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?
