Luke wrote:
>
> Adding content is the other one not on the list. i.e. Getting
> information into the site that's actually useful.
>
> - Current info for people who would otherwise be developers if they
> could find what they needed.
>
> - Info for potential Mozilla users. Normal people. We want people to
> use this thing, right? If not, I'll bail out now...
>
> Luke
I actually posted something like this in mozilla.macosx (on the 30th
about nightly OS X builds). Some asked the difference between a trunk
build and a branch build. Now many developers know the diff as it
fundumental programming ideas. However many "newbies" he test Mozilla
out might not have a clue what the diff is.
As Steve Dagley pointed out in a reply to my posting, this is how I see
him seeing it, Mozilla.org is just a devlopmet hub for the Mozilla
project and has no real intrest exist in distribution. This is fine when
one considers a great deal of the work is done by Netscape employees
and Netscape has an intrest to distribute their end work.
The problme I see with this model is that
a.) not everyone who uses mozilla is a developer, or mozilla developer
b.) mozilla needs tester who understands the program
c.) no "good" end use docs exit
d.) many people have a negative view of netscape and as an extension
Netscape
The only solution I see is having good user docs... that are easy to
find and understand. Let me ask you this you first start up Mozilla and
see two end menu options 'Debug' and 'QA' before that you see a help
menu and you decide to find out what each and for and how to use the
options uder them... what do you find? Information on Netscape Browser.
If you want users to stomp the life out of your builds you better
provide them with end docs on how to use lets say "StingBundle Test"
what it does what you should expect to see... what does "Flush Memory"
do? why use it? No place do this info exist in an easy to find place on
the mozilla page.
I think if you get people to use Mozilla and give them to tools to use
Mozilla (user docs) more bugs will be found... granted many dups so
someone needs to troll for dups... as a result netscape and mozilla
develope a better product. As a side result of getting people to use
Mozilla Netscape will start to get a beter public image. Yes I know not
everone working on Mozilla cares about Netscape but the two are joined
at the hip... and lets face it Mozilla doesn't exactly have the best
image of many webusers.
User Docs should start from the basics of Mozilla. What the prefs
mean... then move to bookmarks/keywords (a good user keyword doc does
exist)... next I would move to explain the Debug and QA before touching
Bugzilla.
BTW why one earth does http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/ have a link
for releases notes point to the old Mx version and not to the current
builds? Yes, a link at the top of the page directs users to the current
notes but I think it would be more natural to link to the current notes
and have the current notes link to the old. After all how many people
use the old Mx builds?
