Firefox Support Blog

Editor’s Note: Written by Chris Illias.

If you are writing a knowledge base article, the current method of providing a link to another KB article unfortunately does not support anchors (bug 398768). This means that if you are writing an article, and want to provide a link to default profile locations, ((Profiles#Profile_folder_locations)) will not work. Some people are working around this by using [/kb/Profiles#Profile_folder_locations|Profiles].

While this does work, it is going to create problems in the long run. We are still renaming the odd article here and there. If you use ((articlename)), and we rename the target article, that link gets automatically updated. If you use the square brackets method, the links to the article are not updated.

So please, do not link to anchors in other articles, until bug 398768 is fixed.

The same goes for links to anchors within the same article. If I remember correctly, there’s a proper tikiwiki way to do that, which we are trying to recall.

The knowledge base of support.mozilla.com is using TikiWiki, an open-source content management system. We are excited to let you know that tonight around 7 pm PST, we will upgrade TikiWiki to version 1.10, which will give us a number of bug fixes and improvements, such as:

• Persistent login
• Edits of articles are always done on the staging copy
• Changes to tags don’t survive a preview
• Less ugly forums

We’re expecting the upgrade to happen seamlessly with zero downtime.  However, if you see any problems with the new version, please let us know, either in the newsgroup, or here in the blog.

After the upgrade, we will work on the remaining bugs in the 0.1 milestone, which should be completed this week. If you would like to suggest further improvements or help hacking on the software, please let us know, or join the awesome TikiWiki community. We’d love to see you involved!

Thanks to Nelson Ko from the TikiWiki community, and Mike Morgan from Mozilla for helping with this software upgrade.

It would be very cool if we could make videos/screencasts for a few of the more popular “help” articles in the knowledge base. I did some basic software research and found a program called Jing, which is free, easy to use, and works on Windows and Mac. It can record what you’re doing on your computer and save it as a video clip, which can then be uploaded and integrated into a knowledge base article on support.mozilla.com.

Sample video

Some articles that we could produce video clips for:

• Installing Firefox on Windows
• Customizing your Firefox with add-ons
• Importing from Internet Explorer
• Windows Media Player (installing the plug-in)
• How to make Firefox the default browser

Anyone interested in making one of these videos, or working on making the list of videos to produce more complete?

We also need a short page with instructions on how to make the videos, e.g.

• where to get the software and how to install and use it
• guidelines, e.g
  • use a default desktop background for the OS
  • use a new firefox profile (no add-ons, standard toolbars, etc)
  • if the video is just about the search bar, only record that part of firefox to make the video smaller
• how to upload and embed a video in an article

If you want to record a video clip, or if you have suggestions for more articles that would benefit from it, or if you want to write that short instruction page, please join us in the mozilla.support.planning newsgroup, or comment in this blog!

As always, the weekly meeting agendas and minutes can be found at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Support/Weekly_Meetings.

Sumo

• Status of 1.10 tiki upgrade
  • Upgrade scheduled for next Tuesday (for real this time, because morgamic will be here in MV).

Knowledge Base

• Article layout proposal by djst [1]
  • Breadcrumbs merged into one at the top (patch ready by jason)
  • Search box moved to right side to get article content better focus
  • Chat bubbles removed in favor or a subtle corner frame similar (AMO design)
  • Action box split up to the most common actions as a menu strip inside the content area, and the rest as a sidebar box (not shown in the mockup because the mockup is for users not logged in)
  • New background gradient copied from the new Firefox Upgraded page
  • Language selector not in the mockup, but should be next to the Print and Edit links, or up in the breadcrumb.
• Jason has started hacking on the TikiWiki source code (templates, css) and has patches ready for Sumo (blocked by the 1.10 upgrade).
• Standard for adding troubleshooting links
  • Point raised that this should be what the “More Like This” box is for
  • Chris to modify an existing article to show his proposal so we have something to evaluate. Chris to post in the newsgroup when ready.
• No updates on l10n leaders. djst has tried to schedule a meeting with Axel Hecht and is waiting for his reply.
• Blog category for community newsletters set up.
  • Proposal to rename the category.
  • Can rename the category title, but let’s not rename the feed rss url unless absolutely necessary, because we don’t have access to the server.
• Reiterating our need for a simple way to review an article change. Ideally, we should be able to see a list of the articles that are different in the staging version compared to the live version, and see a diff between them. Finally, there should be a button named e.g. “Commit Changes”, which a reviewer could click on to commit the proposed changes.
• Discussion about article discussion comments and a way to make obsolete comments expire.
  • Not a high priority item at this point
  • For now, just delete any comments that don’t make sense anymore and just adds noise for content reviewers and editors.

Forums

• No updates this week.

Live Chat

• Lucy has tinkered with the admin panel and made a table of the current preferences in the software and suggested changes. [2]
• Gather feedback in the newsgroup about the preferences and make a decision before next meeting.
• By next meeting, decide a test day for live chat

Other issues

• Question if the database of the staging server can be updated right now by IT, or if it has to wait until after the live server upgrade.
  • Talked to Justin, the database can be updated within a day, pending approval by morgamic. [3]

We have set up a Newsletter category for this blog, under which we will post important information specifically relevant to the contributors of Sumo. For example, that would include information about technical site updates, chanced article review guidelines, etc.

I would recommend anyone involved in the Sumo project to subscribe to the feed of the whole blog, but if you just want the most important information, the Newsletter feed is for you.

This week’s meeting will be held tomorrow, Friday October 12 at 3 pm PST. The agenda is available on the wiki.

We are currently working on the visual design of the Firefox Support Forums. This is what we’ve got so far:

After some more polishing, this should be pretty good. Please let us know what you think!

Based on a number of meetings the last few days, we have a preliminary plan for the technical rollout of support.mozilla.com during Q4 2007:

• 0.1: Upgrade TikiWiki and fix technical/web stuff (bug list)
  ETA: Tuesday, October 16th
• 0.2: Things required to ease l10n (bug list)
  ETA: Thursday, November 2nd
• 0.3: Things required to roll out Forums (bug list)
  ETA: Not yet decided (ideally just a week after 0.2)
• 0.4: Things required to roll out Live Chat (bug list)
  ETA: Not yet decided (maybe this could be done in parallel with 0.3)

Would be nice with a graphical roadmap, but hopefully this is good enough for now.

Starting today, we will post the minutes of our weekly Sumo meetings for everyone to see. They will be published here in the Sumo blog and on the mozilla.org wiki.

Technical Status

• Technical requirements mostly complete. [1] [2] [3]
  • Meeting tomorrow to go through each requirement and determine priority and roadmap. (morgamic, djst)
• May upgrade TikiWiki to latest version within a couple of weeks.
  • Not sure if it’s worth it but should be in our best interests
  • From a TikiWiki community point of view, this makes sense.
  • Some bug fixes there that we want.
• Need page introducing and welcoming contributors to Sumo. Jason will work on that.
  • Should list things you can do to help, e.g. editing KB articles, participating in Live Chat, etc.
  • Should link to writing guidelines and other relevant info (legal, etc)
• morgamic and nelson need a couple of weeks to sort out the technical issues with the site, e.g. https, session data etc.
• Problem with session time-outs after 15 minutes, increased to 60 for now.
  • Will be fixed if we upgrade TikiWiki (warning message when session is about to time out).

l10n

• Technical requirements complete. [4]
• Will go through the requirements tomorrow and then outline a roadmap (djst, morgamic).
• We will not promote l10n until we have the critical technical requirements implemented.
  • See discussion in mozilla.support.planning
• Need an overview of current locale’s community sites.
  • chofmann has done some research on it.
  • djst will blog about it.
  • General idea is to start with small/new communities first and work our way to the top communities.
  • Link to the external top communities as long as they provide help we don’t provide for Firefox.

Forums

• Jason mostly done with forum guidelines and rules. [5]
  • chofmann and djst to run it through legal with cbrady.
• Will go through the requirements tomorrow and then outline a roadmap (djst, morgamic).

Live Chat

• License issue with Live Chat fixed. (morgamic)
• Technical requirements not yet finished. Lucy to work on that.
• We need a mockup of Live Chat start page with instructions and rules. Lucy to work on that.

The synchronization from the staging server to the real support site (support.mozilla.com) has now been completed. This means that if you are a contributor, your account should have been transferred and you should start hacking on the articles at support.mozilla.com instead. We’re still working on some technical issues, but the site is mostly up and running.