Mozilla.org Website Beta Final Call

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
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wwrafter
Posts: 6
Joined: August 31st, 2004, 12:47 pm
Location: Campbell, CA

Remove the Onion from the list of previewed web sites

Post by wwrafter »

On the home page, there is an image of firefox browsing different web sites. This includes "The Onion". These products are not jokes or satire. The Onion is. I would not provide this subliminal suggestion.
Thanks,

Nick
wwrafter
Posts: 6
Joined: August 31st, 2004, 12:47 pm
Location: Campbell, CA

The dowload block on the Mozilla page is not consistent.

Post by wwrafter »

The download block on the Firefox and Tbird pages (at least on my computer) provide a link to the windows english version.
This block on the mozilla page shows linux and osx links as well.

This should be consistent. I'll leave the decision as to whether to add more links to FF and TB or to remove the Moz links to someone whose job it is.
Thanks,

Nick
wwrafter
Posts: 6
Joined: August 31st, 2004, 12:47 pm
Location: Campbell, CA

The tbird page has a paragraph where moz and ff do not.

Post by wwrafter »

Under the "Why use ..." section, the tbird page has a big paragraph of text at the top where the FF and Moz pages do not.
Thanks,

Nick
andkon
Posts: 1641
Joined: March 10th, 2003, 12:06 pm

Post by andkon »

Codeman wrote:
andkon wrote:...

The current design also hampers future improvement on content.

The list goes on... :(


Are you never happy? Are you able to say anything encouraging? Like... "The effort looks good so far, but here's a couple pointers, what do you think of this idea, would you consider trying to...."? You may get a little further with people. :-)


There's nothing to be learned from idle praises. There's not much use in such a chorus. It's only from criticism that anything is learnt, not from flattery. I think ANYONE who puts forth any ideas should be completely open to any attack, including me. Civility is also key, but pure criticism can still fit in with it.

And guess what, it doesn't look good so far. It looks even more boring than before and functionally it's just as dead as before. Even though I have in two essays pounded Shea's design, I suggest keeping *even that* until a better arrangement could be found. (After all, the Shea design at least isn't screwed up in Opera, Konq, [slightly in] IE6.)

It's a ironic and partially ridiculous that an effort that claims to be more design oriented than content forgets to put Firefox logos on ANY page. Aren't the same people who did the design responsible for the logos, btw?? And no, I wouldn't be happy if all the sudden giant Firefox logos spanned Mozilla.org. The point with the lack of Firefox logos is to show that the design, with barely any new content, was done in a rather short-sighted manner with nothing at all in focus.

It's also frustrating to be told by people that the new design took "months" with "multiple companies" that I "don't even know about." Measly CSS cosmetics that took months with multiple companies? What am I supposed to make of that? (It also gives the look that outside is not wanted since Mozilla.org has it all figured out.)

It seems as though everyone's into a mad scramble to finish before the 1.0 and nothing is being done right. Ironically, this panic could be avoided if the Foundation considered proposals from outside sources like mine. Simplifying site structure (so that the enduser would only have at most half a dozen at his hands) is not only easier but more efficient than creating a pretty blue bar for "months" with "multiple companies." A focused, well-lead effort at creating http://www.andkon.com/stuf/mozillanewstrategy/ would take a month *at worst.*

And, YES, the idea of building a design before content DOES hamper future development, for obvious reasons. It's like buying pre-cut carpeting for a house that has yet to have its dimensions worked out... It's counterintuative.

It's also pretty stupid to have a message similar to "don't criticize the content on the beta, will be updated soon" immediatly replaced with "last call for beta design!" The impression, and now my conviction, is that no one is really doing anything about content. "Safer, faster, better" sounds like some kinky infomercial for generic herbal Viagra rip-off...
Last edited by andkon on August 31st, 2004, 1:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
wwrafter
Posts: 6
Joined: August 31st, 2004, 12:47 pm
Location: Campbell, CA

The products page has versions for FF and TB, but not Moz

Post by wwrafter »

The list of product descriptions for FF and TB on the products page specify versions (I don't think they should), where the Mozilla Suite does not. The descriptions should be more in sync also.
Thanks,

Nick
dialate
Posts: 3
Joined: August 20th, 2004, 7:57 pm

Support

Post by dialate »

Just to make sure, are you guys coordinating the switchover with DecisionOne? As it is, if you go to Support -> Telephone Support, it goes back to the original site.

Someone mentioned it looks really messed in Konqueror, but everything looks fine in 3.2, save for some minor highlighting errors. Older versions of Konq probably mess it up much more, but then again, it would be unusual if they didn't. :D
Thomas Stache
Posts: 82
Joined: November 5th, 2002, 6:12 am

Post by Thomas Stache »

At the bottom of the Firefox Promotional Buttons page http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/firefox/buttons.html is a link to Jon Hicks' page for more Firefox graphics. There is no content anymore on his page.

The Thunderbird buttons page here is completely unstyled.
Last edited by Thomas Stache on August 31st, 2004, 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Greg K Nicholson
Posts: 1328
Joined: September 28th, 2003, 8:58 am
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Post by Greg K Nicholson »

With styles and images disabled, the Firefox products page's header reads "Firefox: the browser, reloaded", Thunderbird's "Thunderbird: reclaim your inbox." and the Suite's "Mozilla 1.7.2".

Firefox's needs the slogan updating; Thunderbird's needs rid of the stray fullstop; the Suite's should be "Mozilla Suite".
Greg K Nicholson
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Joined: September 28th, 2003, 8:58 am
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Post by Greg K Nicholson »

Thomas Stache wrote:At the bottom of the Firefox Promotional Buttons page http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/firefox/buttons.html is a link to Jon Hicks' page for more Firefox graphics. There is no content anymore on his page.
The link should go to takebacktheweb.org.
sasquatch
Posts: 6022
Joined: November 25th, 2003, 8:56 am

Re: Remove the Onion from the list of previewed web sites

Post by sasquatch »

wwrafter wrote:On the home page, there is an image of firefox browsing different web sites. This includes "The Onion". These products are not jokes or satire. The Onion is. I would not provide this subliminal suggestion.


I agree. They need to act serious if they want to be taken seriously.
nandhp
Posts: 14
Joined: July 6th, 2004, 10:25 am

Post by nandhp »

There should be a way (on the developers page?) to download the Mozilla+Firefox+Thunderbird betas, similar to the "Technology Previews" part of the old mozilla.org page.
Greg K Nicholson
Posts: 1328
Joined: September 28th, 2003, 8:58 am
Contact:

Post by Greg K Nicholson »

One more thing - please avoid the use of the phrase "Learn more about Firefox" (the title of the large front-page screenshot) - it's not very nice to suggest your audience is uneducated and needs to "learn". Simply "More about Firefox" would be better.
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ivanii
Posts: 444
Joined: July 23rd, 2004, 9:01 am
Location: Serbia, Belgrade
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Post by ivanii »

It is nice that you have listen to the suggestions, I thought, as it was mentioned in your previous post that you will focus mostly on bug tracking and gave up of posting ideas.

I like the fact that Firefox is now Rediscover the web, as users may get it much better than The browser. Reloaded without pouring large sums of money into camapaign.

1) I would like to notice that at this moment you have two product pages - home page and real product page. The difference is marginal, especially if you take into account that RSS feeds are not end-user oriented, and there were good posts here on why they should not be there.

2) I recommend that you should add new section to the site - Community, so that there are actually three level of envolvement -
end-user, community member and developer, with sepparate content for each group.

In this scenary products page may dissapear (I think it should), or you should carefally reconsider content for new home page.

3) Why use product part of each product page is not good. I guess that there is a little trouble in presenting right features, but what is really bad is that they are not presented in right way.

First of all there is no user perspective in presenting them, user perspective should be included with headings like this:

- See innovation every day (to focus on the fact that FF is constantly improving and IE is same whole the time)
- Enjoy secure surf (to focus on the annoyances that browsing with IE causes)
- Be productive and intelligent (to focus on intelli stuff that FF has and which speeds up browsing)
- Make your browser (focus on easy theme switching and extensions)
- Search the browser (integrated all kind of search)

Something like that, maybe little tweaked.

Each heading should have picture, little text that descibes features that enable such experience, and a link to page where whole stuff is elaborated. It is likeky that many visitors would like to know more about some features, so they should be able to do it.

3) Title tag of home page - this is very important as home page appears in search engines rather than FF page. If users don't know nothing about Mozilla products (and it is likely), they won't figure out anything from title. They may not read more, and even if they do, it is possible that the text fragment for such keyword confuses them.

So proposed title: Mozilla foundation - free open-source browser, mail and related software
Get ready for revolutionary File manager!
Thomas Stache
Posts: 82
Joined: November 5th, 2002, 6:12 am

Post by Thomas Stache »

The images on the Sunbird screenshots page are (still) flowing under the left-hand-side menu. Seen in Firefox 20040821 and IE6. And you have

Code: Select all

<title>Calendar - Screen Shots</title>
on the _Sunbird_ page.

PS: I know you can get this right, you do on the Calendar screenshot page ;-)
khlo
Posts: 56
Joined: May 21st, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by khlo »

nice to see, the front page is a total of 270kb though.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/serv ... zilla.org/
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