Firefox Support Blog

We are proud to present the winning screencast made by the one and only, Cameron Roy:

• Article: How to customize the toolbar
• Screencast: Click to view

His video won because it best satisfied the four judging criteria.  For one, Cameron showed how to customize the toolbar, which is not the easiest concept to communicate or digest.  For many users, it’s a new concept to change around the position of the buttons that sit in the browser.  With his great video, Cameron really demystified how challenging this could have been for an end user.  The production quality met our standards with great timing and flow (not too fast, not too slow) and everything fitting well in the screencast.  Of course, we would not have chosen him if his video had not covered the concepts completely.  Finally, his screencast really matched the information in the article.  Users who read this article and view his screencast will have a very detailed explanation with an illustration of just how to rearrange the buttons on the toolbar.

This is exactly the type of screencast we were looking for - a visual medium to help translate and communicate technical concepts to a wider audience. Overall, a terrific effort by Cameron.  Nice work!!

The other winning screencasts will be announced soon…

The SUMO Screencast Contest is over and we now have 50 new videos to accompany the articles in the SUMO Knowledge Base.  Thank you for participating!!

We are thrilled to post them so our end users can begin to use this new content. And, we are excited to announce our winners!

For his work with How to customize the toolbar (note: that’s the Knowledge Base article; we’re still working on making the resulting screencast public!), the judges chose Cameron Roy.  Cameron submitted several stellar videos, many of which will be featured in the KB.  This video was high quality and complete — Cameron took a tricky topic, thought of a creative example to illustrate it, and did a great job filming the video!

If you submitted a video that was ranked best among the submissions for a particular article, you will be contacted shortly about your prize: a SUMO screencast t-shirt!

Thanks again, everyone.  Your work will have a lasting impact on Firefox’s 180+ million users who might need a little extra support.  Congrats!

The SUMO contributors have all worked incredibly hard to make our user-to-user support experiences for our users positive. Today they will need our help in order to maintain the quality, as the services will explode with new Firefox 3 users. Below are three ways you can make a difference to the hard working contributors as well as our new users.

Even if you only have a few minutes to spare, your effort can help one, two, three, or ten new users.

Super Easy

• Monitor the support forum for unanswered questions — Just browse through the list of questions and see if there is anything you know the answer to. You don’t even have to have an account, although I recommend you get one anyway to show who you are.
• Hang out in #livechat on irc.mozilla.org — Other Live Chat helpers may find you there and ping you to help them out in case they run into a hard question. You don’t have to participate in helping users directly, just answering questions other Live Chat helpers might have.

Relatively Easy

• Help users directly in Live Chat — Actually it’s not that hard, but it’s definitely more time consuming than the other ways of helping out. Read all about how to get started — it only takes 5 minutes! Seth Bindernagel’s blog post on why you should try Live Chat out is definitely worth a read too.

Thanks for considering helping us today! If you have any questions about how you can help out, don’t hesitate to contact us. Find out more on the How to contribute page on support.mozilla.com.

Attention SUMO contributors: If you haven’t submitted a screencast for one of our top 100 knowledge base articles yet, today is the perfect day. As you might know, we have been running a contest where we reward one winner per article (up to 100 winners!) with a prize, and the best screencast overall with a grand prize. There are still plenty of chances to win, but you have to submit your screencast before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time today!

Participating really couldn’t be easier — just pick one of the top 100 knowledge base articles and follow the instructions while recording it with e.g. Jing.

1. Pick an article from the top 100 list
2. Create a screencast for the article
3. Submit your screencast

If you’re one of the 100 winners, your screencast will be used in a Knowledge Base article read by thousands and thousands of Firefox users. Not only will you be rewarded with a prize, you will really make a difference to provide invaluable help for all those users.

Happy filming!

We still need submissions for articles, and what better way to win a limited run t-shirt than by recording a simple video? This t-shirt was considered for Firefox 3, but was set aside with a few others to be used for special events like this.

The Firefox Screencast Contest is open for just five more days, and there are plenty of chances of winning! Now is the time for you to spend ten minutes creating a couple of screencasts for a couple of Knowledge Base articles and win some prizes.

Here’s today’s list of Knowledge Base articles from the Screencast Contest we want you to focus on. These articles either have no submissions or need more to get the best screencast possible. Of course, you’re welcome to create a screencast for anyone of the top 100 articles, but if you pick one of the following articles, you definitely increase your chances of winning as the competition is currently low.

Today’s articles are:

• Backing up your information
• Error loading web sites
• Firefox is already running but is not responding
• Lost Bookmarks
• Configuring Windows Firewall
• Importing

Head over to the Firefox Screencast Contest and submit your screencast! Happy filming!

The SUMO start page and the Firefox 3 product help start page are both ready to be localized. The pages contain very little text, and we estimate this will take less than five minutes to localize.

We’ve written instructions on how to do it in the SUMO Contributor Forum. Please let us know if you have any questions, by commenting here or in the forum thread. Thanks!

Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencasts contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create screencast support videos for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base.

We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.  With 100 different articles, anyone can choose whatever article for which they would like to create a screencast.

Mozilla will not be hosting the videos during this contest, so please use a third-party application like Jing to record your screencast and send us the link so we can view it. Ever used Jing?  Here’s a great online demo.  Click “Video Tour” on the front page to see how to use it…it couldn’t be easier!  Just download and begin recording!

All entries will be judged by a team who will look at the submissions and pick the best one for each of the 100 articles. That’s 100 winners!!

What are you waiting for? Go to the Firefox Screencasts contest and start sharing your knowledge!

A huge thanks goes out to Seth, Tara, and Alix for all their help in the preparations of this contest. Also thanks to the awesome SUMO team for the initial planning sessions in Toronto. Last but certainly not least, to everyone in the community who helped writing the top 100 support articles: THANK YOU!! This would not have been possible without your amazing contributions.

On Friday May 23 we’ll be hosting a Support Firefox Day. Frequent readers or SUMO contributors might remember the SUMO Day we hosted in April. Well, this time it’s SUMO Day with a twist and you really don’t want to miss it!

You’ll get a chance to learn more about the Mozilla Corporation and Firefox 3 and have your voice heard. We’ve got lots of things planned! In particular, we’ve lined up a prestigious group of Mozilla celebrities who will be taking YOUR questions and feedback about a variety of subjects. We’ll also have workshops where we’ll be focusing on all the new features of Firefox 3.

Take a look at this preliminary schedule:

• 8:00 AM PDT - 10:00: Support session #1
• 10:00 – 10:45: Workshop: Supporting Firefox 3 users with Live Chat. In this workshop, you’ll learn all you need to know about the cool user-to-user support solution on SUMO to start helping others. Host: Lucy Connor
• 11:00 - 11:30: Chat with Mike Connor, Developer Lead of Firefox 3. Mike will be taking your questions about the upcoming release of Firefox 3 and all its new features, including the all-new product help (yes, SUMO!)
• 11:30 - 12:30: Support Session #2
• 12:30 - 1:15: Workshop: Learn all about the new bookmark system in Firefox 3 (tags, smart location bar, keywords) to better help others. Host: Dietrich Ayala
• 1:30 – 2:00: Chat with Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist & Usability Design Expert. This is your chance to get your questions about the Mozilla way of designing software answered straight from the source. You’ll learn, among other things, how user feedback and support continuously loops back into product.
• 2:00 - 3:00: Support Session #3
• 3:00 - 3:45: Workshop: Learn how to troubleshoot Firefox 3 like a pro. You’ll find out more about how Firefox works, and at the same time you’ll become an expert of user-to-user troubleshooting. Host: Matthew Middleton
• 4:00 - 4:30: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, the difference between the Corporation and the Foundation, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about the Mozilla project.

Got enough reasons to skip work on Friday yet?

Of course, the big highlight of the day will be the best new Firefox 3 feature of all: Firefox’s new user-based support system. All throughout the day, we’ll be showcasing the various aspects to the support system: from the collaboratively written knowledge base to the forums and chat-based support and inviting you to take part. In addition to support-related contests with some pretty sweet Mozilla gear for prizes, we’ll be around all day to answer questions and help you get started helping your fellow users and Firefox enthusiasts.

Stay tuned for more info throughout the week!

Are you getting ready to participate in the Firefox Screencasts contest?  It’s a great chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create screencast support videos for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base.

Starting the morning of May 19, 2008 (GMT-7) on Spread Firefox, we will present the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like, but only one for each article please.  With 100 different articles, anyone can choose whatever article for which they would like to create a screencast.  Mozilla will not be hosting the videos during this contest, so please use a third-party application like Jing to record your screencast and send us the link so we can view it.

(Ever used Jing?  Here’s a great online demo.  Click “Video Tour” on the front page to see how to use it…it couldn’t be easier!  Just download and begin recording!)

All entries will be judged by a team who will look at the submissions and pick the best one for each of the 100 articles. That’s 100 winners!!

Judges will be evaluating each submission based on the following criteria:

• Correctness / appropriateness of content
• Quality of video production
• Completeness

The 100 winners will receive a unique Firefox Screencast Contest T-shirt.  Only 100 will be made, so start thinking of your video now so you can get one of the t-shirts from this exclusive run.

Oh yeah, and there will also be one grand prize winner.  The best entry from the 100 videos will win a grand prize, which is likely to be something you can use to take more pictures and videos.  Hey, we can’t give away all the fun information just yet!

Get ready!  The contest will run from May 19 through 11:59 PM June 15, 2008 (GMT-7).  We want your submissions!

After running the en-US in-product help content through a final review process on SUMO Day last Friday, we’ve now declared the articles good enough to be ready for localization.

Locale leaders: for complete info, including diffs, please see the announcement in the mozilla.dev.l10n.web newsgroup.