Project Orb Documentation Effort LaunchesTuesday August 26th, 2003kguru writes: "Project Orb, a Mozilla documentation project has been launched. Project Orb intends to document to end users how to use and configure the Mozilla app suite, Mozilla Firebird, and Camino. The project is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/projectorb/." The obvious question is, why is this not a mozdev.org project (rather than sourceforge)? As I found out the hard way, it is and it isn't... I originally started the documoz project on mozdev a few months ago thinking of doing something similar, and perhaps producing some sort of help extension besides the usual help file. Within a few days, I came across the mozilla book project, a firebird help page on the wishlist project, and many non-mozdev documentation pages, and the tipbar project was soon after launched to provide a help extension. (Since then I've been a little busy and not so inspired as in the time between starting the project and finding all these scattered resources) In fact, quite a few mozdev projects have help pages on at least one special topic, like translation or help installing and understanding what the extension is. So, next time I have a chance, I'd like to modify the documoz project by making it not the catch-all documentation site, but instead for now a collection of links to as many documentation sites as possible, because right now there's a lot of stuff out there that people miss- some good for one topic, some good for another. Can anyone suggest a few links I could add, with brief description of quality/coverage? why was this never announced in n.p.m.documentation? We have too many lone projects already. We must stop wasting resources and start coordinating. Mozilla Documentation Project FAQ (a bit outdated, but useful): http://www.geocities.com/stolenclover/backstage/mozilla-org/docs/mdp/FAQ.html I second this. I think the dev leaders need to provide more direction to the current balkanization of the documentation efforts. There is also the french help/doc site. For now it's 'just' a forum, but we have some articles and traduction to put on a real site :) http://www.geckozone.org (Now on strike for the no patents protestation) Not that I want to push my site or anything ;-) , but http://mozilla.gunnars.net Already has FAQs and tutorials that describe how to install and configure Mozilla step-by-step (including screenshots and in many cases detailed explanations or links to them). And this is just my site. There are *many* others that offer help, FAQ and tutorials, as well. I find it sad (to say the least) to start a project whose goal it is to provide end-user documentation for Mozilla without even knowing what is already out there. A quick Google search for "Mozilla help" or even a quick look at Mozilla's own end user documentation page might have been a good idea. An excellent site that contains links to many Mozilla-related sites is: http://sandbox.pixelpoems.com/til/mozfavs/ Not that I want to push my site or anything ;-) , but http://mozilla.gunnars.net Already has FAQs and tutorials that describe how to install and configure Mozilla step-by-step (including screenshots and in many cases detailed explanations or links to them). And this is just my site. There are *many* others that offer help, FAQ and tutorials, as well. I find it sad (to say the least) to start a project whose goal it is to provide end-user documentation for Mozilla without even knowing what is already out there. A quick Google search for "Mozilla help" or even a quick look at Mozilla's own end user documentation page might have been a good idea. An excellent site that contains links to many Mozilla-related sites is: http://sandbox.pixelpoems.com/til/mozfavs/ I don't want to be too negative, but this project doesn't merit being on Mozillazine (at least not yet). So far the documentation produced consists of 3 paragraphs, which give a rough overview of the current releases of Mozilla, Firebird and Camino. You can find it at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php?group_id=76913&atid=548656&file_id=59882&aid=795676 "I have heard from some Windows users that 1.4 does not install correctly. If that occurs you may want to try 1.5 alpha if you are comfortable with an alpha release." "Firebird split off of the Mozilla organization in the Fall of 2002, so it has become fairly refined. Initially it was only developed for Windows and Linux. Recently the Mozilla Foundation has wanted to integrate Firebird components into the main Mozilla product instead of the Application Suite." That kind of thing doesn't really belong in a manual. Of course, the great thing about Mozilla and the internet is that people can put up whatever they like, but I don't see this project is going to produce much more than another short doc covering a few basics for new users, and we do have quite a few of those already. The project just recently was started. The project had wanted to inform the Mozilla community so that comments could be received by the Mozilla community to make the project as useful to users as possible. The documnetation included some information about the releases because whenever I have told someone about Mozilla, the releases part confuses them. When this project becomes mature it will be a whole lot bigger and will also include screenshots of the applications. It takes time to put together a quality documentation project of the caliber I had in mind. An update to release 0.1 called 0.1a with more information and screenshots is now being uploaded to the site. 0.1a is an interim release with some obtained browser screenshots. #12 How did you get it on the front page of MozillaZinby LarsO Wednesday August 27th, 2003 10:27 PM "The project had wanted to inform the Mozilla community so that comments could be received" How did you get it on the front page of MozillaZine ? Because I think thunderbirds feature wish list (after approval of the developers) should be announced there too (what it needs is it to be made a votable webpage). In the bar on the left of the MozillaZine front pages, you'll see a link called "submit news" - that takes you to a form where you can submit things to the MozillaZine editors. The editors look through the submissions (sometimes quickly, sometimes not) and decide which ones they think are worthy of putting on the front page. |