State of www.mozilla.org/projects and improvement suggestions
Simon Paquet
www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
Therefore I would like to propose that we reorganize and streamline
this page by improving the visibility of the major mozilla.org
projects (e.g. Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird), removing abandoned projects
or completed projects from the page (and their accompanying content)
and hopefully also improving the current page layout.
I took the liberty to classify the current entries on
www.mozilla.org/projects into different categories. The different
categories are:
- Active projects with a high visibility
These projects should be listed at the top of the page with a more
prominent entry and their logo (if they have one).
- Active Projects wit a lower visibility
These projects would still be listed, but after the more prominent
projects.
- Projects which have been abandoned (or completed)
The entries for these projects should be deleted from the page
(probably their corresponding web content should also be deleted).
- Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com
This entry comprises the content that can currently be found on
the project pages for Firefox and Thunderbird. These entries
should be removed from the website, because these are not
mozilla.org projects.
- Entries that should be deleted because of other reasons
I don't think we need this stuff any longer.
- Projects where I'm unsure of their current status
There are a lot of projects, where I do not know if they are still
active or have been abandoned. We should try to find out what their
current status is and move them to the "active with lower
visibility" or "abandoned" category.
There are some cases, where I know that the projects are active
(e.g. Gecko) but the web content is pretty outdated and we should
decide, whether these projects should still be listed on the
projects page. It serves nobody, if people visit an outdated web
page from 2003, even if the code is still actively developed.
And here's the full list with my categorization. If this finds your
approval, I would volunteer to reorganize and streamline the projects
page.
If you have comments, please reply to this thread.
Active projects with a high visibility:
=======================================
- Bugzilla
- Calendar (Sunbird & Lightning)
- Camino
- Chatzilla (Chat & Instant Messaging)
- Minimo
- Seamonkey
Active Projects wit a lower visibility:
=======================================
- Accessibility
- CCK
- Directory (LDAP)
- DOM Inspector
- Grendel
- Help Viewer
- JavaScript
- Localization (L10N)
- Marketing Project
- Mozilla Documentation Project
- Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR)
- Network Security Services (NSS)
- Network Security Services for Java (JSS)
- Penelope
- Plug-ins
- Ports
- Rhino
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
- Tamarin
- Venkman (JS Debugging)
- XForms
Projects which have been abandoned (or completed):
==================================================
- BiDi
- ColorSync
- Editor
There is a Composer project headed by glazman, but that is
developed outside of mozilla.org)
- Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P)
- Search
- SilentDownload
- Unix
- User Interface
- XPNet
- Xprint
Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com:
================================================================
- Mozilla Firefox
- Mozilla Thunderbird
Entries that should be deleted because of other reasons:
========================================================
- Browser Distributions
- Other
Projects where I'm unsure of their current status:
==================================================
Many of these projects might be still active but in many cases
the web content on the project pages is heavily outdated
- Blackwood
- Bonsai
- Component Security
- Embedding
- Footprint
- Internationalization (I18N)
- Mail/News
- MathML
- Mozbot
- Netlib (Necko)
- New Layout (Gecko)
- Open JVM Integration
- Performance
- Personal Security Manager (PSM)
- PKCS #11 Conformance Testing
- PyXPCOM
- RDF
- SQL Support
- Technology Evangelism
- Tinderbox
- Web Services
- XBL
- XML Extras
- XML-RPC
- XPCOM
- XPConnect
- XPInstall
- XPToolkit (XPFE)
- XSL Transformations (XSLT)
- XUL
--
Simon Paquet
Sunbird/Lightning website maintainer
Project website: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar
Developer blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar
David E. Ross
> Hi everyone,
>
> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
> some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
> homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
>
> Therefore I would like to propose that we reorganize and streamline
> this page by improving the visibility of the major mozilla.org
> projects (e.g. Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird), removing abandoned projects
> or completed projects from the page (and their accompanying content)
> and hopefully also improving the current page layout.
>
> I took the liberty to classify the current entries on
> www.mozilla.org/projects into different categories. The different
> categories are:
[snip]
> - Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com
> This entry comprises the content that can currently be found on
> the project pages for Firefox and Thunderbird. These entries
> should be removed from the website, because these are not
> mozilla.org projects.
[snip]
> Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com:
> ================================================================
>
> - Mozilla Firefox
> - Mozilla Thunderbird
>
[snip, snip, snip]
I think there should be links to Firefox and Thunderbird with brief
descriptions. The home page <http://www.mozilla.org/> has a single link
to <http://www.mozilla.com/> for both. What I would propose is separate
links to <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/> and
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/>.
Actually, I wanted to provide links to general information pages that
were not specific to US English but were specific to each product.
However, I could not find any.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>
Asa Dotzler
> - Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com
> This entry comprises the content that can currently be found on
> the project pages for Firefox and Thunderbird. These entries
> should be removed from the website, because these are not
> mozilla.org projects.
I honestly have no idea what you mean when you say that Firefox and
Thunderbird are not mozilla.org projects. Care to elaborate?
- A
Nelson B
> Projects where I'm unsure of their current status:
> ==================================================
> Many of these projects might be still active but in many cases
> the web content on the project pages is heavily outdated
> - Bonsai
> - Tinderbox
I don't know about their project pages, but these are technologies
developed and maintained actively at mozilla, upon which mozilla's
development process absolutely depends! (But you knew that, right?)
> - Personal Security Manager (PSM)
This is a "core" component, used in FF, TB, SM, etc. Actively developed.
> - PKCS #11 Conformance Testing
The tools for this project got rolled into NSS. This project doesn't
exist independently of NSS any more. Should be put under NSS somewhere.
--
Nelson B
Simon Paquet
Well, from my point of view both FF and TB have gone beyond project
status for quite some time as they are official *products* of the
Mozilla Corporation.
That is quite a difference to *projects* like Seamonkey or Sunbird.
Simon Paquet
>> Projects where I'm unsure of their current status:
>> ==================================================
>> Many of these projects might be still active but in many cases
>> the web content on the project pages is heavily outdated
>
>> - Bonsai
>> - Tinderbox
>
> I don't know about their project pages, but these are technologies
> developed and maintained actively at mozilla, upon which mozilla's
> development process absolutely depends! (But you knew that, right?)
Yes, I knew that. But as I said, the project pages are heavily
outdated, which begs the question whether we should still point
people to those pages or to other locations.
>> - Personal Security Manager (PSM)
>
> This is a "core" component, used in FF, TB, SM, etc. Actively
> developed.
>
>> - PKCS #11 Conformance Testing
>
> The tools for this project got rolled into NSS. This project
> doesn't exist independently of NSS any more. Should be put
> under NSS somewhere.
Thanks for the information.
Asa Dotzler
> Asa Dotzler wrote on 11. Mar 2007:
>
>>> - Entries that should be deleted, because they are on mozilla.com
>>> This entry comprises the content that can currently be found on
>>> the project pages for Firefox and Thunderbird. These entries
>>> should be removed from the website, because these are not
>>> mozilla.org projects.
>>
>> I honestly have no idea what you mean when you say that Firefox and
>> Thunderbird are not mozilla.org projects. Care to elaborate?
>
> Well, from my point of view both FF and TB have gone beyond project
> status for quite some time as they are official *products* of the
> Mozilla Corporation.
>
> That is quite a difference to *projects* like Seamonkey or Sunbird.
>
I don't think that's quite right. There still exists a Firefox project
-- all the people, all over the world, contributing to the development,
testing, documenting, deployment, marketing, etc., of Firefox. Unless
all of that disappears when additional product resources are added, I
think it's wrong to suggest there is no longer a project.
- A
Simon Paquet
>> Well, from my point of view both FF and TB have gone beyond project
>> status for quite some time as they are official *products* of the
>> Mozilla Corporation.
>>
>> That is quite a difference to *projects* like Seamonkey or Sunbird.
>
>I don't think that's quite right. There still exists a Firefox project
>-- all the people, all over the world, contributing to the development,
>testing, documenting, deployment, marketing, etc., of Firefox. Unless
>all of that disappears when additional product resources are added, I
>think it's wrong to suggest there is no longer a project.
We can of course discuss semantics.
Firefox and Thunderbird have gone way beyond where the mozilla.org
projects, that I listed in my original post, are right now.
They've become *products*. That does not mean that there's no community
around them anymore. There is a huge community around both of these
products.
But you still can't compare them against projects like Camino, Seamonkey
or Sunbird, who do not have full-time development, marketing or product
management staff, tier-1 or tier-2 build machines and lots of other stuff
paid by MoCo. These projects are different, not better or worse, just
different.
And IMO this should be reflected by the content on
www.mozilla.org/projects
YMMV
Simon
--
Sunbird/Lightning Website Maintainer:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar
Sunbird/Lightning blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar
Robert Kaiser
> Well, from my point of view both FF and TB have gone beyond project
> status for quite some time as they are official *products* of the
> Mozilla Corporation.
>
> That is quite a difference to *projects* like Seamonkey or Sunbird.
The completely bogus "project" vs. "product" distinction has gone away
with the Foundation/Corporation split as it had only been there to point
out software that was officially supported by the back-then-all-in-one
Mozilla (Foundation) entity vs. other project under the hood of
mozilla.org - it was a try to tell what the "official" side of Mozilla
has "produced" vs. other (volunteer) projects.
Now the distinction is much better and clearer in that Firefox and
Thunderbird are Mozilla _Corporation_ products while other software may
be products of some different entities/projects within the
Mozilla-Foundation-backed community.
Even the MoCo products have or are results of mozilla.org projects, and
that's a good idea, as development happens there, while the user support
etc. happens via the mozilla.com site.
I actually tend to think that the http://www.mozilla.org/products/ in
its current stage makes a really good page to be linked prominently
(which it is all over the place with the tab-like link at the top).
I just realized thought hat the "Which software is right for me?" linked
there could probably be improved by giving descriptions for all software
listed directly on the products/ page.
Even the current sectioning of projects/ is probably OK, though
emphasizing the section titles and linking them from the top might be good.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
> some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
> homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
It's linked from the "All projects" link in the "Other Mozilla Software"
section, so it should list _all projects_ just as the link tells.
I don't think projects should be rated by "visibility" or something like
that on that page, the more prominently linked products/ page already
does a great job of pointing to the major projects, with even more
emphasis on the MoCo apps.
> I took the liberty to classify the current entries on
> www.mozilla.org/projects into different categories.
I think the current categories are a better base than your list.
Those are:
- Browser Components
- Browser Infrastructure
- Internationalization And Localization
- Security Projects
- Other Browser Projects
- Non-Browser Projects
- Browser Distributions
- Other
The category names and some groupings might be non-optimal, but I think
that's the kind of logic this page needs. "Visibility" is nothing that
helps a visitor, it's something we impose on them. It can lead to
ordering the projects within the categories, but the categorization has
to happen on a basis of "what this project is about", IMHO.
Given that mozilla.org is not a suite-based community any more, and we
used "browser" for the suite actually back then in many cases, we should
of course make the page fit today's reality a bit more.
I propose something along the lines of:
- XUL Applications (Software Based on Mozilla's Platform / Gecko)
Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, Calendar, Minimo, ...
- Mozilla Platform Infrastructure
Gecko, Necko, XPCOM, XUL, JS, XBL, XSLT, Tamarin, ...
- Improving Mozilla Applications (this name sucks - proposals?)
Footprint, i18n, L10n, Accessibility, Perf, Ports, ...
- Security Projects
PKI, NSS, PSM, ...
- Software NOT Based on the Mozilla Platform
Bugzilla, Bonsai, Tinderbox, Mozbot, ...
- 3rd-Party Software Built on Mozilla Technology
link to http://www.mozilla.org/university/HOF.html
- Mozilla-Related 3rd-Party Projects
link to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/other-projects.html
The headers of those categories should be more emphasized than the
current headers (probably just using <h2> would solve that), and all
category headers should be linked in a TOC-style at the beginning of the
page, so that people find their wanted category easily.
> - Entries that should be deleted
I don't think any entires can just be deleted from this list, as it
would leave us with pages not linked any more from anywhere, esp. not
hierarchically, which is a quite bad idea. Either we leave the pages in
that project directory for historical purposes, which means the
projects/ page needs to link them somehow, or we delete even the
project's pages themselves. I don't see any other solution that really
makes sense.
Robert Kaiser
Chris Ilias
> Firefox and Thunderbird have gone way beyond where the mozilla.org
> projects, that I listed in my original post, are right now.
>
> They've become *products*. That does not mean that there's no community
> around them anymore. There is a huge community around both of these
> products.
>
> But you still can't compare them against projects like Camino, Seamonkey
> or Sunbird, who do not have full-time development, marketing or product
> management staff, tier-1 or tier-2 build machines and lots of other stuff
> paid by MoCo. These projects are different, not better or worse, just
> different.
>
> And IMO this should be reflected by the content on
> www.mozilla.org/projects
I disagree. Are SeaMonkey, Camino, Bugzilla, Sunbird, Lightning, and
Minimo not products? Firefox and Thunderbird are different, in that they
are backed by MoCo. They are still mozilla.org projects. Nightlies are
uploaded to ftp.m.o. Bugs are tracked at bugzilla.m.o. Code changes are
tracked at bonsai.m.o. Their project sites are at
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/> and
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/>. They are definitely
mozilla.org projects, and thus should definitely be listed on
www.mozilla.org/projects/. IMO. :-)
--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
List-owner: support-firefox, support-thunderbird
mozilla.test.multimedia moderator
(Please do not email me tech support questions)
Gervase Markham
> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
> some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
> homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
Could you explain what you see as the problems, before proposing solutions?
> Therefore I would like to propose that we reorganize and streamline
> this page by improving the visibility of the major mozilla.org
> projects (e.g. Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird), removing abandoned projects
> or completed projects from the page (and their accompanying content)
> and hopefully also improving the current page layout.
Asa is right here - Firefox and Thunderbird are absolutely still Mozilla
project projects. They are additionally Corporation products, but they
don't stop being projects.
I think that we should consider whether the page should only list actual
software deliverables; "User Interface" is not a project in the sense we
use the word now. Perhaps we do need a way of listing groups of people
with a particular interest, like "Accessibility"; but I'm not sure if
it's here.
> - Grendel
Is Grendel really still active?
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> I propose something along the lines of:
> - XUL Applications (Software Based on Mozilla's Platform / Gecko)
> Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, Calendar, Minimo, ...
Er... one of the major points of Camino is that it's *not* a XUL
application :-)
> - Software NOT Based on the Mozilla Platform
> Bugzilla, Bonsai, Tinderbox, Mozbot, ...
That seems an unnecessarily negative category. "Webtools" is normally
what's used; Mozbot of course is the odd one out.
> I don't think any entires can just be deleted from this list, as it
> would leave us with pages not linked any more from anywhere, esp. not
> hierarchically, which is a quite bad idea.
Not necessarily. A lot of documentation has moved to devmo; it may be
that some of these project areas are now entirely defunct.
Gerv
Simon Paquet
>> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for
>> quite some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the
>> mozilla.org homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
>
> It's linked from the "All projects" link in the "Other Mozilla
> Software" section, so it should list _all projects_ just as the
> link tells.
1. It's also linked from "Other Mozilla Software" header.
2. It should list all *active* projects, that's the main difference
that I see.
> I don't think projects should be rated by "visibility" or something
> like that on that page, the more prominently linked products/ page
> already does a great job of pointing to the major projects, with
> even more emphasis on the MoCo apps.
I disagree. Most people coming to that page will still want to find
information about the Top 3-6 projects (Bugzilla, Camino, Chatzilla,
Minimo, Seamonkey, Sunbird/Lightning) and IMO the page should
reflect that.
>> I took the liberty to classify the current entries on
>> www.mozilla.org/projects into different categories.
>
> I think the current categories are a better base than your list.
You totally misunderstood my intention for this classification. My
classification is mainly a cleanup classification, e.g. which
projects are still active (and should stay on the page) and which
projects have been abandoned (and should therefore be removed).
Your classification is a secondary matter, to be done after we know
what we want to keep and what should go.
>> - Entries that should be deleted
>
> I don't think any entires can just be deleted from this list, as
> it would leave us with pages not linked any more from anywhere,
> esp. not hierarchically, which is a quite bad idea. Either we
> leave the pages in that project directory for historical purposes,
> which means the projects/ page needs to link them somehow, or we
> delete even the project's pages themselves.
The latter is exactly my proposal. Outdated content serves nobody
and the role of www.mozilla.org is not a historical one. That's what
CVS is there for.
Simon Paquet
>> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for
>> quite some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the
>> mozilla.org homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
>
> Could you explain what you see as the problems, before proposing
> solutions?
I thought that was obvious from my proposal, but of course I can
clarify my intentions. The page currently suffers (IMO) from the
following issues:
- It does not reflect the current state of mozilla.org projects
(e.g. outdated/abandoned projects are still listed, a popular
project like Camino is not listed at all)
- It does not reflect the popularity of the projects and therefore
does not list those projects first, that people most often are
interested in.
Therefore I propose to clean up/streamline the current page and
make it more accessible for people looking for the top 5-6 projects.
>> Therefore I would like to propose that we reorganize and streamline
>> this page by improving the visibility of the major mozilla.org
>> projects (e.g. Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird), removing abandoned projects
>> or completed projects from the page (and their accompanying content)
>> and hopefully also improving the current page layout.
> Asa is right here - Firefox and Thunderbird are absolutely still
> Mozilla project projects. They are additionally Corporation
> products, but they don't stop being projects.
That seems to be the consensus here, therefore I will adapt my
proposal.
> I think that we should consider whether the page should only list
> actual software deliverables;
I wouldn't necessarily limit the page contents.
> "User Interface" is not a project in the sense we use the word now.
The "User Interface" project listed on the page is one of the outdated
projects still dating back to the Netscape era. Therefore I don't
consider it a good example.
>> - Grendel
>
> Is Grendel really still active?
The webpage has last been updated in November 2005, but the code is
still (somewhat) actively maintained (last checkin was in January 2007).
Robert Kaiser
> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> I propose something along the lines of:
>> - XUL Applications (Software Based on Mozilla's Platform / Gecko)
>> Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, Calendar, Minimo, ...
>
> Er... one of the major points of Camino is that it's *not* a XUL
> application :-)
Sure, but it still builds upon the Mozilla Platform and uses Gecko.
The category names could surely be improved, I tried to emphasize on the
kind of categorization.
>> - Software NOT Based on the Mozilla Platform
>> Bugzilla, Bonsai, Tinderbox, Mozbot, ...
>
> That seems an unnecessarily negative category. "Webtools" is normally
> what's used; Mozbot of course is the odd one out.
As I said above, the names can surely be improved. I think it's a good
idea to have a common category for software (mostly tools, of course)
that we produce but that doesn't build on the Mozilla platform. Whatever
we officially name it - suggestions are welcome ;-)
>> I don't think any entires can just be deleted from this list, as it
>> would leave us with pages not linked any more from anywhere, esp. not
>> hierarchically, which is a quite bad idea.
>
> Not necessarily. A lot of documentation has moved to devmo; it may be
> that some of these project areas are now entirely defunct.
In those cases, we should probably delete their files from the projects/
hierarchy completely - and then it's also a good idea to remove them
from the projects list (or link the relevant starting points on devmo
instead.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
>> I don't think projects should be rated by "visibility" or something
>> like that on that page, the more prominently linked products/ page
>> already does a great job of pointing to the major projects, with even
>> more emphasis on the MoCo apps.
>
> I disagree. Most people coming to that page will still want to find
> information about the Top 3-6 projects (Bugzilla, Camino, Chatzilla,
> Minimo, Seamonkey, Sunbird/Lightning) and IMO the page should
> reflect that.
Here we really disagree. Everyone reaching this page has already seen
the overview of those projects anyways, very near to the link he
clicked, right on the front page.
Additionally, with my category proposal, most of them will be on top of
the list anyways, as they are built on the Mozilla Platform - Bugzilla
being the only exception.
I think this one should be found easily enough with the proposed TOC
links on the top (if we find a good category name there).
We obviously had a misunderstanding in that I thought your list was a
re-categorization.
Cleanup is surely good (and needed), but as I said, I don't think
cleaning anything from the list that leaves its project pages on the
server sounds like a bad idea.
All projects that are still relevant should be left IMHO. All projects
that are really obsolete should have their project pages removed as well
as the project list entries.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> Simon Paquet wrote:
>> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
>> some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
>> homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
>
> Could you explain what you see as the problems, before proposing solutions?
In my opinion, a major problem is that it's hard to find something (It
even was a bit challenging for me to find the category headers) on this
page.
So, for one thing, we should make it easier to navigate (more emphasized
category headers, linking those headers in a TOC on the top).
Also, the current categories are still centered on the suite-centric
mozilla.org organization of "the old days".
It makes sense to move this to being Mozilla-Platform-centric instead,
and re-group projects a bit this way, also adjusting category names to
reflect that reality.
And then, Simon is right in that there are indeed obsolete projects on
the page. We should try to clean up those where reasonably possible
(this means cleaning up the site, especially its projects/ directory,
not just this one page, though).
> I think that we should consider whether the page should only list actual
> software deliverables; "User Interface" is not a project in the sense we
> use the word now. Perhaps we do need a way of listing groups of people
> with a particular interest, like "Accessibility"; but I'm not sure if
> it's here.
I consider a "mozilla.org project" a group of people formed around some
specific task within the Mozilla community - which seems to fit the
definition the current project list implies. Not every project has to
produce its own application, but it usually has its own (sub)community.
I still consider i18n, L10n, accessibility or Necko to be their own
projects within mozilla.org even if they do not produce independent
software.
And therefore, those should be listed on this page.
The major software products of mozilla.org are listed on
mozilla.org/products - so I think the projects/ list should be the place
that lists all still relevant projects/subcommunities we have in the
Mozilla project/community.
Robert Kaiser
Gervase Markham
> I thought that was obvious from my proposal, but of course I can
> clarify my intentions. The page currently suffers (IMO) from the
> following issues:
>
> - It does not reflect the current state of mozilla.org projects
> (e.g. outdated/abandoned projects are still listed, a popular
> project like Camino is not listed at all)
What definition are you using for "project"? It seems to me that the
page currently doesn't have a good definition, so we should probably
establish one before moving on.
This might help to reveal why participants in this thread disagree - it
could be because people have different ideas about what is a "project".
> - It does not reflect the popularity of the projects and therefore
> does not list those projects first, that people most often are
> interested in.
We are assuming that the purpose of this page is to list projects by
popularity. That's possibly a reasonable purpose for it to have, but
it's worth stating it explicitly. Another possible purpose would be an
index - in which case, alphabetical order might be better.
The purpose of a page shouldn't be defined by where it's linked from
elsewhere in the site; if the links require different content, the
solution might sometimes be to create a new page with that content and
move the link.
>> I think that we should consider whether the page should only list
>> actual software deliverables;
>
> I wouldn't necessarily limit the page contents.
Well, that's back to the discussion of its purpose. What do you think
its purpose is?
>> "User Interface" is not a project in the sense we use the word now.
>
> The "User Interface" project listed on the page is one of the outdated
> projects still dating back to the Netscape era. Therefore I don't
> consider it a good example.
Then let's remove it.
>>> - Grendel
>>
>> Is Grendel really still active?
>
> The webpage has last been updated in November 2005, but the code is
> still (somewhat) actively maintained (last checkin was in January 2007).
Are you sure that wasn't just an automated checkin, such as a licence
change?
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> I consider a "mozilla.org project" a group of people formed around some
> specific task within the Mozilla community - which seems to fit the
> definition the current project list implies. Not every project has to
> produce its own application, but it usually has its own (sub)community.
> I still consider i18n, L10n, accessibility or Necko to be their own
> projects within mozilla.org even if they do not produce independent
> software.
I think that's a good definition. Although I think we would need to add
"and has some up-to-date information it wants to share". There is a User
Interface (or perhaps User Experience) community, but I don't think any
of the www.mozilla.org content is useful any longer. So it's arguable
about whether they need an entry right now.
> The major software products of mozilla.org are listed on
Indeed. Given that this page contains all the consumer-level software
projects (with a reasonable priority given to Firefox and Thunderbird) I
think it's the correct place for links about that sort of thing to go.
So the /projects page should be a comprehensive list, organised by
functional area.
> - so I think the projects/ list should be the place
> that lists all still relevant projects/subcommunities we have in the
> Mozilla project/community.
I agree.
Gerv
Simon Paquet
>> I thought that was obvious from my proposal, but of course I can
>> clarify my intentions. The page currently suffers (IMO) from the
>> following issues:
>>
>> - It does not reflect the current state of mozilla.org projects
>> (e.g. outdated/abandoned projects are still listed, a popular
>> project like Camino is not listed at all)
>
> What definition are you using for "project"? It seems to me that the
> page currently doesn't have a good definition, so we should probably
> establish one before moving on.
The definition that Robert came up with and that you extended slightly
makes sense to me. Why don't we keep it.
>> - It does not reflect the popularity of the projects and therefore
>> does not list those projects first, that people most often are
>> interested in.
>
> We are assuming that the purpose of this page is to list projects by
> popularity. That's possibly a reasonable purpose for it to have, but
> it's worth stating it explicitly. Another possible purpose would be
> an index - in which case, alphabetical order might be better.
Right. I would favour the popularity approach, but let's hear what
others have to say here in the thread.
>>> I think that we should consider whether the page should only list
>>> actual software deliverables;
>>
>> I wouldn't necessarily limit the page contents.
>
> Well, that's back to the discussion of its purpose. What do you
> think its purpose is?
As said above. That would include *active* projects that aren't
software deliverables.
>>> "User Interface" is not a project in the sense we use the word
>>> now.
>>
>> The "User Interface" project listed on the page is one of the
>> outdated projects still dating back to the Netscape era. Therefore
>> I don't consider it a good example.
>
> Then let's remove it.
Take a look at the original proposal. The "User Interface" project
was on the list of the projects, that should be removed.
>>>> - Grendel
>>>
>>> Is Grendel really still active?
>>
>> The webpage has last been updated in November 2005, but the code
>> is still (somewhat) actively maintained (last checkin was in
>> January 2007).
>
> Are you sure that wasn't just an automated checkin, such as a licence
> change?
Looking at
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=all&dir=mozilla%2Fgrendel&sortby=Date&date=explicit&mindate=2006-09-30+00%3A00%3A01&maxdate=2007-03-12+23%3A59%3A59
the changes were only corrections of code misspellings.
But at least that's something.
Asa Dotzler
> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> I consider a "mozilla.org project" a group of people formed around
>> some specific task within the Mozilla community - which seems to fit
>> the definition the current project list implies. Not every project has
>> to produce its own application, but it usually has its own
>> (sub)community. I still consider i18n, L10n, accessibility or Necko to
>> be their own projects within mozilla.org even if they do not produce
>> independent software.
>
> I think that's a good definition. Although I think we would need to add
> "and has some up-to-date information it wants to share". There is a User
> Interface (or perhaps User Experience) community, but I don't think any
> of the www.mozilla.org content is useful any longer. So it's arguable
> about whether they need an entry right now.
If they have content at some other location, like the wiki, shouldn't
our comprehensive list of projects link to that?
- A
Gervase Markham
> If they have content at some other location, like the wiki, shouldn't
> our comprehensive list of projects link to that?
Sure :-)
Gerv
fantasai
>
> I think there should be links to Firefox and Thunderbird with brief
> descriptions. The home page <http://www.mozilla.org/> has a single link
> to <http://www.mozilla.com/> for both. What I would propose is separate
> links to <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/> and
> <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/>.
>
> Actually, I wanted to provide links to general information pages that
> were not specific to US English but were specific to each product.
> However, I could not find any.
Weird. They should make mozilla.com/firefox/ redirect to the appropriate
language, but even when I put French at the top of my language prefs, I
still get en-US.
~fantasai
fantasai
> Simon Paquet schrieb:
>> www.mozilla.org/projects is in a very bad state and has been for quite
>> some time. For a page, that is directly linked from the mozilla.org
>> homepage, that is totally unacceptable.
>
> that on that page, the more prominently linked products/ page already
> does a great job of pointing to the major projects, with even more
> emphasis on the MoCo apps.
> The category names and some groupings might be non-optimal, but I think
> that's the kind of logic this page needs. "Visibility" is nothing that
> helps a visitor, it's something we impose on them. It can lead to
> ordering the projects within the categories, but the categorization has
> to happen on a basis of "what this project is about", IMHO.
> I propose something along the lines of:
I'm with Robert Kaiser. I think it would be more important for us to have
a categorized project list here. This is the definitive list of mozilla.org
projects, and it should be logically, not politically, organized. If we want
more visibility for certain projects, we can link them from the front page--
and as Robert says, most of them will wind up at the top under Mozilla
Platform Applications category (or whatever we choose to call it) anyway.
~fantasai