Firefox Support Blog

Firefox 2.0.0.13 is coming out soon; and one common issue that spikes with every update is firewalls blocking Firefox from accessing the internet. We have a few tutorials on the Firefox Support web site, but there are many more firewalls we don’t have tutorials for. This is a great opportunity for us to compile a more complete list of firewall tutorials.

Please help us, by creating tutorials on how to configure each firewall to work with Firefox. To get started, read the creating articles page. Firewalls we are looking for tutorials on:

• [Bug 424783] KB article: Configuring McAfee firewall
• [Bug 424784] KB article: Configuring Trend Micro Internet Security
• [Bug 424786] KB article: Configuring Panda Firewall
• [Bug 424787] KB article: Configuring Comodo Firewall
• [Bug 424789] KB article: Configuring BitDefender Internet Security
• [Bug 424790] KB article: Configuring Defender Pro
• [Bug 424791] KB article: Configuring Webroot Desktop Firewall
• [Bug 424792] KB article: Configuring AVG Internet Security
• [Bug 424796] KB article: Configuring Mac firewall

If you want to create a tutorial for another firewall, remember to file a request (or reviewers won’t know to review the article for approval).

You can view the other firewall tutorials for an idea of how to approach it. And please include screenshots!

The Firefox Support project (a.k.a. SUMO) community has grown lately, with new knowledge base content writers and localizers, forum moderators, and live chat helpers. This is really exciting news, as the project depends heavily on the community to succeed. Thank you to everyone who has helped us help Firefox users so far!

With the release of Firefox 3 coming up soon, we will need even more people to handle the increased load. One thing we’ve talked about for some time is to host a full day event, where new people get together with existing contributors to exchange knowledge, get to know each other more, and have a good time. Let’s call this event the SUMO Day!

The step in the planning process where we are right now is figuring out the best day for the SUMO Day event. If you’ve been contributing to SUMO in the past, or if you’re just interested in learning more about the project, please help us deciding when the SUMO Day should occur. The dates to choose from are:

• Thursday, April 3th
• Friday, April 4th
• Thursday, April 10th
• Friday, April 11th
• Thursday, April 17th
• Friday, April 18th

Fridays would be preferable, because they give us the ability to catch up with the increased load during the weekend. Please comment on this blog post to let us know the day that would be best for you. Thank you!

On the Firefox Support knowledge base, we make use of tikiwiki feature called “Dynamic Content.” This allows us to create blocks of content that can be inserted in any page. Each content block is language specific, and can have the same name as a content block in another language.  This helps us in updating common instructions used, and in the translation process.

Firefox Support locale leaders, and senior editors (approvers) should read this tutorial I’ve created, which explains how to create and use dynamic content on the Firefox Support knowledge base.

Firefox 3 is in beta, and we will eventually be updating articles in the Firefox Support knowledge base with Firefox 3 information. As we prepare the in-product pages for Firefox 3, we’ve also been keeping track of which current knowledge base articles will need updating.

I’ve created a page on wiki.mozilla.org to keep track. If you see knowledge base articles that will need editing for Firefox 3 changes, please add them to the linked page.

The Knowledge Base (KB) is the front line of support.mozilla.com. As shown by the prominence of the search box on the front page, we want users to try to searching the Knowledge Base before anything else. One of the ways we make the KB as complete as possible is to pay attention to what people are asking about in the forums and on live chat.

If you notice multiple people asking about something not in the KB, please make an article request for that subject. You don’t have to write the article yourself (though it’d be great if you did!); it’s just important that we identify what we’re missing. While all article requests go through Bugzilla (Sumo product, KB Articles component), you can also request the article in the contributors forum or on mozilla.support.planning if you’re uneasy about using Bugzilla.

It’s a little bit of extra work up front, but it saves time and makes things better in the long run.

• End users will be able to find the solution themselves, so you’ll be less likely to have to answer the same question again.
• For those that do ask, you won’t have to type out the instructions; you can just link to the KB article.
• Other contributors won’t have to figure out the problem themselves; they’ll find it in the KB.
• Your solution will be improved to cover all cases. For example, if you’re on Windows and the problem can happen on Mac or Linux, other contributors can fill in the platform-specific bits for you.
• We can gather statistics on KB articles much more easily than we can for forum threads or chat sessions. These stats can be used to improve our support offering and to provide hard numbers back to the Firefox development team on frequent issues.

The Knowledge Base of Firefox Support is shaping up nicely. With over hundred articles written so far, many of the most common tutorials, how-to’s, and troubleshooting articles are readily available. That said, there are a number of articles yet to be written, and we need your help to make the knowledge base more complete!

Are you using Firefox? Do you have a few minutes to spare? Are you interested in sharing your knowledge with the rest of the world in the same spirit as Mozilla is sharing Firefox? Do you want your work to be visible to millions of other Firefox users? Then claim one of the 33 unwritten Firefox support articles below! Many of them cover simple, straightforward topics that shouldn’t take more than 15-30 minutes to write, and you will be credited in the article and on this blog. Here’s the list of articles that are not yet assigned to anyone (articles in bold text have a higher priority):

• 399520 - Internet Explorer terminology
• 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?

So you’ve helped out with Firefox support before, be it at mozillaZine, on IRC, in newsgroups, on your own personal site, or elsewhere. That’s great! We could use your help, too. Why should you contribute to the support.mozilla.com (Sumo) Knowledge Base?

The Knowledge Base will be the first line of support for Firefox. Making sure that the content is complete and up-to-date will ensure that end users get their answer quickly. Since end users will be directed to
search the Knowledge Base before doing anything else, it will also save the community from answering the same questions over and over in forums, newsgroups, and chat.

End users can easily tell us what they thought of an article. They don’t have to log in or navigate somewhere else - the feedback mechanism is directly on the page. The top pages already have hundreds of votes and comments are rolling in at about 15 per day. This feedback is invaluable when revising an article; rather than taking educated guesses, we have concrete information from our target audience.

We can get statistics on the most popular articles and searches on a week-by-week basis. Using these statistics, we can prioritize the work we do, identify articles we’re missing, and give real data to the Firefox developers on the most common problems.

The Knowledge Base is a wiki, so anyone can contribute. One of the downsides of wikis is that while anyone can make a change for the better, anyone can also make a change for the worse. To prevent this problem, we have a review system. Changes to articles don’t go live immediately; they have to be approved first. Requesting a review is easy - just make the changes you want and add a tag called “review”, and an approver take a look.

Rather than being a plain old wiki installation, Sumo is being customized for providing support. We have more features planned, including showing different views of an article based on the user’s OS and Firefox version and localization of articles, and we’re getting the resources from Mozilla to follow through on these plans. We want to provide contributors the best tools to do their job.

See a typo in one of the Knowledge Base articles? Fix it in seconds by editing the article! Know something about Firefox that you want to share? Feel free to start working on a new article! Do you think the site sucks? Tell us why in the mozilla.support.planning newsgroup or in this blog!

Yes, we do need your help.

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.

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!

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.