Firefox Support Blog

Here are the slides from my talk on SUMO at FOSDEM 2008: Project SUMO - support.mozilla.com (pdf, 4.3 MB)

Images (c) Martin Creutziger.

Last week, there were two new keywords created to help with Firefox user documentation.

• user-doc-needed
• user-doc-complete

If you see any bugs that need changes to current Firefox user documentation, or new user documentation, please add the user-doc-needed keyword.

Background bug: 418442

With the “Support” header on the US English version of mozilla.com now pointing to support.mozilla.com, the Firefox Support Forum has seen its numbers jump quite a bit; on Friday, we got about 70 questions posted. I’d like to thank cor-el, Bo, and Quarantine, who have each posted over 50 responses in the forum since it opened. It’s a testament to the dedication of the Mozilla community that volunteers answer the hundreds (or even thousands) of support questions across the different sites. How many products out there do people care enough about to spend their time giving customer support?

If you’d like to help out with forum support on support.mozilla.com, just jump right in and start answering questions. Here are a few tips:

• Look in the Knowledge Base for answers. You can link to Knowledge Base articles with double parenthesis. For example, to link to the Safe Mode article, you type ((Safe Mode)).
• You can also use other resources to solve people’s problems, like previous forum threads, mozillaZine Knowledge Base articles, mozillaZine forum threads, newsgroup postings, etc. To link to any URL, use a square bracket, the URL, a pipe, the link text, then another square bracket. For example, [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode/|Safe mode].

Thanks to David Baucum, Bo Bayles, and Kev Needham for keeping up the article writing progress — and another thanks to Ehsan Akhgari for currently working on a second article! It’s great to see people from the community helping us making progress with the content.

That said, there are about 26 articles left to be written. Do you know anything about how to upgrade from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0 (just select “Help > Check for Updates…” in the menu)? Yes, we need people to write articles for simple stuff like that, and that particular article might take five minutes to write! It really is that easy to give something back to the Mozilla community and make your work benefit to millions of Firefox users!

• 399520 - Internet Explorer terminology - Done
  
• 401769 - Chrome registration failed - Done
• 404887 - Troubleshooting extensions - Done
• 398633 - Windows error opening Internet shortcut or local HTML file
• 398635 - How to change the “latest headlines” feed - Done
• 398639 - Search suggestions
• 398641 - Exporting data to Internet Explorer - Done
• 398642 - Exporting data to Safari
• 398643 - Exporting data to Opera
• 398644 - Exporting data to Netscape
• 398645 - Exporting data to SeaMonkey
• 398646 - Exporting data to Mozilla Suite
• 398650 - DOM Inspector
• 398678 - Auto form fill - Done
  
• 399392 - Firefox.exe always open
• 399506 - Transferring data to a new profile
• 399508 - Clipboard not working
• 399509 - Autoconnect - Taken by Ehsan Akhgari
• 399510 - Granting JavaScript access to the clipboard
• 399513 - Configuring keyboard shortcuts
• 399626 - How Do I disable 3rd Party Cookies?
• 400052 - Add troubleshooting links to help articles
• 400913 - Error writing to xpcom_core.dll
• 400916 - Refreshing live bookmarks
• 401261 - Unresponsive script warning
• 401264 - Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete
• 401265 - Firefox only prints the first page
• 401267 - Firefox makes unrequested connections
• 401336 - Upgrading from Firefox 1
• 404931 - Links do not open in Firefox
• 404933 - Firefox always starts in Safe Mode
• 405950 - Document custom install options
• 406096 - Moving from Windows to Mac

Just click on the number link and either assign the bug to you or post a comment in the bug that you plan to write it. If you don’t have a Bugzilla account, just post a comment here and I’ll do the work for you. Then, create an account on SUMO, log in, and click Create an article. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Wiki formatting used — the important thing is that we get the documentation. We can always fix the formatting afterwards.

I’m pleased to announce the opening of the official Firefox support forum! The forum is a result of a few months of work, and I’d like to thank all those that provided input into its design, those that coded it, and those that tested it. Now the real work begins!

These forums are meant for Firefox support only. Discussion of other Mozilla applications and general, non-technical-support Firefox discussion should continue where it happens currently, like mozillaZine. Because the forum is Firefox support only, we were able to build it so suit that purpose. Here are a few examples of the benefits the support.mozilla.com forums have over a generic forum.

The forums and the Knowledge Base being integrated in the same piece of software makes things easier for forum helpers. The syntax for forum posts is the same as for Knowledge Base articles, so linking to Knowledge Base articles is simple. Instead of remembering a URL, you just have to remember the article’s name - ((Safe Mode)) automatically becomes a link to the Safe Mode article.

Users sometimes don’t know what information is important to post for others to be able to help them. The forum automatically determines the user’s version of Firefox, operating system, and plugins, and includes this information when the user asks a question. Users are prompted to give the steps to reproduce their problem, any error text they receive, and a URL if it’s a problem with a particular website.

Forum discussions can get into the dozens of pages and it can become very hard to help any one person. This is compounded by there not being any way to tell anonymous users apart. To prevent this, the forum encourages users to start their own threads rather than continuing someone else’s thread. It will also let anonymous users enter a display name, which is then remembered in subsequent posts.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the forum isn’t even in the forum itself. Rather than having users asking questions as their first support option, support.mozilla.com directs them to search the Knowledge Base. This will help prevent contributors from answering the same questions over and over.

There are more features coming in the future. One of them will let users mark their question as being answered, which lets helpers easily find people still looking for help. Another will let users register and ask a question in one step, which will make it easier for them to find their posts in the future. Of course, we’re open to your suggestions as well.

So go ahead and dive in! If you have a question about Firefox, ask it! If you’re fairly knowledegable about Firefox, answer some questions! If you have any feedback, it’s very much appreciated as a comment in this blog, on mozilla.support.planning, and on the new contributor’s subforum.

This week, we will be launching the Firefox support forum on support.mozilla.com. In this forum, Firefox users will be able to ask support questions not yet covered in the knowledge base, and hopefully have them answered quickly by other fellow Firefox users. The idea is that we will then use the questions we see in the forum to determine what information we’re lacking in the knowledge base. By continuously improving the knowledge base, we will be able to keep the forum traffic relatively low.

I’m really excited about this, as it will also be a great channel to send people who are currently frustrated with the lack of “official” Firefox support. Today, many people send e-mails to random @mozilla.com addresses, and a share of those end up in my inbox (and up until now, I’ve taken the time to answer them all). Add to that the number of support e-mails I receive from my gmail address listed on the old support pages, despite the pretty obvious disclaimer on the contact page.

Finally, the forums will be an interesting way to build a larger community around SUMO. Even though we haven’t linked to the forum yet, people already seem to ask questions and at least one of the questions is already answered. That’s a good sign of things to come!

Need help? Stay tuned for the Firefox Support Forums… 

Thanks to Ehsan Akhgari, the first of the 33 remaining articles has been added to the Knowledge Base. Thanks, Ehsan!

There are still 32 articles to be written. This is your chance to give something back to the Mozilla community! Do you have 15-30 minutes to spare? Even just writing an article stub really helps and will ensure you are credited in the article. Some articles require very little effort to write and the associated Bugzilla link often includes reference articles that can be used as inspiration.

• 399520 - Internet Explorer terminology - Done
  
• 401769 - Chrome registration failed
• 404887 - Troubleshooting extensions
• 398633 - Windows error opening Internet shortcut or local HTML file
• 398635 - How to change the “latest headlines” feed
• 398639 - Search suggestions
• 398641 - Exporting data to Internet Explorer
• 398642 - Exporting data to Safari
• 398643 - Exporting data to Opera
• 398644 - Exporting data to Netscape
• 398645 - Exporting data to SeaMonkey
• 398646 - Exporting data to Mozilla Suite
• 398650 - DOM Inspector
• 398678 - Auto form fill
• 399392 - Firefox.exe always open
• 399506 - Transferring data to a new profile
• 399508 - Clipboard not working
• 399509 - Autoconnect
• 399510 - Granting JavaScript access to the clipboard
• 399513 - Configuring keyboard shortcuts
• 399626 - How Do I disable 3rd Party Cookies?
• 400052 - Add troubleshooting links to help articles
• 400913 - Error writing to xpcom_core.dll
• 400916 - Refreshing live bookmarks
• 401261 - Unresponsive script warning
• 401264 - Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete
• 401265 - Firefox only prints the first page
• 401267 - Firefox makes unrequested connections
• 401336 - Upgrading from Firefox 1
• 404931 - Links do not open in Firefox
• 404933 - Firefox always starts in Safe Mode
• 405950 - Document custom install options
• 406096 - Moving from Windows to Mac

If you have a Bugzilla account, just click on the number link and either assign the bug to you or post a comment in the bug that you plan to write it. If you don’t use Bugzilla, just post a comment here and I’ll do the work for you.

Then, create an account on SUMO (http://support.mozilla.com/), log in, and click Create an article. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Wiki formatting used — the important thing is that we get the documentation. We can always fix the formatting afterwards. When you’re done writing the article, it will be scheduled for review by a SUMO reviewer. Once reviewed, it will go live on the site and you can feel very good about yourself — and perhaps write another article?