SUMO Blog

There are a few bugs that the Firefox team is asking for help with. If you’re experiencing any of these bugs or are helping users with these bugs on SUMO, they’d love to get in contact so we can get more information or try workarounds.

• Crashes with the @_woutput_l signature that have FFTMUFEHelper.dll in the crash stack or the module list. These are probably the TrendMicro Toolbar. We’d like some specific information about the users’ TrendMicro install and put them in touch with TrendMicro so they can figure out what’s causing the crashes. See bug 511756.
• Crashes for users in Turkey. If any users would like to help in debugging these crashes (the current thinking is they’re related to DNS servers in Turkey, please have them post in bug 508292.
• Lost or missing downloads. We saw a few reports of downloads in Firefox being deleted as soon as they finished downloading. Now we’re looking for more information. This is most likely do to some kind of security software — we’re just not sure which. Try to get the users’ antivirus software, version and if they’re still getting updates. Please comment in the Contributors’ forum if you find out anything.
• Firefox closes/quits (no Crash reporter) when closing AOL mail windows. We’re looking in particular for steps to reproduce and also their Firefox version and window/tab settings. Again post in the Contributors’ forum or pass along any contact information. Bug 515679 has more information.
• Firefox 3.6 has two changes just pushed in beta 3 that affect some users: 1) Third party software in the components directory of the install folder will need to register itself 2) Users who tweaked a preference to disable extension compatibility checking in Firefox will find that it now needs to be set for every version of Firefox.  If you come across legitimate software that is using the components install pathway or websites giving the old compatibility checking advice for 3.6 please let us know in this Contributors’ forum thread.

Getting help on these bugs would go a long way towards improving Firefox and fixing issues. If you’re passing along information from a Firefox user who comes to support, please make sure that you ask their permission and be sure to convey along our thanks for all their help.

Over the past month, the SUMO community has gathered a list of changes in Firefox 3.6 and determined which knowledge base articles need to be updated. We have been in contact with localizers and KB contributors to establish the update plan, and here it is:

The English update – this week

• All updates to English articles will be done manually. If you would like to help, just pick a section in the Mozilla wiki page, and update the articles listed in it.
  • We will not be displaying Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 content separately (i.e. using SHOWFOR).
  • We will be using the “Mark other translations as out of date” checkbox when approving edits for 3.6. This will make the articles appear in the “Needs Updating” section of the Localization Dashboard, so localizers will know which translations are ready to be updated.
  • For screenshots, use Firefox 3.6 Beta 3.
• We will also be creating a new article that walks users through the information they see in the new Troubleshooting Information page (a.k.a. about:support). (bug 528112)

Localization – now until release

• Localizers will need to rename their translations of the “Options window – Main Panel” article, because the Main panel has been renamed to General. The new English article name is “Options window – General panel“. After your translation is renamed, create a translation of Options window – Main Panel which will redirect to your previous URL.
• A list of articles to update will appear in the “Needs Updating” section of the Localization Dashboard.
• Once the “Using the Troubleshooting Information page” article is approved, it will need to be translated as well.

A good way to get started, is to go through the list of articles that mention the “Main panel“, and change them to “General panel (Main panel in Firefox 3.5)”. If you have any questions, just ask in the Contributors forum thread. Thank you!

After being slightly distracted with other priorities, we were finally able to launch the new and optimized start page for Firefox Support that we designed and tested in June!

The old Firefox Support Start page

The old start page had a number of problems:

• The bounce rate was relatively high, especially on the in-product start page (although we’ve learned since the start page redesign effort that a big reason for that is the F1 keyboard shortcut that people press by accident)
• The search box didn’t provide example searches to encourage people to use it
• The design wasn’t emphasizing on the fact that we are here to help and that we do provide a way to get personal support if the search doesn’t return any useful results.

For a complete list of what changed in the new start page, see the image on Flickr with notes explaining all the differences.

The new and optimized start page

The preliminary site statistics indicate that the impact of the new start page is even bigger than we anticipated based on the A/B test. So far, the start page shows a 3% decrease of bounce rate, which is pretty fantastic.

This translates to an improved user experience for over 400,000 Firefox users (annually)!

We’ve started to work with localizers on how to update the non-English start pages too. There are instructions available for how to do this and some locale leaders have already updated their start pages:

• Supporto a Firefox (it)
• Firefox-Support-Starteseite (de)

Thanks to everyone who helped with the process of getting this new start page created and implemented!

Over the past couple months, we’ve made a number of improvements to the Firefox support forums. Here’s a quick overview of the many changes we’ve made. We’d like you to try them out and then tell us what you think.

New Ask a Question form:

The Ask a Question form for the forum got a complete new overhaul with categories and more detailed questions. We also added better instructions for listing extensions and a more user-friendly step-by-step workflow. Hopefully this will greatly improve the information that users provide in the beginning — making it easier to come up with a solution.


Forum list:

We made a number of changes to make the forum listing easier to use.

Other changes:

• We’ve made forum URLs easier use and easier to understand.  Instead of http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=1&threadId=123465&lang=en-US, you can simply type http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/123456
• Want to link directly to a post in a long thread? Now you can, just hover over the post, right click on the # and select Copy Link Location.
  
• There’s now an RSS feed of all threads so you can follow everything in the forums from the news reader of your choice.
  
• We’ve added buttons for a couple common moderator actions such as detaching a post to its own thread () and unsolving a solved thread ().
• You can now log in when you post a reply.  Just click registered contributor and fill in your details.

We’d like to know what you think of these changes and what else we can do to make the forums easier to use.  It’d especially help if you could take this quick survey.

Sumo

• Happy Birthday Firefox!
• Weekly metrics
  • 99 active SUMO contributors last week!
  • Bounce rate down by 3% on the start page as a result of the improved design
  • Forum traffic higher than normal, answer rate dropped to 45% last week
• Last week’s weekly support issues

Knowledge Base

• New articles:
  • Controlling AVG Firefox add-ons
  • Where are my bookmarks history and other data stored
  • We should be able to use commas and other common characters in article titles
    • Long term solution would be to do it the Wordpress way, where the URL is a simplified (and editable) version of the title. The title can then contain any Unicode characters while the URL remains sane.
    • cilias to file bug for the short term solution: adding support for commas
• 3.6 plan for the KB is up [1]
  • Not using SHOWFOR to distinguish between 3.5 and 3.6 — currently betting on 3.6 being a minor Firefox upgrade. If this changes, we will likely have to support 3.5 and 3.6 separately.
  • Looking into scripting some changes: “Main” panel in Options window has changed to “General”
• Tutorial for locale leaders to update their start pages [2]
  • cilias to update the tutorial based on what we discussed about using a separate content blocks for the actual article list

Forum

• Will launch forum UX survey this week to evaluate the impact the new forum UX improvements have had to forum contributors

Live Chat

• New Live Chat shift at 6am PST (9am EST, 2pm WET, 3pm CET), seems to be better for contributors in Asia (already seeing new contributors from Asia!)
• “Chrome registration” error, corrupt bookmarks, and unable to download files much more common after 3.5.5/3.5.5 update. (full data)

Roundtable

• Plan for user-to-user support during 3.6 release week.
  • Extended Live Chat hours
  • E-mails + phone calls will probably surge — cww to allocate time for it as it can prove to be helpful in finding out more info about new issues

One of our goals over the past few months was to get the knowledge base average CSAT score up to 85%.

CSAT is short for Customer Satisfaction, and the way we measure it is with the “Please rate your experience with solving your problem on support.mozilla.com from 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied).” poll that appears on each article. This is the primary metric that we use to measure the success of the Knowledge Base.

One of the ways we tackled it was to take some of the larger articles that cover generic subjects like bookmarks or cookies, and split the content up into individual articles addressing specific questions seen in the list of top searches.

Recently, “cookies” became our top search term, so we decided to split up that article first.

Over the month before we split up the Cookies article, it had a CSAT score of 4.36 (87.2%).

Our top cookie related search terms cover 3 tasks:

• Enabling and disabling cookies – which covers cookie settings and how to make sure cookies are enabled when a website tells you that you need to have cookies enabled.
• Deleting cookies – which covers how to clear cookies for a single site and how to clear all cookies.
• Blocking cookies – which how to block individual websites from storing cookies.

We created an article for each of those tasks. As a result, each article was shorter and to the point. The average CSAT score of all three articles plus the original since the split is 4.5675 (91.35%).
If we take the original article out of the equation, the CSAT score rises to 4.71 (94.2%).

This action was one out of many that we’ve taken, which has risen the average score, and we’re not done yet. The Bookmarks article has been split, and we’re looking into the need to split up the Pop-up blocker article and maybe Tabbed browsing.

The lesson here is to let the search terms dictate how we spread out our documentation, so the article to question ratio is 1:1.

A list of top 15 search terms can be found in the SUMO Weekly Metrics, and if anyone wants to see a full list of our top search terms, just post in the Contributors forum, and any SUMO team member will be happy to provide the information for you.

Sumo

• Weekly metrics
  • Real Player is a trended search term
  • zzxc to provide any relevant info from Live Chat in the bug
• Last week’s weekly support issues
  • Re: websites blocking cookies: Findings from forum thread [1] (cilias)
    • They complain about specific sites, not all sites. The sites vary (facebook (no specific app), google, ebay, amazon)
    • Some instances of settings not being saved.
    • Re-installing does not work.
    • cilias to share this in the weekly common issues meeting tomorrow

Knowledge Base

• New article: Entry point js_SaveRegExpStatics could not be located
• Gathering list of articles that need to be updated for 3.6 [2]
• SUMO 1.4.2 (next SUMO release) will:
  • add an upload button for adding screenshots.
  • let us switch to a new start page
    • cilias to double-check which content blocks need to be created for the new start page and provide instructions for locale leaders on how to switch to the new start page
• Reword “Did this article solve your problem”? [3]

Live Chat

• Starting a new live chat shift at 6:00am Pacific this week

Roundtable

• SUMO 2010 update:
  • Collected lots of great ideas and suggestions for SUMO in 2010. Thanks to everyone who participated!
  • This week we’ll focus on formalizing & prioritizing these ideas into actual milestones. This involves:
    • Providing more concrete details of ideas
    • Grouping ideas together into logical milestones
    • Estimating the time needed for each milestone with the help from webdev
    • Prioritizing these milestones based on what has the most significant impact
  • First draft of 2010 roadmap should be ready within a couple of weeks