Alix F.

Quite a few improvements to Sfx landed over the summer. Many thanks to Alex Buchanan and Paul Booker for their hard work!

After analyzing traffic to the site, and gathering feedback from Sfx members and admins, we have also created a plan for the next set of improvements.

The priority for next quarter is to redesign the homepage and top-level navigation of the site. There is a lot of information on the current page, which makes it difficult for new users to navigate.

We envision three parts to the redesign:

• Create a simplified homepage with an explanation of what Sfx is about, a community spotlight, and a call to action.
• Create a new page for members to track Sfx activity. This is where members will go to see what is happening on the site: events, new groups, new posts, etc.
• Update the navigation to improve usability. This includes making the header smaller so more page content is visible without scrolling, and making the menus easier to find. We’ll also add the activity page and the campus reps program to the top level menus.

In addition to the big redesign, we’re planning to add a content aggregator to gather Firefox marketing content posted outside of Sfx and publish it to the site. The long term vision is to aggregate all things related to Firefox marketing (including tweets, photos, videos…) but we’ll start with a simpler blog aggregator. We’re hoping to have content from Mozilla marketing, but also from Sfx members who are blogging about spreading Firefox around the globe.

Finally, there are many smaller tweaks, including new content creation (how to get started/tutorials) and some bugs fixes.

You can see the full plan posted on the Sfx group which we’re using to discuss and keep track of updates to the site.

Many thanks to all the volunteers who are helping with the development and day-today operations of the site! We’re always looking for more help, so contact us if you’re interested!

Two weeks ago, we launched a new pilot survey: Firefox in your country to better understand how and why people are using Firefox in specific markets.

The initial set of countries targeted includes Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Indonesia, Poland, and Spain.

We have received 8,500 responses so far, this is phenomenal! Thank you to everyone who has answered the survey and helped spread the word about it.

We are still hoping to get a few more answers from Australia and India before the survey closes, so we would really appreciate your help in reaching out to people in those countries.

What’s next? Once we get the results, we’ll analyze them and publish aggregate data (no personal information). We’ll also use these results to tweak the questions in the survey, if needed, before extending it to more countries. We’ve been thrilled to see how many people have expressed interest in helping localize and publicize the survey.

Thanks for your help with this project!

I wanted to share the tremendous progress that has been made so far in Brazil in 2008. Here’s a summary of the activities and some of the results:

• The number of daily active users has doubled from 1.2 million in November ‘07 to 2.5 million in August ‘08
• Market share has increased from 19% in November 2007 to 27% in July 2008 (Source: Net Applications )
• Brazil was an integral part of the Firefox 3 launch!
• Mozilla participated in FISL, the largest open source conference in Brazil
• The community is more involved than ever!

Community involvement:

Campus reps, evangelists, events organizers and contest participants, you name it! The community in Brazil is thriving, and we’re very excited to see so much enthusiasm.
In fact, one of the 3 grand prize winners of the Extend Firefox 3 contest is from Brazil and has been a very active member of the community this year. Congratulations to Felipe Gomes for the Tagmarks add-on!

Firefox 3 launch:

• Firefox 3 and mozilla.com were fully localized
• The Download day project was localized and everyone helped spread the word! Brazil was one of the top countries in terms of number of pledges.
• Press: localization of the reviewer’s guide, direct press outreach for download day and the launch, extensive press coverage in all major press outlets (including the printed version of Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper) and many blogs
• Launch parties in 5 cities with 700 attendees

Fisl (April 2008):

• Mozilla Project overview by Mitchell Baker, Firefox in Brazil and Beyond panel, Mozilla XUL Runner by Felipe Gomes
• a day long workshop on Mozilla, Firefox and how to get involved, including:
  Firefox A developer’s best friend by Clauber Halic and Mario Rinaldi, Localizing Firefox 3, Mozilla, and how to get involved by Fernando Silveira, Offline Online Web and Firefox 3 by Marcio Galli, Mozilla Testing Sprint by Chris Hofmann
• a community party for 100 participants
• press coverage by Globo, PC World, Terra, Baguete

Thank you all for making this possible! In particular, thanks to Marcio Galli, Bruno Magrani and Ronaldo Lemos for initiating and helping coordinate many of the activities. Thanks also to the fantastic team of localizers, including Jeferson Hultmann, Fernando Pereira Silveira, and Marcio Galli.

Stay tuned for more on what we’re planning next for Brazil!

The launch of Firefox was amazing with events around the world: download day fests, launch parties, and more!

We would like to collect your pictures, videos, and stories from the launch to share them with everyone. To do this, we have created a new group on spreadfirefox: Firefox 3 launch archive where you can post links to your memories of the launch.

If you posted your pictures to flickr and would like to share them, please tag them as ff3launch so we can easily find them.

If you go to the spreadfirefox group today, you will already see pictures of the many parties that took place around the globe, including in Brazil

Thanks for your help!

Firefox 3 has so many new and interesting features, we thought it would be great to showcase them in a few screencasts. And who would be better to help create those than some of the people involved in making Firefox 3!

The screencasts:

• Asa Dotzler shows how easy it is to switch to Firefox 3
  

• Johnathan Nightingale shows the new security features in Firefox 3 and why they matter.
  

• Seth Spitzer gives a tour of the awesome bar
  

• Alex Faaborg gives an overview of bookmarks in Firefox 3.
  

The videos are posted to vimeo and youtube Make sure to view the high quality versions if you choose youtube, vimeo’s look great by default.

The process:

Each video was created a little differently, as we investigated the best way to produce them.

In each case, we identified the features to highlight, and for each one listed the main points and drafted a script to serve as a reference during the recording session. The audio recording was always done first, and video was added later. Each video took about 8–10 hours to produce.

The switch video follows the prepared script very closely. The audio for the bookmarks and awesome bar videos was created by interviewing Seth and Alex. The security one was recorded from Toronto by Johnathan, using Jing, we captured that audio to edit it slightly and add our own video recording and transitions.

One recording had to be made in Rainer’s car because we could not find a quiet place… We’ll let you guess which one!

Thanks:

Thanks to Asa, Johnathan, Seth, and Alex for taking the time to record and review the screencasts. Also many thanks to David Tenser who helped with the scripts and reviews, and Rainer Cvillink for his technical expertise and artistic input.

Next steps:

• Gather feedback on the first set of videos
• Publish them on the mozilla.com web site.
• Identify the easiest way to make the videos localizable
• Create the next screencasts: new look&feel, cusomization/add-ons manager, download manager

We would love to know what you think: are those screencasts helpful? interesting? What features would you like to see showcased next?

Hopefully the title got your attention :-)

What is this about?

As part of the launch of Firefox 3, John Slater and I worked closely with The Royal Order and Jason Meyer to create a video highlighting all the wonderful features of Firefox 3.

Where is it?

You can watch it on the new mozilla.com to see the high quality version.
But it's also right here:


If you would like to embed it in your web page, it is also available on the firefox vimeo page and the foxmoz channel on YouTube.

Thanks to Pascal Chevrel and the awesome team of Mozilla localizers, it is also available with subtitles on mozilla-europe.org

How did we create it?

The goal was to create a 1 minute overview of the exciting features in Firefox 3 as a complement the features page.

Some of the Firefox 3 features are much easier to understand when you see them in action than when you read about them, in particular for people who might be less familiar with browsers.

After listing the features to highlight, TRO worked with us to create a script. It became clear that 1 minute would not be enough to showcase everything, so we had to limit the number of features, and extend the video by a few seconds.

Then the hard work started: it's all about the details! Finding the right voice, deciding on which pages to show in the video, working on transitions, zooming, intonation... and finding stock footage of a ninja we could use!

If you would like to know more, check out John's post about the project.

We hope you like the result, and would love your feedback!

As you probably know, spreadfirefox.com relaunched a few months ago, thanks to a lot of hard work by the Mozilla marketing team (Asa, Rhian) and the community (Paul and Ian at Glaxstar, Jamey at GraphicsGuru, Ken Saunders, and many others).

The new spreadfirefox (v2) is a true community marketing platform organized around your projects.

So what’s the status today?

Good things are happening!

• New community members are joining Sfx and creating organic groups around initiatives they’re passionate about! In particular, it’s been great to see people from around the world creating local groups. We are connecting directly with many international community members (check out our starter guide to see project ideas)
• Events! All Mozilla events are posted on Sfx (thanks Mary!)
• The Firefox 3 t-shirt contest (vote until 3/30!) has been a featured project of sfx and a great success.
• 500 million downloads! The celebration happened on spreadfirefox!

There is more work to do:

• The site is alive! So we are still working to list and address the usability issues and bugs in this new version of sfx. Help us by reporting issues on the sfx2 feedback group. We are also thinking about what sfx3 should look like, so post your ideas there as well!
• We are making lots of new contacts, in particular with international community members, we need to do more to report this on the site and make it visible to all!
• We have featured many official projects, like the t-shirt contest, or extend Firefox 3. We would like to feature more of your projects: let us know which ones you would like us to put in the spotlight!

What can you do?

• Create an account
• Check out the list of current organic groups and join initiatives you’re interested in and start posting! Ask a question, make a suggestion, see how you can contribute. Sometimes all it takes is some person to help a project move forward!
• Give us feedback on the current affiliates program
• As mentioned previously, you can help us track issues and feature requests in the sfx2 feedback group.

Thanks to all the long time members of spreadfirefox and all the new members who have recently joined and are making the site a success! (To name a few in addition to the above: Ottodv, Stormbringer, LouCypher, and Jeremy Glassenberg)

Thanks also to morgamic, the webdev and the IT teams at Mozilla for all their help!