1237757 - Firefox channel page is orphaned

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: Information Architecture & UX, defect)

Description

[Kohei Yoshino]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1189471 +++

The Firefox Channel page is also orphaned, so currently there's no easy way to get the Beta builds. People can still search this page though.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/

Another one is Firefox Releases, but AFAIK this page has been orphaned for a long time. I don't know how to get there.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/

Comment 1

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

This seems like a pretty bad content discovery issue - we should try and correct this.

Jen, Holly - thoughts?

Comment 2

[Kohei Yoshino]

A content discovery improvement is my personal Q1 goal, maybe. We need a clear sitemap (Bug 906879) and perhaps enhanced Tabzilla or something else. Mozilla has a bunch of great contents, but frankly speaking the site navigation is pretty poor at this time.

Comment 3

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

(In reply to Kohei Yoshino [:kohei] from comment #2)
> A content discovery improvement is my personal Q1 goal, maybe. We need a
> clear sitemap (Bug 906879) and perhaps enhanced Tabzilla or something else.
> Mozilla has a bunch of great contents, but frankly speaking the site
> navigation is pretty poor at this time.

This sounds great Kohei, I think a sitemap will be a good addition for mozorg and will help to aid overall discovery a great deal. In the case of the channel page I think we need somehwhere more prominent still however, as it's the only place people can download Firefox Beta. Could we add a place in the Firefox family navigation perhaps? As for the Firefox Releases page, this should probably go on the new release notes page somewhere?

I don't know about plans for tabzilla, but we're currently moving sites away from using it as a form of global navigation (content discovery via the tabzilla drop-down was also poor).

Comment 4

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Kohei Yoshino [:kohei] from comment #2)
> A content discovery improvement is my personal Q1 goal, maybe. We need a
> clear sitemap (Bug 906879) and perhaps enhanced Tabzilla or something else.
> Mozilla has a bunch of great contents, but frankly speaking the site
> navigation is pretty poor at this time.

Hi Kohei, here is a little more info on this for context. Last year we had a plan for refining the IA and designed a new global navigation for mozilla.org, but did not implement it. Implementation was dependent on the redesign work and now on hold due to brand strategy work that could potentially impact our plans for the global navigation. If the redesign continues to block solving IA issues on Mozilla.org I would like to find a way to remove it as a blocker and move forward since we know that usability and findability is not great right now. We have put in a lot of work to solve it and would like to implement that work. Jen can weigh in more on the plan for this. 

As for the channels page, this does need a redesign. If we do not have the bandwidth to do a complete redesign on soon, we could focus on making Beta download easier to find like Alex offered a solution for. I hesitate to put it in the Firefox Family global navigation and expose it so prominently to standard users, but we could put it in the tertiary navigation of each platform for now.(http://cl.ly/3W013q3W3p2B) I recognize this isn't very prominent placement, but hopefully we can focus on solving the issue by working on the channels page.

Comment 5

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

I understand a lot of talk & discussion has already gone into this. Personally, I don't think we should block this bug on any redesign work of mozorg navigation, or the channel page redesign. Enabling people to find & download Firefox Beta should be the top priority imho, regardless of how the page looks in the current form.

Comment 6

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Also, I second Holly's suggestion of adding Beta to the tertiary nav. I think this is much better than leaving the page orphaned any longer :)

Comment 7

[Holly Habstritt Gaal [:Habber]]

(In reply to Alex Gibson [:agibson] from comment #5)
> I understand a lot of talk & discussion has already gone into this.
> Personally, I don't think we should block this bug on any redesign work of
> mozorg navigation, or the channel page redesign. Enabling people to find &
> download Firefox Beta should be the top priority imho, regardless of how the
> page looks in the current form.

Agreed. This bug is kind of addressing a couple of things. Making Beta builds easier to find can be decoupled from the larger issue of Mozilla.org IA improvements.

Comment 8

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Ok, to move forward I'd like to propose we do the following:

1.) Add a "Channel" link to the tertiary menu in the Firefox family navigation
2.) Add a "Firefox Releases" link to the bottom "Other Resources" section of release notes page.

Jen, does this sound ok to you?

Comment 9

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

Note:  I'm checking from a strategy and retention POV if we want to prioritize Beta or Dev Edition.  Thx.

Comment 10

[Kohei Yoshino]

Thanks Holly for your explanation! I have already seen the redesign concepts and mock-ups and look forward to seeing that implemented. However, I'm personally afraid that removing Tabzilla (as well as the old Products page, Bug 1148127) was a rash move. We could rather continue using and improving it by, for example, automatically expanding it when hovered, until the site is fully redesigned. That would be better than nothing. Tabzilla is actually off-topic here but 30+ sites are still using it (see http://bit.ly/1ncs9E7) so we have to figure out what should we do anyway.

For the channel page, +1 to Alex's idea in Comment 8.

Comment 11

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

This is just my 2 pence, so feel free to take it or leave it :)

Personally I don't think adding a link to the /channel page in the tertiary menu would necessarily mean prioritizing Beta over Dev Edition, as they are both for very different audiences. Ensuring we have new Firefox Beta users is important in helping to improve the overall quality of Firefox (we measure crash stats in Beta before releasing Firefox updates, rely on bug reports to identify blockers etc), so having a good number of users there is (imho) equally as important as having developers use Dev Edition.

Comment 12

[Kohei Yoshino]

My proposal:

* Combine /firefox/channel/ with /firefox/products/
* Add Beta download button and DevEdition, ESR (and perhaps Nightly) links to /firefox/products/

Comment 13

[Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch]]

Let's call the link in the Firefox nav under the ... "Pre-release downloads".  Thanks Alex.

Comment 14

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

(In reply to Jennifer Bertsch [:jbertsch] from comment #13)
> Let's call the link in the Firefox nav under the ... "Pre-release
> downloads".  Thanks Alex.

Thanks

Comment 15

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Fixed in bug 1299947