Reorganize www.mozilla.org/projects and the content under it (part 2)
Simon Paquet
Hi!
As some of you may remember I want to make www.mozilla.org/projects
and the content under it contained useful again. In a first step,
this means taking a look at which projects on this page are still
active and have active content which should still reside on
www.mozilla.org, now that we have places like MDC (for developer-
oriented documentation) or wiki.mozilla.org.
I've clicked myself through hundreds of web pages on www.mozilla.org
referenced on www.mozilla.org/projects or pages listed there and
have come up with the following proposed list of projects, which
should be removed from www.mozilla.org/projects together with their
accompanying content, if not otherwise stated in this post.
The main reasons for being on this list are:
- Projects have been abandoned or completed
- Project pages have not been maintained in 24 months or longer
I would welcome on this list.
Here's the list with some additional information (if necessary):
- BiDi - http://www.langbox.com/bidimozilla/
- Blackwood - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/blackwood/
(only the Java API for WebShell aka the java webclient is still
actively maintained, all content should be removed and the java
webclient should get a new home)
- CCK - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck/
(remove the old content and directly point to the Firefox CCK instead)
- ColorSync - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/colorsync/
- Editor - http://www.mozilla.org/editor/
(There is a Composer project headed by glazman, but that is developed
outside of mozilla.org)
- Footprint - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/footprint/
(project pages has not been actively maintained since 2002, but some
content may still be valid and should be migrated to MDC)
- Internationalization aka I18N - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/
(project pages has not been actively maintained since 2002, but some
content may still be valid and should be migrated to MDC)
- JavaScript Debugging - http://www.mozilla.org/js/jsd/
(link should point to Venkman instead)
- Localization aka L10N - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/l10n/
(content moved to wiki.mozilla.org and MDC)
- Mail/News - http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/
- Marketing Project - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/marketing/
(web pages are no longer maintained)
- Mozilla Documentation Project
(content already moved to MDC)
- Netlib aka Necko - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/
(still actively developed, but project pages have not been maintained
since June 2004 - valid content should be migrated to MDC)
- New Layout aka Gecko - http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/
(still actively developed, but most project pages have not been
maintained since 2004 - valid content should be migrated to MDC or
wiki.mozilla.org)
- Open JVM Integration - http://www.mozilla.org/oji/
- Performance - http://www.mozilla.org/performance/
(content already moved to wiki.mozilla.org)
- PKCS #11 Conformance Testing
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/pkcs11/
(part of NSS now - no separate mentioning necessary)
- P3P - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/p3p/
- PyXPCOM - http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/architecture/xpcom/pyxpcom/
(content already moved to MDC)
- RDF - http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/doc/
(still actively developed, but project pages have not been maintained
since 2003 - valid content should be migrated to MDC)
- Search - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/search/
- SilentDownload - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/silentdl/
- SQL Support - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/sql/
- User Interface
- Web Services - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/webservices/
- XML Extras - http://www.mozilla.org/xmlextras/
(content already moved to MDC)
- XML-RPC - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xmlrpc/
- Unix - http://www.mozilla.org/unix/
- XPCOM - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/
(still actively developed, but project pages have not been maintained
since 2004 - valid content should be migrated to MDC)
- XPConnect - http://www.mozilla.org/scriptable/
(still actively developed, but project pages have not been maintained
since 2002 - valid content should be migrated to MDC)
- XPInstall - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpinstall/
(content already moved to MDC)
- XPNet - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpnet/
- Xprint - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xprint/
- XPToolkit aka XPFE - http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/
(no longer actively developed, but some content probably still applies
and should be moved to MDC)
- XSLT - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xslt/
(content already moved to MDC)
- XUL - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/
(content already moved to MDC)
Cya
Simon
--
Calendar l10n coordinator
Calendar Website Maintainer: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar
Calendar developer blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar
fantasai
> [X-Post to m.d.mozilla-org and m.d.planning, F'up2 m.d.mozilla-org]
>
> Hi!
>
> As some of you may remember I want to make www.mozilla.org/projects
> and the content under it contained useful again. In a first step,
> this means taking a look at which projects on this page are still
> active and have active content which should still reside on
> www.mozilla.org, now that we have places like MDC (for developer-
> oriented documentation) or wiki.mozilla.org.
As a first step, I think we should reorganize the projects page
and update links, but not remove any content. There was a lot of
good discussion about how to do this in the thread you started
last March
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.mozilla-org/browse_frm/thread/6f57629383cab883
I think you can act on that right now, and just push the projects
that are abandoned into a list of links at the bottom of the page.
That'll give us an up-to-date Projects page while we evaluate what
should happen to the abandoned content (which could take awhile).
~fantasai
Ray Kiddy
You might want to stretch your definition of a project. In a sense, the
only definition of a project is "an effort that some group of people
agree to try to work together on for some time".
I have found other things that should or could be called projects.
Obviously some are related to others, some are replacements of others,
and some might mean nothing at all.
But given a flexible project list, this meta-information related to
project(s) can be managed.
- Accessibility
- Bonsai
- Calendar
- DevMo
- Documentation
- Grendel
- Help Viewer
- Joey
- LDAP SDK
- Litmus
- MDC
- MLP
- MathML
- Minmo
- Minotaur
- NGLayout
- NSPR
- NSS
- Penelope
- RDF <-> Z39.50
- SVG
- SeaMonkey
- Security
- Socorro
- Sunbird
- Tamarin
- Thunderbird
- Webclient
- XForms
thanx - ray
Simon Paquet
> You might want to stretch your definition of a project. In a sense, the
> only definition of a project is "an effort that some group of people
> agree to try to work together on for some time".
I have problems relating your post to mine. Could you perhaps clarify
your intent?
> - DevMo
> - Documentation
> - MDC
These are synonyms.
> - Calendar
> - Sunbird
These too.
> - Minotaur
> - Thunderbird
These two are also synonyms since the last one is the direct successor
of the first one.
The same would go for: m/b -> Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox
Simon Paquet
> As a first step, I think we should reorganize the projects page
> and update links, but not remove any content. There was a lot of
> good discussion about how to do this in the thread you started
> last March
>
> I think you can act on that right now, and just push the projects
> that are abandoned into a list of links at the bottom of the page.
> That'll give us an up-to-date Projects page while we evaluate what
> should happen to the abandoned content (which could take awhile).
I think that is a valid proposal. Expect a patch in your review queue
in the next few days :)
Robert Kaiser
> As a first step, I think we should reorganize the projects page
> and update links, but not remove any content.
Sound like a good plan that should hurt nobody but help a lot.
We should only kill projects off the list once we have a good plan about
abandoned content, but that should not hold off improving the world.
Robert Kaiser
Samuel Sidler
> Ray Kiddy wrote on 23. Aug 2007:
>> - Minotaur
>> - Thunderbird
>
> These two are also synonyms since the last one is the direct successor
> of the first one.
I think "Minotaur" referred to the new automation project.
http://quality.mozilla.org/en/projects/automation/minotaur
-ss
Reed Loden
Samuel Sidler <s...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Simon Paquet wrote:
> > Ray Kiddy wrote on 23. Aug 2007:
> >> - Minotaur
> >> - Thunderbird
> >
> > These two are also synonyms since the last one is the direct
> > successor of the first one.
>
> I think "Minotaur" referred to the new automation project.
Incorrect. Minotaur was the name of the mail client before
Thunderbird existed.
See http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article3000.html for more
information.
~reed
--
Reed Loden - <re...@reedloden.com>
Samuel Sidler
... I think "Minotaur" [as used by Ray above] referred to the new
automation project.
-Sam
Gervase Markham
> ... I think "Minotaur" [as used by Ray above] referred to the new
> automation project.
Why oh why do people not at least run their proposed names for things
past a few experienced project people before choosing them? Most senior
Mozilla contributors could have pointed out that we've used the Minotaur
name once before, and so it would be confusing to use it again. (Or did
he choose it knowing we've used it before? If so, I don't think that was
wise.)
We seem to have a terrible history of name-choosing at the Mozilla
project <sigh>.
Pop quiz: which browser name was chosen despite there being an existing
browser with that name, which lived at www.<name>.org and which was the
top hit when you searched for "<name> browser"?
Gerv
Samuel Sidler
> Samuel Sidler wrote:
>> ... I think "Minotaur" [as used by Ray above] referred to the new
>> automation project.
>
> Why oh why do people not at least run their proposed names for things
> past a few experienced project people before choosing them? Most senior
> Mozilla contributors could have pointed out that we've used the Minotaur
> name once before, and so it would be confusing to use it again. (Or did
> he choose it knowing we've used it before? If so, I don't think that was
> wise.)
I'm entirely sure of the specifics of this particular naming decision,
but I believe it was a general consensus online at the time not a
one-person idea. In any case, using the same name as something that
hasn't been used for years (meaning the name, not Tb) isn't the end of
the world.
> We seem to have a terrible history of name-choosing at the Mozilla
> project <sigh>.
>
> Pop quiz: which browser name was chosen despite there being an existing
> browser with that name, which lived at www.<name>.org and which was the
> top hit when you searched for "<name> browser"?
Why, Chimera, of course! But you knew I'd know that. :)
-ss
davidwboswell
> www.mozilla.org/projects
> and the content under it contained useful again.
As part of updating the Projects page, it would be great to also
update the Products page and tie that into the Projects page (right
now, there doesn't seem to be a way to get to Projects from the
Products page.)
I think one way to update the Products page is to make it a polished
intro page to the full Projects list. In this sense, a Projects main
page would have a set of Featured Projects that highlighted a few
projects and then provided a link to the full list of projects.
I came up with a mockup for what a page like this would look like:
http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/files/2007/09/project_page.jpg
This is basically an expanded version of the current Products page
that breaks things up into Applications, Addons and Developer Tools.
It also includes a wider array of projects, specifically some
applications made outside of the Foundation and more Developer Tools.
If mozilla.org should be linking to projects made by the whole
community, we could use the slots on this page currently taken up with
Songbird and Miro and rotate these every month with other non-
Foundation applications (Joost, OpenKomodo...).
David
fantasai
>
> I think one way to update the Products page is to make it a polished
> intro page to the full Projects list. In this sense, a Projects main
> page would have a set of Featured Projects that highlighted a few
> projects and then provided a link to the full list of projects.
>
> I came up with a mockup for what a page like this would look like:
>
> http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/files/2007/09/project_page.jpg
Where would Gecko and XPCOM fall under this scheme?
~fantasai
davidwboswell
That's a good question :)
I was putting the mockup together quickly and overlooked that
category. I just updated the mockup and added a Featured Technologies
section. New sceenshot posted at
http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/files/2007/09/project_page1.jpg
David
Chris Ilias
>> As some of you may remember I want to make
>> www.mozilla.org/projects
>> and the content under it contained useful again.
>
> As part of updating the Projects page, it would be great to also
> update the Products page and tie that into the Projects page (right
> now, there doesn't seem to be a way to get to Projects from the
> Products page.)
Does www.mozilla.org even need a products page?
--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
List-owner: support-firefox, support-thunderbird, test-multimedia
davidwboswell
No, I don't think a products page makes much sense for mozilla.org,
but I think having a featured projects page that serves as an
introduction to a long list of projects would be useful.
David
Robert Kaiser
> I came up with a mockup for what a page like this would look like:
>
> http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/files/2007/09/project_page.jpg
This is cool! I think we should replace projects/ with that and make
products/ redirect to projects/ then. Do we still want a link to
http://www.mozilla.org/download.html there like we have on products/ or
is it better to remove download.html completely (probably along with
those VARIABLES that are used only be this page)?
Robert Kaiser
Nelson B
Still no Gecko or XPCom on that page.
Guess platform projects don't count, 'eh?
--
Nelson B
davidwboswell
>
> Still no Gecko or XPCom on that page.
> Guess platform projects don't count, 'eh?
XPCOM is the first link in the Featured Technology section in the
mockup. Maybe you were taking a look at the first mockup I had
posted?
For Gecko, we certainly could add that as well. My idea was that we
should put only 3 or 4 technologies up at a time and then rotate them
on a regular basis to keep the page current and to highlight a wide
range of projects.
David