Update on the www.mozilla.org relaunch

It has been several weeks since we finalized the new www.mozilla.org design and I wanted to post an update on things. There are several different pieces we’ve been putting together to prepare for the relaunch.

The new design is on a staging server and we’re making a few more tweaks to the templates to polish things. If you’d like to help with the HTML and CSS edits, please let me know.

We’re also moving from CVS to SVN to put the site on a modern repository and to help us work with more people (for instance, the l10n community uses SVN to localize web content and we are interested in working more closely with them).

Out of date pages are being archived to make the transition to the new repository (and the move to a new PHP-based templating system) easier. We’ve trimmed the site down from roughly 24,000 files to just under 14,000 files so far.

Many existing pages are being updated and new content is being added. This will continue after the site is relaunched, so let us know if you’re interested in helping us tell the Mozilla story.

As we move forward with transitioning files to the staging server, we’ll need some help to make sure pages are displaying correctly. We’ll post more information about that soon. Thanks again to everyone who has commented and contributed so far.

I Am The Benevolent Dictator Of My Face

About a week ago, I asked for help choosing my next beard style. Unfortunately the most frequent suggestions were not practical and would take a long time to grow in.

So instead, I’m going with something that no one suggested—a horseshoe moustache. I had thought this beard style was a fu manchu but learned I was wrong (this really has been a voyage of discovery).

Now some may say that I’m going back on my promise, but I think this highlights an important point about open source communities—they are not democracies. I have taken everyone’s input into consideration, but ultimately I’m the benevolent dictator of my face and have made a tough call.

One Cause or Many?

For the www.mozilla.org redesign we’ve been working on adding new content to the home page and adding a new section we’ve been calling Our Causes. I have some questions about this section that I’d be interested in getting feedback on.

The idea is to use this section to tell a more complete story about Mozilla and the goals that are behind our actions. Or to put it another way, if Firefox is a means to an end we need a place to talk about what that larger end is.

Many Causes version

The initial approach to writing the main page for this section was to identify a set of community priorities (accessibility, privacy, etc.) that mapped back to principles in the Manifesto and describe what we’re doing in these areas.

After talking about this with other people it became clear that there was an alternate approach to consider. Instead of many causes, perhaps we have just one overall cause (making the Internet better) and everything else is just a means to this end?

Both approaches seem useful, so this leads to a few questions:

• Does the One Cause or Many Causes approach appeal to you more?
• Where else would the Many Causes content fit if it wasn’t used here?
• What name would you use for the One Cause approach? Our Cause, Our Goal, Our Mission, The End To Which Firefox Is A Means? (I’m joking on that last one…)

One Cause version

I have some thoughts on these questions, but no clear answers yet. The Many Causes version seems more correct to me because it has more detail to it, but the One Cause version seems easier to digest for someone who just knows Mozilla makes a browser.

If we used the more approachable version as the main page, there are other ways to use the more detailed version. It could be a sub-page or an introduction to the Manifesto (it rolls up many of the principles into concrete activities and that could be a good way for people to approach the full Manifesto text).

If we used the One Cause version, what about the name? I think Our Causes flows well, but the singular Our Cause doesn’t sound right to me. Maybe Our Goal or Our Mission is better? The current mission page is a bit out of date and could use a review, so maybe that gets folded into this process?

The response to my last post about site content had a lot of useful feedback, so I’m looking forward to hearing from people about this too.

Featured Mozilla-Based Applications for June

People and organizations are doing a lot of interesting things with Mozilla technologies. Here are two of the many Mozilla-based applications available. If you would like to suggest other applications to feature, please leave a comment.

Evergreen is an open source library automation system that helps patrons find library materials, and helps libraries manage those materials.

Skyfire™ is a free mobile web browser that allows you to experience the internet on your phone exactly like on your PC. Now, you can use the full web from your mobile phone with unprecedented speed and simplicity.

Four Travel Questions

Asa recently posted answers to four travel questions on his blog. Here’s my list of the most interesting things I’ve seen in each of the categories he listed.

Architecture/Building: Pantheon (I like Roman stuff)
Natural Wonder: Aurora Borealis (barely seen in Iceland)
Work of Art: Peace Fountain (that’s my photo in the article)
Animal: Reef shark (seen in Fiji on a dive)