Asa Dotzler wrote:
> update the list of links in the navigation bar on the left of the page.
Great news!
I suggest to use something like this as a basis and modify it to suit
mozilla.org's needs:
A. Site & Server
B. News & Events
C. Projects & Activities
D. Software & Download
E. Documentation
F. People, Companies etc.
G. Search
- There should not be more than 7 (seven) items, at least on the top level.
I doubt it's a good idea to add sublevels with many items each (max. 2-3
sub-items in a very small font).
- *All* important "dispatcher" pages on mozilla.org should be max. two
clicks away from the front page. This includes all documents currently
linked to from the left-side menu, the performance/footprint projects,
bugzilla, ..., if necessary through a sitemap.
I think it's a good idea to integrate the search form (or a simplified
version of it) on the mozilla.org front page. That would make it easier to
discover the usefulness of this tool.
There should definitely be a good introductory page for mozilla.org that
contains everything you should read as a newbie, but only need to read
once. Maybe http://www.mozilla.org/mozorg.html ("The Mozilla Organization
At A Glance") is already good enough for now, but I'm sure it can be
improved.
This would be the first item (A.): "About mozilla.org", "What is
mozilla.org", or "Introduction to Mozilla". It shouldn't take more than 5
minutes to read all the information offered there, and it should at least
cover the following things:
- What is mozilla.org? What's it's relation to Netscape, AOL and other
companies?
- What is Mozilla-the-browser-suite?
- Basically everything that is in the current menu, with the following
exception:
- some of these things should be moved to an "advanced", more
hacker-oriented ("for mozilla developers") page, e.g. "New Checkins", "Tree
Status", "View Source", "Module Owners", "Ports". Maybe they can move to
Documentation/Mozilla Developers.
The front page should also have a link to mozillazine.org (and probably
mozdev.org, maybe others), but not necessarily in the menu on the left
side.
In bug 65457, I attached a draft for an FAQ for the mozilla.general
newsgroup that contains some hints which items I think are not needed on
the front page:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=24159
Maybe something like this could be used:
A. About Mozilla (with links to roadmap, milestone page,...)
B. News (does not need to be a link if the front page is the news page)
C. Projects
D. Download
E. Bug Reports
F. Docs & Info:
- for Mozilla Hackers
- for Web Developers
- for Users
G. People, Companies and Related Sites
[ - "FAQ" mentioned in the (A.) and (F.) pages]
[ - "Search" integrated into the front page]
[or FAQ and Search stay at the bottom, clearly separated from the other
items]
> 1. Audience. Which links? Who do we expect to be using the front page
I think the front page should be optimized for _all_ first time visitors,
and maybe also those who come back some more times. No matter if they are
potential Mozilla users, web-developers, Mozilla developers or otherwise
interested in Mozilla.
I do _not_ think that the front page should be a optimized to be a good
homepage for mozilla developers. Such a page could be a link deeper (like
"/docs/") and mention tinderbox, bonsai, and other "advanced" tools. There
could be separate "homepages" for each of the three roles (Mozilla
developer, Web developer, User), reachable from the front page with a
single mouse click.
> 2. Scope/Depth. How many links and how many levels (currently there are
> two levels and 27 links).
If there is is more than a single level, items on different levels should
have different appearance, much more different than they are currently. It
just looks like a very long list of items, and that's not attractive. For a
casual visitor, it currently looks like a lot work to click through all
these items...
> 3. Order. Which links belong at the top and which links at the bottom?
I don't have a strong opinion on this one, but it should make sense to
click through the links from top to bottom. I suggest to discuss the
categories first. If you ask me, both the "Introduction to mozilla.org" as
the first item and "Search" as the last item makes sense.
Andreas
