Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.” Be sure to check out his other Mozilla work as well as his general portfolio.

The four runners-up in the challenge were Mauro Henrique de Bulhões Fidelix’s “Hot Navigation”, Emmanuel John Y. Villar’s “One Mask One Family One World”, Joyce Schellekens’ “Firefox All Around the World” and Eric Yeoung’s “MobiFox”. Interestingly, these designers all hail from different countries (Brazil, the Philippines, the Netherlands and Indonesia), which speaks to the incredible diversity of our community. Many thanks to them, and to everyone else who participated, for sharing their time and talents with Mozilla.

We’ve also launched a new challenge at the Creative Collective: “Five Years of Firefox”. Help us celebrate Firefox’s 5th birthday by creating designs based on this milestone. The possibilities are practically endless, but should generally focus on recognizing what a great accomplishment this is for the Mozilla community and what it’s meant for the hundreds of millions of people who use Firefox. The winner will be featured on this blog, turned into desktop wallpaper and t-shirts, and more.

The submission period for “Five Years of Firefox” ends on December 9th, but don’t wait to get started. Visit the design challenge page for more details, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Calling all Web developers! We’re looking for developers from all over the Web to help us build the Mozilla Developer Network.   Firefox is an important tool for many developers and as the Web continues to evolve as a platform, we need your input to enable better communication and collaboration to push the Mozilla project forward and make the Web better for everyone.

To learn more about the initial steps we’re taking to connect with Web developers, check out Chris Blizzard’s post on the Hacks blog.

The official endoresement and supporting organizations can be found below.  Hacks.mozilla.org also has a full post about WOFF implementation for Firefox 3.6 and beyond.

We endorse the WOFF specification, with default same-origin loading restrictions, as a Web font format, and expect to license fonts for Web use in this format.

Bold Monday http://www.boldmonday.com
Commercial Type http://commercialtype.com
Emigre http://emigre.com
Emtype Foundry http://www.emtype.net
Fonthead http://www.fonthead.com
FontShop International http://fontfont.com
Hoefler & Frere-Jones http://typography.com
House Industries http://houseindustries.com
Incipit http://incipit.com
Incubator http://vllg.com/Incubator
The Indian Type Foundry http://www.indiantypefoundry.com
International Typeface Corporation http://itcfonts.com
Jeremy Tankard Typography Ltd www.typography.net
John Downer http://www.aaupnet.org/programs/2007production/Bios/DownerBio.pdf (PDF link)
Klim Type Foundry http://klim.co.nz
KLTF http://kltf.de
Kombinat-Typefounders http://www.kombin.at
LettError http://letterror.com
Linotype http://linotype.com
Lux Typographics http://luxtypo.com
Mac Rhino Fonts http://www.macrhino.com
Mark Simonson Studio http://www.ms-studio.com
Monotype Imaging http://fonts.com
Okay Type & Design http://www.okaytype.com
OurType http://www.ourtype.be
Process Type Foundry http://processtypefoundry.com
Thirstype http://vllg.com/Thirstype
Type My Type http://typemytype.com
Type Supply http://typesupply.com
TypoNine http://typonine.com
Typotheque http://typotheque.com
Underware http://www.underware.nl
Village http://vllg.com

We just launched a big new feature on the Mozilla Creative Collective: design challenges. The idea is to give our creative community the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to Mozilla by focusing everyone’s efforts on a particular topic. We’ll be hosting these design challenges roughly once a month, and we’re kicking things off with Firefox Goes Mobile.

The goal of the Firefox Goes Mobile challenge is to create the official promotional emblem of the mobile version of Firefox (which is getting closer and closer to release). The winning image will be used on everything from websites like mozilla.com and addons.mozilla.org to schwag like t-shirts and stickers, so if you’re a designer it’s a great way to get involved and make a big impact on a really important project.

To sum up, we’re asking you to abstractly represent mobile-themed concepts like convenience, connectivity and innovation in a simple, yet easily understandable graphic…basically telling the mobile story with a single image. Not an easy task, but of course that’s why it’s called a challenge! There are more details about what we’re looking for on the Firefox Goes Mobile page, so if you’re thinking about getting involved definitely read through those first.

The submission period lasts until September 30th (with voting extended through October 7th)…we can’t wait to see what the Mozilla community comes up with!

If you’re in Chi-town, this will be a great opportunity to get to familiar with add-on development and have an opportunity to share your ideas with the AMO team.

The full details of the event are up on the Mozilla wiki:

Mozilla Add-ons Meetup: Chicago, IL – Sept. 29th 6-9PM EST

There’s no cost for the meetup and it will be packed with great sessions. Look forward to seeing you there!

The first is the University Design Challenge Fall ‘09. For this challenge, the team will  work together with students from universities and schools specializing in User Experience and Human-Computer-Interaction studies around the world to find innovative concepts to the question: “Browsing and Search History — How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user?”

Over the course of 10 weeks, students will work together in teams, with each university deploying a different solution approach — from a semester-long integration of the Design Challenge into the course to shorter Design Sprints and high-energy 24 hour Design Jams. For more information visit Mozilla Labs, here.

The  second design challenge will focus on Weave Web UI, and will aim to answer the question: “Visualizing your browser data – How can we provide intuitive and useful visual representations of your browser data (such as your contacts, bookmarks, browsing and search history, tabs, stored credentials etc.) on a web page?”

The Labs team, together with IxDA, a network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design and Johnny Holland, an open collective, talking, sharing and finding answers about all aspects of interaction design, will invite the wider community to join them in this challenge to develop concepts and submit them to their site.  The full design brief and background information can be found here.

For more information see the Mozilla Labs blog post and learn how you can get involved!

Add-on Recommendations

Some things go great together: peanut butter and jelly, popcorn and movies, Firebug and YSlow. Starting today, when you’re looking at an add-on’s listing, you’ll see several other add-ons that are often used together. We base these recommendations on the add-ons our users have grouped together in collections.

Contributions

Last month we launched our Contributions pilot, a way for add-on authors to accept monetary donations from users of their add-ons. We’ve gotten great feedback from users and developers, and are now expanding the reach of contributions on AMO. Add-ons that have turned on Contributions will now have contribution boxes in search results and category browse listings, where many installations take place.

While these new boxes help surface the existence of contributions, some users aren’t likely to make a donation without first testing the add-on to ensure it’s useful to them. With this release, developers have a new way to accept donations after a user has tried the add-on by simply pointing users to their add-on’s new about page.

Collections

Since the launch of Collections in June, add-on fans have created almost 30,000 collections, resulting in more than 6.5 million add-on downloads. This release includes many new features to make Collections even more useful.

Logged-in users can now rate collections and sort by those ratings to help the best collections bubble to the top.

To help determine the popularity of a collection, authors can now access a collection statistics dashboard that shows information on the number of subscribers, ratings, and downloads over time.

We’ve also added a treat for users of browsers that support localStorage (including Firefox 3.5): recently viewed collections. When browsing through the collection directory, users can now easily get back to a collection they saw, without having to log in.

Public Stats

In early 2008, we gave add-on developers their first look at the shiny new Statistics Dashboard for each add-on hosted on AMO. Currently some dashboards are public and some are private, but we’ve never offered an in-depth look at the aggregate statistics for all add-ons hosted on AMO.
Today we’ve launched a detailed view of AMO as a whole, with data on add-ons, downloads, active users, users, reviews, and collections. Go on, check it out!

Add-on Validation

Earlier this month, we announced the arrival of the new add-on verification suite on AMO. At the time it was an optional tool developers could choose to run for their files. With this release, the tool will automatically be run when uploading a new file, and the results of the tests will affect the submission process. Editors will see the test results and any flags when reviewing the add-on. We hope to help developers catch common problems before an editor’s review.

As you know, we launched the Mozilla Creative Collective today!  To kick things off we’re hosting a mini design challenge around Mozilla Service Week.  We’re hoping your creativity and artistic skills can help inspire action and ultimately better the Web experience for people and organizations around the world.

Here are some ideas:

• Craft a flyer, poster or banner (the offline kind!) to get the word out.
• Design new site badges, Twitter backgrounds or blog themes.
• Create a new Persona for Mozilla Service Week.  Check out the  current one.
• Dream up a new t-shirt design for the community store.
• Create an avatar for Facebook or other social networks.

As inspiration check out The Royal Order’s blog post about the design direction of the Mozilla Service Week site.  In a nutshell:

• The Mozilla Service Week site aims to be inspirational and make participants feel part of a bigger movement that has the ability to affect change and better the Web for people all the world.
• The site strives to reflect the organic, participatory and people-driven nature of the Mozilla project.
• We drew from the humanistic style of 1930’s WPA murals which evoked people working together and helping each other for the sake of the greater good.

You’re encouraged to use existing Mozilla Service Week elements (such as the logo) to create your own unique interpretation of the “take action” theme. In other words, your designs can look entirely different from the other Service Week materials…it’s up to you. As
inspiration, check out:

• Mozilla Service Week Website Design Graphic (Photoshop file)
• Website Design Elements (PNG files)

Please submit your designs to the Mozilla Creative Collective tagged with “mozservice09″ by September 14th.  We’ll be sending t-shirts to our favorites!

Lastly, you can make a difference by helping an organization with their design needs as part of Mozilla Service Week.  There are opportunities for both Web design and graphic design.  Social Actions for instance can use some help with a new Twitter background and more!

Let’s use our creativity to make a difference this Mozilla Service Week!

Building communities is a big part of what Mozilla is all about, and key to our success as an organization.  We have dedicated communities that contribute to nearly every aspect of Mozilla – from software development, to extensions, to localization, to marketing, and more – but an area that’s traditionally lacked an organized community is visual design. And because art is such a powerful form of communication, we’re harnessing that with the Creative Collective.

Mozilla actually has a long history with community design. Successful past projects such as the Firefox 3 t-shirt, Mozilla Mexico logo design contest and Personas are just a sampling of our community’s creative energy – and demonstrate the growing level of interest among people who are eager to contribute.

On the Creative Collective site, artists can create personal profiles, share their work in a public gallery, connect and collaborate with others from around the world, and much more. There’s also a variety of social features, such as a system of achievement badges, to make the experience more fun for everyone.

An important feature that’s not yet available (but will be added soon) is the Design Challenge, which will prompt members to submit design solutions based around a particular theme.  Although the feature hasn’t been formally introduced to the site, we’re already reaching out to artists to help support Mozilla Service Week with creative designs that inspire action. If you’re looking for an initial way to get involved, be sure to check that out.

As noted earlier, the site is still in beta so we’re eager to hear your feedback. If you have suggestions on how to improve the site, please don’t hesitate to share them with us. We’ll be making tweaks and adding new features over time, and are counting on the community to help guide the project’s future direction. So, make sure to check back often, or follow our tweets, for updates.  Looking forward to seeing you on the Creative Collective!

Since we announced Firefox 3.5 on June 30th, community members all over the world have been planning amazing parties (150+ to date) to celebrate and share their passion about their favorite browser.

One of the questions that I am frequently asked is, “Why are parties necessary?” I feel that it’s important to take take time to have fun and reflect on everything the Mozilla community has accomplished. The launch of a new version of Firefox is the perfect excuse to meet up and spread the word.

I’ve always been under the impression that “pictures are worth 1000 words” so I went out to collect as many pictures from our community parties as I could.

I’ve assembled a PDF which shows all of the parties that were submitted and links to many of the photo galleries. You can view the presentation here: