New Beta of mozilla.org Website Available for TestingFriday August 20th, 2004Steven Garrity today announced a new beta design of mozilla.org's website. The new design, done by silverorange, upgrades the navigation and freshens the look of the site. Steven and the other designers are interested in hearing feedback, but want those who provide feedback know that the home page content has not be updated yet. Also, there are some other outstanding bugs, which are listed in the feedback link. I like it. I have been hoping for something snazzier and more professional looking (no offense to Dave Shea who did the most recent design). I like it. I have been hoping for something snazzier and more professional looking (no offense to Dave Shea who did the most recent design). I´m currently forced to use IE (internet cafe with pcs properly locked down so you can´t use firefox zip build:-( ). Anyway there are a few layout errors in IE 6.0. What´s wrong with the old look anyway? Looks clean. I'd only recommend that on the home page you add either a right border or an alternate background color to the left column so it doesn't bleed so much with the main content area. I agree with the color recommendation for the left column. I really like the background color on the sections ("The Latest From Mozilla", "Mozilla 1.7 / 1.7.1", "Technology Previews", etc.) of the current page (not the beta) as it helps classify the content with a blink of an eye. I also like the warmer colors (yellow, red, brown) of the current page whereas the blue and white of the beta are "colder". Though it's true that blue is a more usual color for links, so there are easier to recognize for newcomers. On the Home Page the text content between the left column and the main body column is very confusing to the eye, it needs something to separate visually the two sections. Where is the Mozillazine link? Overall, it looks much cleaner in appearance, maybe almost to the point of being sterile Michael Gordon I agree, the home page needs more distinguishing features as it stands, like a separately-coloured column. Personally however, I think the "Products" page should be the new home page. It provides the information new people need to get the product straight away, and it's clean and attractive. News, if kept, should be on a separate tab. In IE 5.5 (I think) on W2k, the Mozilla logo at the left top is not visible. Also there's a whole screen of white space before the "Technology Previews" heading. Also the background of the camine logo appears gray in IE 5.5. I guess it's a PNG 24 and the transparency is not handled correctly. Also the gray background under "more news..." is too narrow. In IE5.0, the logo doesn't appear at all Also, the "Technology Preview" section starts below the "More News" section, leaving a big blank area under the "Mozilla 1.7 / 1.7.1" section. But it looks really great in Firefox! I like the new design In IE 6.0 in Windows 2000 (at least in the swedish version) the logo is visible and looks like it should, but the "Technology Previews" starts after the "Latest News" ends, leaving a huge white space between "The Latest in Mozilla" and "Technology Previews". Looks very nice in Firefox though. for current IE users who wish to check out mozilla/firefox/TB, the beta design does not look right in IE. try it for yourself if you can. i thought part of the idea was to get IE users to switch... how can they switch if they have trouble with the site?? Uhh, it's a beta. And if you follow the link to the feedback topic you see a list of some of the known bugs... I find the new site too boring, too common. It doesn't have any originality. It doesn't have anything that makes it recognizable at glance. It completly lack any visual identity. With the old website, with one look, I knew it was Mozilla's website. With the new one, I have to read the title before knowing. The "main content" area on the all the pages looks like the default Apache theme, ie: http://www.andkon.com/info/ The "main content" area on the all the pages looks like the default Apache theme, ie: http://www.andkon.com/info/ I agree, I don't like it a bit What was wrong with the current one? Well the current one (and this silverorange one since it's just a CSS change) does not seem to focus enough on endusers. And now it's entirely focused on selling CDs and merchandizing... BTW, the colour of the navbar (dark blue) clashes ugly with th red of the lizard. And yes, it's completely boring. Looks like your average small company website. I'd put the donate/merchandize links to the default startup/homepage for Firefox. Of course, even that is completely wasted now as it just redirects to the products page... I wonder how hard would it be to make a list for the /products/firefox/start/ that has links to 1)support forums 2) extensions 3) themes 4) plugins 5)donations/merchandize listed on it.. Keep the old color scheme and ditch the new one. It's too depressing. Greate, that means people will actually read the content of the site, not get distracted by the old horrible colorscheme that pulled focus to the navigation AWAY from the content... Greate, that means people will actually read the content of the site, not get distracted by the old horrible colorscheme that pulled focus to the navigation AWAY from the content... OR it might be so boring that the person gets lost in all the black-on-white text... There's ways to combine colors without making it too boring or too distracting. The new design does not address the numerous bugs reported via Bugzilla against the current Web site. Also, the Site Map fails to expose the entire Web site; many interesting pages cannot be readily found. I would argue that if a site needs a sitemap for average endusers, the site's structure is already too complicated. It looks more like a different CSS to me. A while back someone made a mock up of a really "User Friendly" mozilla site that would be easy for new users to use to updrage from IE. That was a re-design. I much prefered it because it was much more accessable. In fact it seemed to get favorable comments from almost everyone who posted. This is the same site with a lick of paint. Fine for teckno-nerds like me but not very inviting to the average desktopper. Umm, was it my (andkon) redesign? http://www.andkon.com/stuf/mozillanewstrategy/ with http://www.andkon.com/stuf/mozillanewstrategy/design/ I must say that I'm glad to see that some of your really good suggestions of how the website should be remade has trickled into the new design. Especially the Product & Download sections are much improved IMO. I do like the prodcuts page better than the rest on the new design, but whats the need for a download page AND a general products page? Seems redudant. Looks much better than now. But I'm missing nVu in the list of products (it's not on the current page either). While Fx and Tb are replacements for Seamonkey browser and mailnews, the composer substitution is missing. . Why isn't NVu listed here? That's the right place, as long as it's not a mozilla.org product, but I can't find it here. NVu means the possibilty for end users to build WebSites with Gecko. "Take back the web" - not only from IE, also from Front Page. Give end users and newbies a tool for creating a standard compliant web which provides full Gecko experience . NVu is essential for this. Or shall they stay with MSIE-optimized wysiwyg-editors? Sorry, but IMHO the current design looks MUCH better than this mess. I look at this and all I see is a huge mass of 'stuff.' There's almost nothing to visually delinate anything on the page except the header, so it all sticks together in one big clump in the middle. I'm not real big on the color, either. (What little there is of it.) A page that's almost totally white with just a few touches of a dull blue leaves me with a really cold and sterile feel. The gentle, earthy tone of the current front page feels much more friendly and inviting to me. It also appears to ignore andkon's suggestions for the content of the front page. While I wasn't crazy about his mockup of a new design, I agree wholeheartedly with most of his suggestions for the content of the front page. Getting Bugzilla and Camino out of the picture (they should have their own pages elsewhere, possibly even their own domains, especially Camino), overhauling the reasons for using, etc - all excellent ideas. As Galik said above, this is the same site with a lick of paint, and a rather unappealing one at that. That said, there's a couple things I think aren't that bad. Taken by itself, the header looks reasonably good. But if I scroll the page just enough so that it disappears, I'm left with a page that's mostly a cold clump of black and white. Having the main links in the header appear as tabs is a great idea, I mean, we're trying to promote a tabbed browser here, so why not a tabbed webpage? But that brings another question to mind: Why is there no visual consistency between mozilla.org and the default Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird theme? It would go a long way toward creating an actual, unified 'image' for Mozilla. In case you didn't notice it, this is on the front page of the mozilla beta website: "NOTE: This home page on the website beta has not been updated for the new design yet. It will be upated soon. More info about the beta is available in this weblog post, and feedback/bugs/issues can be posted on this MozillaZine thread." So basically, what you see is the new header, plus the old content without stylesheet. How could you expect it to be better than the current design? Sure, I understand that. Probably part of the problem is that this seems like it was designed bass ackwards - I would think that the first and most important page you see (ie the home page) would be the first one you'd finish, and then you'd base the others around that, rather than the other way around. Still, some of my comments apply equally to the other pages. For example, the color scheme and overall presentation still feels rather cold and dull to me. On the product pages, I still think the area below the big "Firefox - Download Now" box (which doesn't look too shabby) still feels a bit cold and could still use some separation, even if it's just simple white space. (that's part of the reason I prefer fluid-width designs, you don't end up with huge wasted gutters on the sides and a tight clump with little white space in the middle, it balances things better) Also, what's up with that left column on the "Why Switch" and "Releases" pages? It's there on some pages, but just disappears on others? Not something you want to do with navigation! For that matter, why is the narrower column on the right-side on the product pages and on the left everywhere else? One more question that needs to be asked: where does updates.mozilla.org tie into all of this? I would think it should be featured quite prominently in the navigation, probably as a tab in the header. Unfortunatly, if you mention the content, then the answer is "This home page on the website beta has not been updated for the new design yet". This of course isn't the fault of the makers of the new design as they were just trusted to do a design, nothing more, literally. But overall it's like trying to criticize only a book's cover without talking about its content. As I view the MZ threads, even people who think the newest design looks good or nice, have similar ideas as my essay had as far as the website function goes or needs to go. I love the new design. It feels simpler and makes more sense to me. BUUUUUUT, the page really should detect if the user is using the latest version of a mozilla browser. If it is not, then the user should be pushed or redirected toward a FireFox because those are the users that most likely need the help getting there. Just my 2 cents I think the headers (H1) needs to be more distinguished from the rest of the text. With the current design, the different 'blocks' are separated in a more visible way. Do it! This is a great upgrade. This beta design doesnt fill my browser width like the existing design. That is pretty horrible. Hmm The sidebar should be more distinguished from the rest of the page... the frame/table to the left (didnt look at the source so I dunno if its using iframes, tables, or what). On the main page, all of the attention as at the top, rather than where the "software showoff" section is. That kind of bothers me, but the Products section looks great. On the main page, all of the attention as at the top, rather than where the "software showoff" section is. That kind of bothers me, but the Products section looks great. If you read the notice at the top, the main page is actually the only part that is _not_ done. :-) So this will probably change later. The frontpage looks terrible but thats due to it using the old content. the other pages look better as the sidebar is alot nicer. However on the products page i think the "get involved its easy" column should be removed, the content moved to the right and add another column like that on the support page there with all the apps listed and then you can put a link to a seperate "get involved" page. The casual end user wont want to get involved so it shouldnt take so much precadence. I know the frontpage isnt finished, but for when you do it i recomend listing less products, say 2 of the browsers, thunderbird and maybe leave it at that. Also place lest precedence on the donate and store links in the main body as most people wont use the links and both can be reached through the header or footer should people wish. I like the more compact navigation, especially the "tabbed browsing" suggestion, but the dull blues of the top field are simply horrid, a sample of the typical cold "geek colours" that are extremely unattractive to me. The same thing done in Mozilla red or the orange and gold tones of the Firefox icon would be far more attractive and inviting, in my opinion. (Incidentally, since red is the Mozilla logo colour, why was the blue use in the first place?) Aside from that, I think the site would have a far greater impact in general if instead of the current front page the products page - http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/ - would be used as the index page, since the prominently displayed large icons would show at the first glance what the site is all about which the current front page does rather badly. Change the awful secondary color to compliment the dark blue header. (See menu on http://website-beta.mozilla.org/developer/ ) Who chooses Mozilla colors anyway? The last site was a terrible mishmash of colors and now this one has a very nice dark blue but with an awful pale greenish-blue 2nd color that doesn't quite match and needs to be changed. Personally, I'd much rather have seen a classic red/white/black scheme that matched the logo, but the dark blue is nice. I really like the blue/grey banner colors/style. But I prefer the old page's larger, more obvious, block-ier organization: side-bar, titlebar and body. Maybe it's all the extra space between the "blocks" that I like. The old organization is much easier to navigate with the eyes (though, I suppose old-skool and traditional). The old design utilized the whole width of browser window, and I liked it. Whar are these new large white horizontal margins of the webpage are for? They look as if someone forgot to set BODY { margin: 0; padding: 0; } in CSS. Because it's not necessary to cram heaps of information into pages like that. Give the elements some room to breathe. If you remove the margins, what next? Make all fonts 9-point so you can see everything in one screen and don't have to scroll? (As if it wasn't cluttered enough already.) It much looks like the new beta design uses a Macromedia tempalte design or something. Can we leave this like that? Shouldn't Mozilla have an individual website design? - That would be much cooler! Blog: http://www.robke.be/?itemid=16 The people at Macromedia couldn't write a standardscomplianat template if their lifes dependened on it, so I'm quite sure this site isn't a Macromedia ripoff. As for similar design principles, creating a unique design that lacks in the usability area is a bad choise. Much better to stick with what actually works. The people at Macromedia couldn't write a standardscomplianat template if their lifes dependened on it, so I'm quite sure this site isn't a Macromedia ripoff. As for similar design principles, creating a unique design that lacks in the usability area is a bad choise. Much better to stick with what actually works. The frontpage is simply boring because it has a blue header and a black and white content. That's it. No mention of Sunbird? I'm glad we can all agree :) why a fixed width? a step backwards from the current one in my opinion. never been a fan of centered content, doesn't look good. the header looks good, but the rest of the content looks a bit bland. need to distinct the sidebar more. I feel like its no longer firefox, mozilla or anything else.. at least I can find stuff on old site.. now it looks like its just plain & old.. not visually appealing to the average joe.. why take out the theme and colors? I don't like the grey in modern theme either.. mozilla suite is no longer a viable product to copy colors from.. Firebird and default theme is the wave of the future.. forget that new beta site.. you can just feel it in your bones that is just not right.. except probably for the mozilla store page.. products.. but the grey and no left side colors and all the way across the top has got to stay.. I feel you really have be in tune with mozilla and history to work on the a website.. that is not it.. this guy who made it probably has not used mozilla for any length of time.. I on the other had have seen it since Mozilla 0.5.. This new beta site is not going to fly.. too corporate.. its definetly not mozilla, are you trying to deliberately make a fool out of yourself? I for one absolutely hate it, its not mozilla style to say the least. dman84.. Am I the only one uncomfortable seeing the use of DL-DT-DD tags for what is essentially style/presentation purposes? Being a site that helps advance standards compliance, I seems it would be better to use these tags only when doing defintion lists. It would also be nice if an alternate style or some other mechanism was offered to overide that use of max. width, for those who don't care for it or otherwise would like to have the text rendered across a wider area. Those aside, it seems there has been a lot of good thought and work invested in all this. So compliments to the chef(s). Personal preference, I like the way the existing/old mezzo-tan style looks/looked better than this new cavendish. Maybe something like mezzo-tan could be offered as an alternate style. > Am I the only one uncomfortable seeing the use of DL-DT-DD tags for what is essentially style/presentation purposes? Could you explain where and why you feel it's used improperly? I've just taken a quick look at the source, but nothing there imediately jumped out at me. Anyway, good idea about that alternative stylesheet for those that don't mind having really wide pages. after looking it over. it is better than what we have now. the worst page of the new design is the main page. i have a few pieces of constructive criticism for that page. 1) the news at the bottom left of the page is absolutely useless. i never read news from the main mozilla page, I always come to mozillazine for the exact same info. either lose the news or put it above the first fold in an iframe where you only see the latest headline and you can scroll for more. 2) the products page is great, but you need some overlap between the products page and the homepage. what I mean by this is that there is no download button. Products is what I look for when it's something I need to buy, download is what I look for when it's something that's free. I think the link in the menu at the top can stay as Product but in the body of the main page put the 3 main products from the products page, with smaller logos (like are there now) and put a "Free Download" button beside the logo. This is VERY important. 3) put a home tab left of products, it's for the idiots 4) there are a few new features in html and javascript that you can take advantage of to have a main page that is absolutely aimed at end users and will attract those who love mozillazine and are huge mozilla supporters but don't visit mozilla.org because the main page is so static and bland. what i mean is for each product section after the description of firefox and the download link info, put a + sign in a square box (image) at the bottom right of the firefox description area that when clicked will open an advanced user box (via hidden div) and it will list the main bug fixes/new features in that release. Don't forget about us advanced users, because that's what's kept mozilla alive for the several years. * dont know what happened to the line breaks * after looking it over. it is better than what we have now. the worst page of the new design is the main page. i have a few pieces of constructive criticism for that page. 1) the news at the bottom left of the page is absolutely useless. i never read news from the main mozilla page, I always come to mozillazine for the exact same info. either lose the news or put it above the first fold in an iframe where you only see the latest headline and you can scroll for more. 2) the products page is great, but you need some overlap between the products page and the homepage. what I mean by this is that there is no download button. Products is what I look for when it's something I need to buy, download is what I look for when it's something that's free. I think the link in the menu at the top can stay as Product but in the body of the main page put the 3 main products from the products page, with smaller logos (like are there now) and put a "Free Download" button beside the logo. This is VERY important. 3) put a home tab left of products, it's for the idiots 4) there are a few new features in html and javascript that you can take advantage of to have a main page that is absolutely aimed at end users and will attract those who love mozillazine and are huge mozilla supporters but don't visit mozilla.org because the main page is so static and bland. what i mean is for each product section after the description of firefox and the download link info, put a + sign in a square box (image) at the bottom right of the firefox description area that when clicked will open an advanced user box (via hidden div) and it will list the main bug fixes/new features in that release. Don't forget about us advanced users, because that's what's kept mozilla alive for the several years. While I agree with the previous comment regarding the tabbed navigation being a potential improvement (and a nice tie-in to the browser), I don't like the lack of context. The tabs should change in order to remind the user which section of the site they're currently browsing IMHO. I also have to agree with another poster's comment that the site doesn't do enough to expose it's contents. I have about a half-dozen or so bookmarks to different parts of the Mozilla website because I can never find those pages again by simply browsing it. I either stumbled across them accidentally, or followed a post from someone else. I'm not sure that a search engine should be a primary navigation tool -- it presupposes knowledge of site contents that a new visitor won't have. All negative comments aside, thanks for continuing to make the effort! While I agree with the previous comment regarding the tabbed navigation being a potential improvement (and a nice tie-in to the browser), I don't like the lack of context. The tabs should change in order to remind the user which section of the site they're currently browsing IMHO. I also have to agree with another poster's comment that the site doesn't do enough to expose it's contents. I have about a half-dozen or so bookmarks to different parts of the Mozilla website because I can never find those pages again by simply browsing it. I either stumbled across them accidentally, or followed a post from someone else. I'm not sure that a search engine should be a primary navigation tool -- it presupposes knowledge of site contents that a new visitor won't have. All negative comments aside, thanks for continuing to make the effort! The site map needs an update....it doesnt actually link to the products page. I know any halfwit can get there anyway but if its a site map youd think itd be there instead of linking to a downloads page (that for all i can see can only be reached through the site map) Also the top tabbed links in the header are broken when you use them from the sitemap page. They have urls like http://website-beta.mozilla.org/%%DIR_DEPTH%%products/ instead of http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/ so that needs to be addresses. Also if you have a downloads page listing other products and that page is hard to find (aka only searchable from the sitemap), perhaps the download page at the very bottom needs a link to "View other products" or something similar and then redirect to the downloads page from there, or ideally another extended products page. As andakon (sorry about the spelling) said further up, a products and downloads page is rather redundant. sorry that should be "perhaps the PRODUCTS page at the very bottom needs a linkto "View other products" or something similar and then redirect to the downloads page from there, or ideally another extended products page." replace the initial downloads with products, ie the products page needs a link to another page with all the other products which is currently the downloads page. Nice design! With FF 0.9.3 Release the beta website shows good, but so I see it with current Seamonkey Mozilla 1.8a4 builds: http://www.torsten-richardt.de/bilder/Moz1.8a4-build.png There is a huge gap on the main column between releases and technology previews. Am I the only one who sees this? no, i also get that, mozilla1.8a3 actually thought it just was a unfinished styling bug, but had to check in mozFF and the gap isn't there. it is probably the div with clear:both that is causing this behavoir. DO you have a bug number for such problem? Looks crazy to me, as FF and MAS should share the same layout generation code (Gecko). Another example of a fix not being ported back? I think the color scheme is nicer on the beta page than on the current home page, however, I think the icons of say Camino, etc. look better placed in front of the name rather than on to of it. You guys are doing a great job. I would also like to see the file size for the download links come back to the home page. The colour scheme is more user friendly and less distracting IMO. But why is the Mozilla Suite being advertised on the front page? There are too many links. I think that only Firefox and Thunderbird should be featured here. Anyone who wants Mozilla will be able to find it using the search tool, navigation or site map. looks like the new frontpage is up. Looks nice althought im not sure id use cnet as the example image and the order on cd image isnt really very good and blends in too much with the blue. Looks Alot better but. I also dont like how the "or get Firefox on a CD from the Mozilla Store" link extends beyoond the text, all the way up until the image. You can look for youself by placing the cursor to the right and on level with the link. I like the new look of the front page. Couple nits: - FF section is missing small FF logo - FF image is too big. It feels like the image takes almost 1/4 of the screen @ 1024x768 - footer fonts can be smaller The site is getting better. Keep up great job! Perhaps not strictly in relation to a new website design, but I'd like the localisation packages to be easier to find. It makes sense people want to have a direct link to the packages themselves right next to the actual Mozilla download location. Right now, it's not always clear that Mozilla has been translated in many languages which can be downloaded and installed with just a click. |