Comments on: AMO Design Update (now with all Mozilla products)

By: Eduardo

Eduardo — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:16:15 +0000

I, sincerely, hated the AMO for a long time.
When I search for a Seamonkey add-ons all thing come back, but only one add-on for Seamonkey and ten for FF when a stay at Seamonkey session of site.
Now a hope the service work better, with the add-ons repor to to search product correctly.
Thank you for the work!

By: Weekly Status Report, W47/2007 · Get Latest Mozilla Firefox Browsers

Weekly Status Report, W47/2007 · Get Latest Mozilla Firefox Browsers — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:21:37 +0000

[...] this looks good. After some comments of the first draft, Basil Hashem from Mozilla Corp. created an updated AMO design that should fit SeaMonkey as well as Firefox and the other products well. Due to some discussion [...]

By: Home of KaiRo: Weekly Status Report, W47/2007

Home of KaiRo: Weekly Status Report, W47/2007 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:27:11 +0000

By: Simon Paquet

Simon Paquet — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:52:01 +0000

The current design is better in terms of visibility for the other apps, but to be completely honest, that wasn’t very difficult as the other apps weren’t visible at all in the earlier design mockups.

The design still misses to address the following use-case:

A person looking for Thunderbird add-ons comes to http://addons.mozilla.org (please notice the “.org” in the URL) and is greeted with a big fat “Firefox Add-ons header”. If that doesn’t turn him away immediately, he then has to look for the “Other applications” link. Let’s assume that he is totally smart and tries to search for “Thunderbird”, that will not direct him the “Other applications” link, right?

I totally understand your desire to streamline the usability for Firefox users, but you should also understand that you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy here. By de-emphasizing the other apps, fewer people will look for non-Firefox extensions which will in turn lead to a higher percentage of Firefox-only searches, giving you more incentive to de-emphasize the other apps even further.

I repeat my statement from your earlier post on this matter: This would be fine, if this were a addons.firefox.com or even a addons.mozilla.com website, but mozilla.org is about much more than just Firefox and this should be reflected in pages coming from that domain.

What I would propose is an easy-entry page like http://www.mozilla.com, call it Mozilla Add-ons, put a big link to Firefox add-ons on top and smaller links to Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Sunbird add-ons below the big Firefox link. Then continue with your current design (from this post).

By: bhashem

bhashem — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:49:26 +0000

@Michael V. van Rantwijk: We have an outstanding feature request for SeaMonkey to do User Agent string detection and route appropriately. Doesn’t quite work for Thunderbird since most will be using a browser to download Thunderbird add-ons.

By: Brian King

Brian King — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:32:30 +0000

I agree with Michael that a lead in homepage with all products listed would be useful. I also understand the rationale behind defaulting to Firefox, with it being the most popular and the most extensions.

By: Dave Miller

Dave Miller — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:40:24 +0000

We already have a few add-ons for Bugzilla, and we’re approaching the point where we’ll be able to have self-contained plugin bundles dropped into a specific place to add features to Bugzilla. Any thoughts about a section for Bugzilla? I imagine it would be useful for localization packs, skins, and plugins alike for Bugzilla, none of which we host right now, and you have to look for them scattered all over the web. The hitch is that none of it would be xpi or jar files.

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Addons lists a bunch of what’s out there now.

By: Michael V. van Rantwijk

Michael V. van Rantwijk — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:48:13 +0000

Removing this 175 pixel tall chopper image will definitely make room for a menu or whatever.

I also agree with Brian that the drop down menu might not be enough, but it might be the only solution when more and more applications are added.

However, what about having an entry page where all applications are listed, where people select the target application. Moving the “We Recommend:” section at the right of the page over to the appropriate pages. I mean, you probably want this for every single application, right?

It would be cool if you could check the HTTP User Agent to select the target application section/pages automatically, skipping the main/entry page. Having a link on all pages (or a tab) to ‘return’ to the main/entry page would be a plus.

p.s. The current ‘Extend Firefox 2 Contest’ banner is a bit distracting on non-Firefox related pages.

By: Callek

Callek — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:25:27 +0000

these mockups do address my main “other apps” concerns, thanks…

By: bhashem

bhashem — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:54:43 +0000

@Brian: We have some ideas to help the search problem along the lines of what you suggest. They are not likely to go into this upcoming release but certainly for consideration for the one after that.

@Myk: Great idea Myk, it’s natural to have an “All”, we’ll get that added in.