One thing that Mozilla (and Mozilla Firebird) could really use is a short and clean "How to do 20 really cool things in Mozilla (Firebird)" document. Ben Goodger wrote the great "Why you should switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser" doc and I wrote something similar in my "Mozilla Application Suite" doc but both of these tell users what compelling features we have to offer and not how to use them.
I'm seeing time and time again folks (on blogs) saying things like "I know Mozilla can do this cool bookmark keyword thing, how does that work? How do i make it do [various things]?" or "Mozilla's got good searching but how do I get more search engines on the list?". The "101 things you can do in Mozilla" doc did a lot to get people thinking, talking and sometimes even using a few more of Mozilla's great features and it's a bit closer to what I think we need for a "tipsheet" but I think it suffers for being so long and it doesn't have quite enough detail for how to get the most out of each feature on the list.
Ideally, someone would write something along the lines of "20 amazing Mozilla features that will dramatically improve your time on the web" doc with only the most valuable features mentioned and going into some detail on how to really take advantage of that feature. One could take 20 or so items from the 101 things doc and expanded them. Most of the great features have been documented more thoroughly somewhere else and so it shouldn't be hard to make a really comprehensive tipsheet without too much effort.
For example, starting with one tip from the 101 things... doc, pick a really cool feature:
Bookmark keywords
Keywords to look up bookmarks quickly. Keywords have the advantage that the part entered after the keyword is filled in where '%s' appears in the bookmarks's URL.
Then use google to find a more comprehensive explanation somewhere like the mozillaNews Hints and Tips which says:
Keywords & Bookmarks
The first tip involves bookmarks & keywords.
In case you're unaware of the keyword feature, each bookmark can have keywords associated with it. This allows you to type the keyword into the URL bar and go to the bookmarked page as if you had typed in the whole address.
This by itself is fairly cool, but keywords get even better when you use variable subsitution. For example, let's say I look at a lot of Mozilla bugs but don't want to have to go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ and type in the bug number to look it up. With Mozilla you can create a keyword that, when followed by a number, will automatically look up the bug number.
How is this done? Do the following.
1. Create a Bookmark with the following address: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=%s Note: that the "%s" is a variable which stands for the string to be subsituted.
2. Next add the keyword "bug" (without the quotation marks) to the bookmark. To do this, right click on bookmark and choose "Properties"
3. Type in "bug 123" (again without the quotation marks)into
the URL bar and watch as you are redirected to the Bugzilla page on Bug123.
4. Bow down and praise the great Mozilla.
I think a document like this would answer a lot of the repeat questions asked across blogdom as well as provide something more for "the press" who can't seem to talk about any of our other cool features besides pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. "101 things" was really good but I think it was a bit too long to really sink in with the masses. What do you all think? Any volunteers?
Posted by asa at May 12, 2003 05:18 PMI could try someting. I'm not much of a writer but I do use Firebird exclusively. I'd love to try and contribute something.
Posted by: flatrabbit on May 12, 2003 08:39 PMI'd like to contribute too. I think this would be a good way for me to do so as I am always explaining how to do these things to people. And it'd be something productive to do.
Posted by: ginlocker on May 12, 2003 09:19 PMExpect to see something like this on Mozilla Firebird Help. I should have done stuff like this from the very beginning. Unfortunately, I don't have time for it right now, but there _will_ be HowTo documents on MFH in the future.
Posted by: David Tenser on May 12, 2003 10:18 PMI figured there would be docs up eventually, Your site is the most comprehensive resource for Firebird (& Thunderbird) help online. If you need any help from a novice, I'll gladly lend a hand. Feel free to email me here: flatrabbit@flatrabbit.com
Posted by: flatrabbit on May 13, 2003 08:48 AMWell, sounds like we've got a few volunteers. Here's what I suggest. Let's decide on what the top cool features are and split up the howto writing (some might be a few sentences, others a few short paragraphs). I'd propose these few as a starting point.
1. tabbed browsing - this should cover the basics of telling a user how it works, offering a couple of the most common keyboard shortcuts and possibly a usage scenario.
2. image blocking - this one's pretty simple.
3. bookmark keywords and keyword wildcards - this one's written several times. The trick will be to distill it to it's most simple and then maybe link out to more complex usages like "multiple variable " bookmarks http://grayrest.com/moz/resources/bookmarks.shtml
4. extending mozilla's search - cover search plugins, search toolbars, etc. should be easy to pull info from the mozdev projects (start with mycroft.mozdev.org)
5. installing themes. This is pretty well covered but we'd want to make it as simple as possible since anythign that requires going out to the web, downloading and managing is likely going to scare a lot of newbies (and power-users probably don't need much help)
6. installing and managing extensions - again, this isn't lacking in howto content but it really needs to be "sold" with a great couple of short sentences that don't scare people off and then a couple of simple howto bits for disabling (and maybe a link to more detailed manual uninstall howto but don't include much on that less we scare them off).
7. find as you type (aka type ahead find) - this one should be pretty short easy but it would be really good to include enough info to help people migrate from old-school find in page to this "improved" method.
I'm sure there are another 10 or so of high value. I also think that most of the above features are pretty well documented, although not all gathered into one place. If we could split those up, add a few more to the list and each go write a couple of paragraphs of howto I think we could assemble a pretty nice document. It might be nice to include small screen captures inline with each howto where an image would help the user figure it out.
--Asa
Posted by: Asa on May 13, 2003 09:58 AMThis document sounds useful and compelling, but I'm also interested in making more sophisticated HowTo's feature per feature. E.g. a whole document covering bookmark keywords, another document covering extended search engines, etc.
This "20 reasons to..." document could of course be a wrap up and spiffed up version of them all.
Posted by: David Tenser on May 13, 2003 10:06 AMThis sounds really good. The problem is that documents like this tend to get 'lost' on mozilla.org. For example, if I wanted to point someone to the Mozilla Browser document, I'd have to spend five minutes finding it, even though I already know it exists. Someone browsing for information would never find it. The fact that David's site is in the default bookmarks is obviously good but that only helps after the user had decided to run the browser (plus, it's, understandably, somewhat focussed on home users rather than on larger groups like schools or businesses looking to use the browser).
One solution that was suggested at mozillazine was to create mozilla.com to act as a focus for people wanting to use the browsers and leave mozilla.org as a developer site. I brought this up in the Tech-Evengelism thread at netscape.public.mozilla.general, and with a more complete descrition of how I can imagine a hypothetical mozilla.com functioning (and a less-complete descrition of why I think it would benefit mozilla.org). I'd be interested to know what Asa and others think about this idea.
Posted by: James Graham on May 13, 2003 12:32 PMdescription
Posted by: James on May 13, 2003 12:34 PMTabbed Browsing ... install TBE!
Image blocking ... sample userContent to DL. Better yet, replace the userContent-example that comes with it.
Searching ... resizing the search box with userChrome
Themes ... go to FB help. click "install". restart. Need to get rid of last step.
Extensions ... probably the most complicated bit. Should mention gestures, TBE
Add
Toolbar customization
very good idea!
I'll try and think of my favorite "Cool things" and send them David's Way so he can put it up on MFH. Good thinking Asa
I'm volunteering. I have already created a layout and now I'm working on the text.
However, I need to place to upload the html file.
Posted by: Min Truong on May 15, 2003 10:41 AMHow about twentythings.mozdev.org ?
Posted by: Andyed on May 16, 2003 07:41 AMhttp://wishlist.mozdev.org/firebirdfeatures.html
The site is up and running.
I don't know how to simplify grayrest's bookmarks. Frankly, I don't understand the code or javascript. I believe that such a advance capabilities should be not presented on a site aim at novices. It would "scare" them. Maybe a link for those who dare will suffice.