Mozilla.org Relaunched

mpeach writes "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look unfortunately, but, according to the Firefox 1.0 Roadmap, release candidates of the latest browser are getting closer by the day."

Finally sheesh

[(54)T-Dub]

I'm glad that the creative designers behind the firefox look finally got a crack at the homepage. IMO it gives the browser much better more credibility if it has a professional looking website. Not just like some hodge-podge browser. *warning ... blatant plug to get me free stuff following

The Previous Design

[adam mcmaster]

Why not actually compare it to the previous design [archive.org] they had?

Firefox

[danormsby]

I'm a big fan of Firefox. Only bit I don't like is upgrading the software where "installing over the top of an older version may cause unpredictable problems [mozilla.org]."

Soon as that is fixed I'll recommend it to my mother.

Great UI Improvements

[grape jelly]

I, for one, think they have made some great UI improvements. Most people don't hit moz.org seeking news and whatnot about the project. Instead, they just want to know where to get The Better Browser(TM). More than once, I've had to hold a few slower-than-I'd-like hands in finding where to download the latest and greatest version of Moz and variants. I just wonder why they featured FireFox so prominently and put the full version of Moz in the "bottom" row.

Slow News Day?

[ackthpt]

Ok, this is bordering on infatuation. "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look" This is effectively saying we looked at 500 submissions and this was the best of them.

Slow news day or infatuated with Mozilla? Heck, I like Mozilla and use it at home and work, but I don't drop everything to see what's happened with their website in the last day. Gee willikers.

Here's some other fine articles which could probably have been posted:

Philadelphia Considering Free or Low Cost Wireless For All [forbes.com]

Microsoft to Exploit Japan's Post Offices to deliver SP2 (their word, not mine!) [japantoday.com]

The Road Ahead, According to Steve Ballmer [computerworld.com]

X-Rays Reveal Mummy Faces (Low Cancer Risk to Mummy) [iol.co.za]

Owls Use Poop to Lure Beetles [discovery.com]

Bad choice of hook

[cicho]

They shouldn't be using "Free download" as the prominent eye-catching link. "Free download" does not mean the software is free, only that it costs nothing to download it. This semantic fuzziness is often used by commercial software vendors (and spammers) as a way to entice people to download trial and/or crippled software. They should instead say something like "Free software", "Free to get, free to use", anything that doesn't have the bad vibe that comes with "free download"

Links to the Alphas buried?

[Beautyon]

Links to the bleeding edge 1.8 Alpha versions are not immediately apparent...why?

Re:Links to the Alphas buried?

[bizpile]

Links to the bleeding edge 1.8 Alpha versions are not immediately apparent...why?

That was the first thing I noticed, I'd have to guess they are trying to go more mainstream and make downloading their brower less ambiguous for the masses.

Thanks mozilla guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks nice, And valid [w3.org] too!
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I'm still posting :-)

Re:Finally sheesh

[randyest]

I'll second that, and not even anonymously.

The free ipod thing, which has been joined by the new "free flatscreen" thing is turning every part of the internet that didn't totally suck (like slasdot and fatwallet and . . ) into a spamfest.

Frankly, I'd like to see /. handle the "free *" spam sigs and posts the same way that the SomethingAwful forums do -- permaban.

Now mod me as offtopic, overrated, trolling flamebait. I know you want to because you want a free ipod too, and you're in so late in this pyramid scheme that you have no chance to get one, so you have to lash out somewhere . . . .

They know my system.

[vitaflo]

It seems the website knows what system I'm running, as they offer for me to download the OS X version of Firefox, yet the screenshot of it to the right shows the Windows version. It'd be nice if they tailored this page to me a bit more and showed a screenshot with OS X chrome.

Re:Great UI Improvements

[RichM]

Mozillas default interface also resembles the old Netscape Navigator interface wich feels kinda old to the people that switched over to IE back in 1996.

I know, they are really holding themselves back over this one - a lot of people don't actually realise that they can change to another theme. IIRC, the only reason why this is the default theme is because the "modern" theme doesn't display properly in 256 colours on certain systems. I know, it's a bit silly really.

Re:Finally sheesh

[jelwell]

I'll third that, also not anonymously. The problem isn't the links themselves. It's that the content of the message posted is so hastily written to try to get moderation points quickly.

Is the new Mozilla site actually more professional looking? No. Maybe compared to the link in the article from 1998, but not compared to how mozilla.org looked a month ago.

It just seems like this kind of ill-informed comment only serves the purpose of promoting said website.
Joseph Elwell.

Thunderbird integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know how well Firefox integrates with Thunderbird? Specifically, if I click on a "mailto" link in Firefox, will it pull up Thuderbird without any custom configuration (assuming Thunderbird is installed)?

Last I looked into this, Firefox and Thunderbird would not work together like this "out of the box". This was a real bummer, and it made me wonder if Firefox wasn't being targeted a little too much at the geek community. Compared to the simple integration of IE and Outlook Express, the Firefox/Thunderbird integration was really clumsy.

(On a side note, it kinda irritates me that Firefox is being pushed so hard over Mozilla. I've had a few clients download Firefox (thinking it was a Mozilla update), and then wonder why they couldn't get to their email program anymore when it replaced all of the Mozilla icons...)

Re:Great UI Improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Firefox and you'll know.

I use Firefox as my primary browser, and I'm equally confused as to why it suddenly has centre stage. It's not ready for primetime. The current release version has got a half-assed incomplete default theme, there are still problems upgrading from version to version, there's still filler text where there should be text that is actually useful... it's not a finished product. That's why it isn't 1.0 yet.

Seeing as 1.0 is not too far away, why couldn't they have postponed pushing Firefox over the Mozilla suite until 1.0 is released? As it is, newbies are going to be downloading this incomplete version and being put-off permanently. Once a user has a bad experience with an application, it's damn hard to convince them to give it another shot. When 1.0 is released and the press machine goes into action, a substantial number of people are going to think "Firefox? I tried that not long ago and it was unfinished crap!" and not give it a second thought.

The previous design, while it wasn't as pretty as this new one, clearly labelled Firefox as a "technology preview". I just wish they had kept it that way until Firefox is ready for prime-time.

CHANGE THE "FREE" BIT!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

It looks great. Awesome. Great new site.

Expect lets make it more clear that Moz is free. "Free Download" makes me think of a demo, or a trial, or the __download__ is free but might cost more later.

It should say "x is a FREE product. Free to own and use forever."

Re:Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I am not much worried about that, because I am sure the distros will take care of packaging it nicely to avoid these kinds of problems.

Distros? This is an end-user application that is provided for multiple operating systems, not simply a component of a Linux distro. That's a real problem that end-users get burned by, every Firefox release is a release to the public, not just to Linux distros.

Re:Thanks mozilla guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks nice, And valid [w3.org] too!

*cough* [w3.org]

Re:Great new look! Same old shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

So /. renders really poorly in Gecko

Huh? The only way rendering varies from other browsers is the left edge of the main content section is occasionally a little too far to the left. That's a bug in Gecko, it's already been fixed, and it's not the catastrophe you are making it out to be.

as do a myriad of other sites.

If you don't name them, it's just hand-waving FUD. Get specific.

Re:The Previous Design

[asa]

So when an IE user goes to the site, some stuff appear to be broken (like the green box that says "Free Download" doesn't have rounded corners on IE)... Small details, but still...

"broken"? What's broken? Everything degrades well. Different is not "broken".

--Asa

Re:Latest nightly is already called

[elemental23]

On the contrary, placing images with CSS is extremely useful, especially for excluding images from print versions or providing pages that degrade to nothing but the most basic layout (the way the new Mozilla site does). Positioning can also be a lot easier this way.

Personally, I think it's much more elegant than a bunch of inline floated or, god forbid, align="right"ed image tags.

Re:Latest nightly is already called

[Hooded One]

That's what generated content is for. Unfortunately, since IE does not and may not ever support it, ugly hacks such as background images are used instead.

Background images should be used for background images only. Anything else breaks most of the normal user operations that can be performed on content images.

Honestly, I'm not sure it's even necessary to take this step on the Mozilla website anyway. I imagine that most of the users browsing without CSS would be browsing without images as well, i.e. text browsers such as Lynx.

Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if I got a flood of indignant responses to the effect of "I use graphical browsing without CSS all the time, you insensitive clod!"

Re:Finally sheesh (OT)

[labratuk]

That article looks very suspicious. I'm amazed that it's written by someone 'credible' like wired. The whole thing reads like an advertisement. It doesn't say one bad word about it. How do you know that everyone who 'got' an iPod isn't a plant?

Anyone with an IQ above 60 must realise that this scheme is not sustainable in the larger scale (not that I even think it's sustainable on the smaller scale). But what's that you say? It doesn't matter as long as you're at the top of the scheme. These things rely on everyone thinking they're pretty near the top, and they're the ones getting the free iPods. And if every third slashdotter is into this as they seem to be, do you really think you're high enough on the scheme?

Whatever's going on, someone is getting scammed here. The return on investment doesn't add up. It's either the free iPod company, the advertising broker, the ultimate company doing the advertising, or the participating member of the public.

With any of these, the person in the chain getting scammed will soon wise up and 'plug the hole' before they let too many free iPods get taken out of their bank accounts. Unless it's the member of the public, in which case they'll continue being as gullible as ever and fall for the next scam.