about:mozilla » User experience

The vision for SUMO – Part 8: Live Chat

deb — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:45:21 +0000

David Tenser has published an extensive series of blog posts where he has been discussing a comprehensive vision for the scope and role of the Support.mozilla.org (SUMO) project. He has recently published the eighth and final post in the series, this one focused on the innovative and incredibly useful “Live Chat” feature. “If a problem isn’t yet covered in the Knowledge Base, or if the instructions in the article are too hard to understand, Live Chat is a powerful way for users to get in touch with Firefox experts and get hands-on assistance in solving their problems. Live Chat can also be a very fun way for contributors to provide support. Contributors helping out with Live Chat don’t just help users, they talk to each other in the backchannel as well, providing assitance to other helpers whenever needed. This means that although you’re usually the only one interacting with the user you’re helping, you’re never alone.”

David’s blog post goes on to discuss some potential future improvements for the service, including a fully integrated chat client, a simple scheduling solution, support for languages other than English, and automatically saving chat logs and associated user happiness ratings, among other things. If you’re interested in the Live Chat feature of the SUMO project and would like to see how the team is thinking about improving it in the future, read the full post over at the Firefox Support Blog.

Mobile Firefox: User Experience developments

deb — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:40:31 +0000

Mobile Firefox (code-named “Fennec”) recently hit its milestone 8 (M8) release. Mark Finkle blogged about the release at the time, and Madhava Enros has since blogged about the user-experience changes and additions to the mobile browser. “This is an exciting time from a user-experience perspective because, along with functionality and stability improvements, this milestone brings with it the beginnings of Fennec’s look and feel. In a sense, we have some UI worth playing with, evaluating, and improving.” Madhava’s post includes a bevy of screenshots that you can check out, and if you would like to take part in the discussion about the Mobile Firefox UI, you should do so over in the Mobile development group.

Polishing Firefox

deb — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:31:07 +0000

In an effort to improve the level of Firefox’s visual and interactive polish, Alex Faaborg will be posting a short list of top-priority user experience bugs every Monday morning between now and the Firefox 3.1 launch. He writes, “These bugs will involve fixing some rough areas of Firefox 3’s UI, landing icons that we meant to land before shipping, and trying to make sure every last pixel is perfect.” The team could use some help getting these bugs finished up and closed off, so if you have the time and are interested in helping out, you are encouraged to dive in and get started. Additionally, if there are polish issues that drive you nuts, Alex asks that you file bugs for those and leave a note in the comments of his post.

Skinning the Fennec

deb — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:26:34 +0000

Madhava Enros and Sean Martell have been working on creating a default theme for the Fennec web browser (”Fennec” is the code name for Mobile Firefox). Madhava writes, “We’re trying for something that nods back in the direction of Firefox on the desktop while still striking out in a direction that’s appropriate for a small-screen finger-directed device. [Sean]’s posted some recent work to his blog, and he’ll be posting more there as we go. This is an effort still very much in progress, so please jump in with your suggestions. There’s a Fennec UI discussion thread ripe for contribution.” For more information and some mockups of the theme, see Madhava’s blog post.

Language-based interfaces

deb — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:57:07 +0000

Jonathan DiCarlo has been writing a series of blog posts discussing language-based interfaces — interfaces that allow you type commands in real language and the right stuff happens. “What would the web be like if you could tell it what you want to do as easily as you currently tell it where you want to go?”

Mozilla Labs has started experimenting with linguistic interfaces that are designed to do just that, the first of which is the recently-launched Ubiquity project. Jonathan’s posts are an extensive look into the concepts, questions, and thinking behind the experiments, and he has written three so far: Language-based interfaces: The problem, Language-based interfaces: Where do we stand now?, and Language-based interfaces: Report card for Ubiquity. If you’re at all interested in these approaches and ideas you should read Jonathan’s blog, and then head over to the Ubiquity project to get involved with the growing community working on these experiments.

Firefox Mobile design session: bookmarks

deb — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:33:45 +0000

Aza Raskin writes, “For the third installment of the Firefox Mobile design discussions, it’s bookmark time. Bookmarks have been a fundamental feature in the browser since Mosaic days. Do they have a place in Mobile? Are there better paradigms? How are they displayed? What’s the difference between a tab and a bookmark? Is it only a matter of one being in the device’s memory?” These are some of the questions that are asked and answered in the third video installment of the Firefox Mobile design sessions. Aza and Madhava look forward to your thoughts and feedback. More information is available at Aza’s weblog.