so beautiful. I hate to say, but it makes the beta look so cluttered and unprofessional by comparison.
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

I still have a problem with the Firefox slogan...
"Firefox: The Browser Reloaded"

IMO, it would fit much better with Thunderbird's "Reclaim your inbox" if we use the "Firefox: Take back the web" slogan instead. The Mozilla suite also needs a slogan, since it looks out of place...

We could probably lose the version number of Mozilla too. Either that or include the version numbers for Firefox and Thunderbird, since the inconsistency was immediately noticable for me.

Under "Featured Mozilla Projects", there needs to be more of a margin before Bugzilla's image/text. The margin is far smaller than the gap between "Make a Donation" and it's following text.
Last edited by BenBasson on August 20th, 2004, 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jwb
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Joined: August 20th, 2004, 8:20 pm

Fonts too small, layout too fixed

Post by jwb »

Your fonts are too small. They are quite a lot smaller than my default fonts. Why do you feel that you must make everyone's fonts smaller? If I say "12px" I mean it, and while *some* text might be smaller or larger than that, I can't think of any legit reason to make the <i>whole page</i> tiny.

You can see in this screenshot. Those are my default fonts on the left. Those are your fonts on the beta site on the right:

<img src="http://saturn5.com/~jwb/fonts.png">

I don't see the attraction. Please don't dick with my fonts.

Also the fixed layout isn't too cool. On the latest flat panel monitors it barely takes up any of the screen.
=franCk=
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Joined: August 15th, 2003, 11:03 pm

Post by =franCk= »

The top banner is too dark blue on my LCD screen (and on some others) - make it lighter.

My main concern with the website was not the look (but the new one is better) is was the navigation, and although it did improve (suppress the left menu on main pages) it is still not up to what we can expect for main stream browser.

My advice? Do a website for users only - I mean the guys that will use it but won't participate, and from which we would not even want a bug report because it will be useless. For this ones I see only two pages required : Product (without stuff like Bugzilla or even Firebird (not ready) of course!) and Store the rest is plain scary and useless.

Have another website for the nice guys that may really help, and include info for developpers on the same.

Currently the website is a bit of Mozilla (think kitchen sink) - make it Firefox. No clutter. Simple - but allowing to do anything for the most advanced users (link to the dev site).

A bit more than my 2 cents.
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Tesla
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Post by Tesla »

The site needs to be left justified - not centered. A flexable site that fills the whole screen in all resolutions would be nice.

Here is an article that has a lot of good ideas:
http://www.andkon.com/stuf/mozillanewstrategy/
Last edited by Tesla on August 20th, 2004, 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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MechR
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Post by MechR »

So... when they say the homepage isn't updated yet, does that refer to http://website-beta.mozilla.org/ in relation to http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ and other subsections?

Anyhoo:

- On the main page, the font for "Mozilla 1.7/1.7.1" is bigger than for the other products. Probably intentional, but it just looks kinda funny to me.

- Definitely want screenshots for the different products on their subpages. This could also display the theming capabilities :)

- http://update.mozilla.org/ is still blindingly bad :( I realize it may not be slated for this round of updating, but I really hope it gets fixed up before the 1.0 releases. In particular, theme previews must be obtained, by hook or by crook.
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aconbere
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Post by aconbere »

Alright the new site is an improvement in particular the product pages are much certainly much clearer. I do have several issues and suggestions that I will try and list here clearly.

A) Firefox Product Page

I continue to find the firefox product page to be somewhat less than intuitive. The Thunderbird page comes in my mind much close to a layout that follows user interest and necessity and pares that with the flow of the page.
While I love the set aside top section that gives easy access to a brief description, and download information, the bottom section quickly becomes cluttered and unusable. The long list of reasons trails off bellow the screen where I have to scroll down and down to read it. and while it's impressive that there is such a long list, It's cumbersome and unwieldy.
In short it would be nice to see all of this condensed into a single page. Certainly some space on the right could be set aside next to the top table for the resources and links list (see illustration)

------------------------------------------
|...................................|..................|
|Download and FF info | Resources |
|...................................|........And....|
|...................................|.......Links...|
------------------------------------------

I also find the short paragraph in the Thunderbird product page on why Use Thunderbird to be a nice brief in comparison to scrolling through the long list. Also notice that the quotes on the Firefox page don't mean much without some background to give them substance.

B) the support and about pages

These pages only give me trouble in that there suddenly appears this left hand navigation bar that until then had been absent. It feels out of place and confusing not having been placed in any of the other pages. In my mind there are two simple options that would make this transfer seem more clear. a) one could make the right hand links look like this, and shift this navigation bar to the right. b) one could make the navigation bar look like the links lists, and put it on the right (or put the link lists on the left)

C) in the home page:
I feel that the long scrolling screen fails to deliver a good overview of what it is that mozilla offers, it leaves so much content at the bottoms and tops of screens or generally outside of the viewers attention. Perhaps a bar running horizontally at the top could direct users to individual products.

----------------------------------------------------------------
| firefox | Thunderbird | Mozilla | Sunbird | Bugzilla |
----------------------------------------------------------------

Something like this perhaps. The general Idea being that I don't feel users are stumbling upon mozilla.org in a random google search for “new Internet browsers for people looking for a more feature full, safe web experience”. But that rather people will be arriving looking for a product, be it mozilla, firefox, or thunderbird, and they should be given access to the information they are seeking as quickly as possible.

I'm not sure if this is to be implemented in the updated home page or not, but I hope that it is.


Anyways Thanks for all the great work, this is what Catches my eye right off
(also i liked the yellow theme much better)

Anders
AnonEmoose
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Post by AnonEmoose »

I haven't seen this issue adressed... So, what about Section called ADD-ONS with Links for popular plugins (Java, Flash, WMP etc.) and links to Extensions/Themes (update.mozilla.org) on the FRONT page as opposed to inside pages where it is easer to get lost... As customization/extensibility is one of Mozilla Foundation's software strongest points
iamnotniles
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Post by iamnotniles »

I was showing the new design to someone earlier and after the "ooh lovelys" and the "much nicers" he said. "It would be nice if they had a fade effect on the buttons at the top. A bit like the one on <a href="http://www.lycos.co.uk/">Lycos</a> perhaps (but actually working properly).
Timothy Babych
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Post by Timothy Babych »

I like the new mozila logo. But overall impresion is that previous one was better. This one is ok, but it is too.. ordinary?

* The seachfield is at the left top - not the place where most people will look for it. The input field is too short and nice effect of "white only on hover" is gone.

* The selected tab must bring the current page to front. Not only change color to something different than oter tabs but actually *pop* in the eyes of user. May be bold black on white?

* I would love to have navigation line at the top of the page. Mozilla's site is pretty large and it is easy to be lost there. something like
Products > Firefox > Release Notes
marke
Posts: 285
Joined: June 30th, 2004, 2:07 am

Post by marke »

- ugly support table. screenshot also upside
- black and blue text makes site very classical
- left pane is too near for right one. no space and their like one pane :/
- when Title of products are like 300 pixels from right then the logo and produck tect should be 310 or even 320 pixels...
xdiag
Posts: 2
Joined: June 6th, 2004, 12:41 am

NVu

Post by xdiag »

Hi,

I really like the new design. But I think nVu should be on the products page. While Fx and Tb are replacing Seamonkey's browser and mailnews component, nVu is the standalone composer and thus should be mentioned.

For the seamonkey page: “Mozilla's HTML editor keeps getting better” sounds not convincing.
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