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Thank you Nelson Ko

Earlier this week, Nelson Ko applied some patches to the support.mozilla.com TikiWiki system, which have greatly improved our whole contributor/review process.

  • All edits now go through a staging copy.
  • There is an auto-generated list of all articles not the same as the staging copy.
  • Approving an edit is as easy as clicking on a link.
  • The contributor’s name is then automatically added to the live version (giving credit where credit is due).
  • We can now have hidden article tags (possible tag: NeedsMacInfo)
  • The anchor issue posted on the Firefox Support blog is now fixed.
    • Correct syntax: ((article name|#anchor name|text being linked))
  • and more.

This post is my BIG thank you to Nelson. The Firefox Support web site as been greatly improved.

2007 12 12 Chris Ilias Firefox
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For those wanting to localize the Firefox Support KB

Unfortunately, JT’s blog does not allow posting without a Google account; so I’m posting this here.

On JT’s blog Cédric commented about the lack of localization currently on the Firefox Support knowledge Base. In order to ensure a level of consistency and quality, the growth of the KB has been mostly a controlled growth. Upon reviewing articles, I noticed that quite a few of the articles that needed major revisions, were already localized. It doesn’t really make sense (to me at least) to start localizing, without a solid en-US base.

We now have around 75 articles that have been reviewed, and deemed ready to go live. Even after that, I can’t review articles written in a language I don’t understand. We’re going to need l10n leaders to take on reviewer roles.

Anyone wanting to get more involved, please feel free to speak up in the mozilla.support.planning newsgroup.

2007 09 22 Chris Ilias Firefox
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No drummer better than Neil Peart

C’mon; all of us Rush fans have done this at least once. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ-l6ErEazI

2007 09 13 Chris Ilias Personal Comments (1) Permalink

Importing data

Instead of having one article in the Firefox Support knowledge base for importing user data (bookmarks, passwords, cookies, form data, history, etc.), I’ve decided to split it by product. We now have an urgent need to get these articles created, before September 31.

I’ve already created placeholders:

Feel free to contribute content to those articles. If you have any questions on how to format the articles, all pages in the Mozilla Knowledgebase category are ready to go, and can be used for formatting references. We also have a Manual of style, and Best Practices Guide.

2007 09 11 Chris Ilias Firefox
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User-friendly terminology

Words are expensive. Use them carefully.

There’s an article in the Firefox Support knowledge base, about sharing profile data across computers, but we’re not sure what the most user-friendly and unmistakable name for it is.

Tell us what you think.

{democracy:3}
2007 09 07 Chris Ilias Firefox
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New iMac keyboards

I’ve always liked the Macbook keyboards; and it now looks like Apple has applied that same design to the new iMac ultra-thin keyboards.

Images are available at AppleInsider.com.

2007 08 08 Chris Ilias Personal Comments (1) Permalink

Deadline for Firefox Support Articles

Just in case anyone didn’t know, we’d like to have all Firefox Support articles drafted for the Alpha knowledge base by this Friday (Aug 3).

2007 07 31 Chris Ilias Firefox
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Remaining Firefox Support articles and areas of concern

Almost all of the articles in the list, for the alpha version of Firefox Support have been assigned, and most of those have been drafted. So far, the response has been better than [at least I] expected; and I can’t thank contributors enough for the great work they’ve done. Out of the articles remaining, the majority are troubleshooting articles, and add-on articles. We need people to author articles for:

  • Firefox will not start
  • Video or Audio doesn’t play
  • Error loading any web site
  • Firefox crashes
  • Unable to download or save files
  • Unable to install add-ons
  • Recovering a profile that suddenly disappeared
  • Firefox.exe always stays open
  • Plugin scanning
  • Adobe Reader
  • Java
  • QuickTime
  • ActiveX
  • RealPlayer
  • Standard Diagnostic
  • Antivirus software
  • Roaming profile

Some other notes.
The best practices for support documents page includes a couple of guidelines to prevent screenshots from increasing the width of support pages. One way is to only crop what is needed. Another is to resize your screenshots to 75%. You can also resize the Firefox window, to be less wide, before you take the screenshot.

Simply copying and pasting content from MozillaZine is not what we want. Take the opportunity to make articles more understandable to mom.

Many of the articles have been written for one platform only (mostly Windows). If you’re a Mac or Linux user, feel free to add Mac and Linux content to others people’s articles.

2007 07 25 Chris Ilias Firefox
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Help create the Firefox Support knowledge base

The staging site for the new Firefox Support knowledge base is now up and running; and we’re looking for people to help contribute content. We have an initial list of articles we would like created for the alpha version; so feel free to create an account, assign yourself to an article, and create it. Our primary goal, right now, is core content; so if you’re not familiar with tikiwiki, feel free to create articles without markup.

As more articles are drafted, there are more ways you can contribute, such as reviewing the accuracy of information, reviewing compliance with the best practices page, proofreading, marking up articles with tikiwiki code, and even creating sreenshots.

Get started now by following the instructions on our “Get Started Now” page; and thank you to everyone who contributes.

2007 07 20 Chris Ilias Firefox
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In the end, it’s about the UI

I’ve been doing some testing of candidate content management systems for support.mozilla.com. The folks at Jive software were kind enough to create a demo site for us. Lucy Connor was also kind enough to create a tikiwiki test site for us. When I see how they match up with the list of criteria, tikiwiki seems to do a far better job of meeting that criteria; but in the end, if I were to choose which of the two I would send users to, I would decide on the Jive version. Why? The user interface is much more user-friendly. It’s a testament to just how important a good user interface is

2007 06 20 Chris Ilias Firefox
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