Good deal! I agree with the sections you suggested; all of those areas
need to be on the front page. I have a few more along with some
comments.
1. Get the lizard on there. This is an easy way to build mind share
even among folks who don't care about mozilla. People who don't like
Coke know what it is, and that's also a big role of the front page --
brand identification.
2. A Community section, with links to "who Uses Mozilla?" (along the
lines of what Apple does in its weekly emails), Mozilla Galleries, and
Join.
3. The "Who uses Mozilla" could go to a listing of other companies and
products that use Moz. That helps to overcome the skepticism of
the outside world --- sure we've got some some killer code and a great
poduct, but Who Else is using this thing? Success stories also help.
The viewer/developer./tech writer/grfx person wants to be part of a
living, growing community and example of others making it or the neat
things they can do all encourage them, which leads to the next point.
4. The Galleries would be a section like Macromedia's Shockwave
gallery, but even better. Tag line would be something like, "Look at
what you can do and still be standards-compliant!" Here, you scould
show what people have done using all the neat features of Moz.
5. Direction. I think we can show some neat stuff off on the front
page that degrades nicely in browsers that are not standards compliant
(although we should have a little tag line that says as much). This
again gives people a further incentive to go and get the browser
without being obnoxious about it. Something like "You're not seeing
the whole story! Go get Moz today.." etc. Obviously I'm not an ad man,
but you get the general idea.
6. Color usage. In the modern skin, the color usage is kewl, because
it plays off of the other elements of the skin. That won't always be
the case if the user sets his or her own skin, so a neutral color
scheme (greens/browns/greys) is probably better.
~Mike
