Asa, actual style of roadmap is much better then proposed. Red and purple lines are not clearly visible for me without zooming. You should continue to use actual style and increase contrast by tweaking red color.

I'm not sure if it's my slight red-green color blindness, but I have trouble seeing the red lines.

I liked the original 'freestyle' graphic. However, I'm not sure how that comes across with respect to the Mozilla Foundation's 'seriousness'.
I agree with Adam that the colors in your latest graphic is somewhat hard to resolve and - even worse - it moves into the direction of, e.g., OOo's roadmap (http://development.openoffice.org/releases/ooo_roadmap.pdf) which IMHO is amazingly ugly...

Oh, there was purple. Didn't even see that before reading the comments.

What I miss is "year". If you look at the historic examples, you have to judge from graphical style which comes first ;-).

Lines are a litle small i think, seeing where there is red is pretty hard...
So same comment about it that Adam Hauner and Jussi Kukkonen.

I personaly prefer things like color gradients but if the question is "Should I keep going in this direction?" my answer is "No" the actual is a lot better than your try...

Yeah, I didn't notice there was any red until reading the comments and looking again at the image (like Jussi, I am slightly red-green colorblind).

Definitely a retrograde step, for all the reasons stated above, and I couldn't make out the different coloured lines either. The current thick-lined diagram is much better. While I like Hixie's original, I agree that you should have something professional looking these days. Couldn't (shouldn't?) you hand this over the visual identity team?

The current roadmap graphic is user-friendly and informative. The primary way to increase its *usefulness* is, of course, to increase its predictive value.

I think the original "week lines" were a nice touch, but they're really only necessary if it's supposed to be an exact roadmap (by which I mean, no running late on schedule etc). I believe that by taking them out, it gives the roadmap more of a draft-ish look.

Other than that, there's the red-purple problem which has already been brought up. Maybe it can be made more clear by putting something more in the places where the map branches, like an X or something similar. Then comes the quintessential "try something else than purple" advice ;-)

PS: Oh, the week lines actually are in there! I saw them accidentally by zooming in... Forget what I said up there, but I'd advise to give them some more opacity! You could even make the weeklines more visible near the main roadline, and then fade them out as they get further away. I think it might look great.

PS2: I fooled around a bit with the colors on the map, I replaced all the purple with blue color #3366FF, it looks pretty nice! Try it out!

Hope this all helps!
//Markus.

I have to say that I much prefer the middle two drawings to to the "old"/top one (it looks unprofessional because the arrows and the X appear to be just hand-painted on and because of the colors and whatnot) or the one at at the bottom (too plain, so good thing you have plans to "lighten it up").

The last one looks much more professional and easier on the eyes. One remark: what's those purple lines? They're hardly visible, so change that (make them thicker or in another colour, or put a 1 px white line in between the 2 lines) and you should be ok.

I think whatever happens the new roadmap picture should have a 'We are Here' X just like the old one did.

I like the last one personally. just a slightly bigger font would be nice. And perhaps lines a bit thicker than the last, but thinner than those before it.

The lines are much too small on the new one (I have a 1400x1050 screen, 120dpi), I'd make them at least half as big as the lines on the previous style.

I also like the weekly rule, perhaps you could put it just across the trunk?

What are you using to generate these?

I'm just looking at the first graphic - can someone explain 'threaded pr0n'???!

Thicker is better IMHO, although the vertical seperating bars from Hixies could also be used instead of the dotted week lines.

It would be funny to have a photo of a whiteboard version. And I like the new style, but like others have said, it's hard to read the different colors going on in there.

Also the location of the Mozilla 1.7 header seems way too far to the right. It makes it look like the Alpha after May 12 is for 1.7 and not 1.8

libpr0n is as far as I understand the Mozilla image rendering library. I assume threaded pr0n means a transition of libpr0n to a multithreaded architecture?

Thanks - but thats a very odd name - pr0n is what 90% of my spam is trying to sell me!

Along with all the other comments, I'd say choose a different font and antialias it.

No offense, but this is a backwards step for sure.

I, like many of the commenters, much prefer the old roadmap style to the one that is in there now (or, I like the second from the bottom more than the bottom ;). The new graphic doesn't follow the style of the old ones anymore, either. The 1.4 branch, which is the stable branch (for a little while longer) runs across the top, which I like (1.0 did too, in the earlier one). In the new one, the 1.7 branch runs in the same line as 1.6 and 1.8.

Also, I like the old one more because it doesn't go quite as far time-wise, ie it shows less of the graph. I think you can then go more in depth with a smaller section. However, zooming in, as it were, also means the graphic needs updated more often. Oh, the 1 week lines *are* a little harder to see...

Finally, what happened to the idea of vertical lines (or gradients, if you prefer) that showed checkin volume? I remember reading a post here about it, did the idea never pan out? I think it was an interesting idea.

I found the post:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/004800.html

What is the text in the background of the oldest roadmap (Bugzilla, The Book of Mozilla)? The drop down menus in the upper right make me think it is Bugzilla.

What I think I like about the original map is that it looks more like a tree. Visually. However, I do like the current versions more in terms of professionalism because they do not appear to be "free hand". (With the granted need to fix the colour scheme to make it more readable.) What I would suggest is to clean up the colours, and keep the modern look, BUT alternate the branches so that, roughly, every other one comes out from the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it). That way it keeps the "tree" association. Having that visual identity makes it much easier to understand what "tree / trunk / branch" is all about. Even the 2nd one looks better than the 3rd and 4th because, while not alternating top and bottom, it still represents the idea of "branches" like a tree much better. By the time you get to the 3rd and 4th there's no such real visual identity at all. I also like the "We are here." and the background colour differentiation of annual quarters in the first one - it makes it much easier to put things in perspective / get the big picture, rather than having to "think" about intepreting the dates.

Probably should include some kind of indication of how Firefox and Thunderbird are derived from this roadmap. That seems to be one of the most common questions in the Mozillazine forums.

As far as design, use a thicker line of red since the current thin line is hard to discern. Maybe use a brighter shade of red too: to help out the red-green blind folks. Use something like Vischeck to check out how the images look to persons with color blindness. The current image is particularly bad for protanopes.

@Greg, firefox and thunderbird are due to be included in the next revision of the roadmap.

See Asa's post in n.p.m.general

I have to that I like the bolder lines in the last most recent design. It's easier to read and just has more impact.

Clean, easy in the eyes and clear to me. You could take a look at mindjet mindmanager if you want to, it has some nice options to make things visual i think.

I also liked the original roadmap graphics, but I agree they don't look very professional.

Of the black/red ones, I like the original one with the curved corners the best, then the one after than, and then the thin one. The old ones weren't too dark, but they were bold and easy to read at a glance - the point of a diagram.