348165 - default bookmarks for new profiles in Firefox2

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

The default bookmark sets for Firefox 1.0 and 1.5 were designed to serve a user population that was, at the time, skewed more towards power users. Now that we're serving millions of users, we should examine the default bookmarks for new profiles.

Our design ethic has always been minimalist, focusing on providing what the user needs to get underway and to their task of browsing. We also want to provide localization when possible, and a consistent user experience across all locales.

We should remove all our existing default bookmarks and ship with:

 - a "Firefox" folder with bookmarks for: getting help and support, getting add-ons, developer resources, finding out more about mozilla and firefox. These should all link to portal sites that serve these more general user goals.

 - a "Getting Started" bookmark in the bookmark toolbar folder

 - a live bookmark sample in the bookmark toolbar folder

We should remove the bookmarks to Firefox Central, Mozillazine, Firefox Start, Spread Firefox, the Mozilla Store and /contribute.html. These can instead be linked to from the new portal sites.

We should also remove the quicksearch bookmarks; they're invisible to new users, and easily added by existing users. Instead we should properly publicize how to create quicksearches, and push on adding quicksearch support through the search manager. The bookmarks as they exist are of low value for new users.

Comment 1

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Blocking against beta2 since this is an l10n requirement which shook out of the l10n strategy meetings in Toronto.

Comment 2

[Chris Beard]

These bookmarks will also be localized and point to web pages on mozilla.com per the l10n strategy and requirements.  We should work with the local developer and localization communities to source and finalize specific localized content (e.g. links to official l10n community home pages, local developer resources, community web sites, blogs, etc.) for these templates. 

Comment 3

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Well, since the patch is dead simple you must be waiting for the controversy to simmer down, so I guess as the volunteer who put in the link to /contribute.html, I'll do what I can to start it:

I'm not very happy with the idea of "no links to mozilla.org, MoCo will own and manage all content that users need to see," but I'm even less happy with the idea of tailoring links for users who are nothing but consumers of MoCo's product. They may well mostly be nothing but users, but that doesn't make it a good thing for us to treat them that way, and a link to a MoCo page that may or may not link to another page that may or may not link to information on contributing to the Mozilla Project is *not* enough. One measley link to a .org page, which makes it clear that it's a link that will tell someone how to stop being a user and start being a contributor, doesn't seem like too big a bone to throw to all the volunteer contributors who've made MoCo's product what it is.

Comment 4

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> /contribute.html, I'll do what I can to start it:

I await your harsh invective!

> I'm not very happy with the idea of "no links to mozilla.org, MoCo will own 
> and manage all content that users need to see," but I'm even less happy with 

Nobody said no links to mozilla.org. What we said was that we wanted to reduce the number of bookmarks that we ship with, and instead of barraging users with an array of potential sites to check out, send them to some portal sites that help them understand the differences between those sites and assist them in getting involved to their level of satisfaction.

> contributing to the Mozilla Project is *not* enough. One measley link to a 
> .org page, which makes it clear that it's a link that will tell someone how to 
> stop being a user and start being a contributor, doesn't seem like too big a 
> bone to throw to all the volunteer contributors who've made MoCo's product 
> what it is.

The .org pages aren't localized. Please don't confuse .com links with "opaque, evil, and not interested in building our community of contributors." :)

I think your point is a good one; we probably want to add a "Get Involved" link to the set listed in comment 0, and build a site which goes over how people can get involved and links to the related sites. 

Was that all the controversy? Got more?

Comment 5

[Chris Beard]

(In reply to comment #4)
> > I think your point is a good one; we probably want to add a "Get Involved" link
> to the set listed in comment 0, and build a site which goes over how people can
> get involved and links to the related sites. 

We can and should accomplish this as part of the set of default bookmarks as proposed in in comment 0.  That was the intent.  The motivation here is to present all of this existing content, and much more, in a way that is increasingly approachable and understandable to a much larger audience.  The goal is to deliver the best possible user experience in meeting the needs of our users (new and old) and the project at large. Remember, MoCo is not a distinct commercial organization pursuing corporate profits at the expense of the project. It is the product arm of the Mozilla Foundation and shares its public  benefit mission.

We also know that new users know little to nothing about Mozilla and how we develop our products.  With a simplified set of links to point to pages focused on specific use cases we can provide on ramps into a multitude of resources with enough context that those links become much more meaningful.  For example, the link to learning more about Mozilla and its products, would point to a page that would introduce Mozilla and our public-benefit mission, etc. with links and information on where to go to learn more, get involved, etc.

The standardization of all URLs to point to mozilla.com in the product is a technical point, allowing us to ensure that we can provide localized content and a coherent user experience with maximum flexibility in a highly-available way.  Also, the URLs in the product will resolve into much more human consumable formats, e.g. mozilla.org/en/about/, mozilla-europe.org/fr/about/, developer.mozilla.org/ja/, etc.   

Comment 6

[Chris Beard]

(In reply to comment #5)
> ....  Also, the URLs in the product will resolve into much more human
> consumable formats, e.g. mozilla.org/en/about/, mozilla-europe.org/fr/about/,
> developer.mozilla.org/ja/, etc.   

To clarify, this will be the case in some cases but not all. We still need to work out the specific mappings. There will be some evolution here as we're also working to simplify localization of web-based content.

Comment 7

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I'd appreciate some feedback on these proposed bookmark names and the URIs that I've concocted for them; I'm guessing which ones could benefit from knowing the product name and version number as opposed to being general URIs.

[] Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
    # Getting Started  (http://en-US.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/)
    # Latest Headlines (http://en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------)
[] Mozilla Firefox
    # Tips and Tricks    (http://en-US.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/help/)
    # Customize Firefox  (http://en-US.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/customize/)
    # Getting Involved   (http://en-US.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/community/)
    # About Mozilla      (http://en-US.mozilla.com/en-US/about/)


Notes:
- Getting Started should go to an app-version specific page like Firefox Start (see bug 345805)
- Latest Headlines URIs are still tbd per locale (see bug 348256)
- "Tips and Tricks" would be a new portal with links to message boards (ie: mozillazine) and articles that help users get the most out of their browser and the web
- "Customize Firefox" would either link directly to AMO or a portal site that talks about the different ways to customize the browser (with links to AMO)
- "Get Involved" would be a portal to SFX, MDC, wiki.mo, donations, etc
- "About Mozilla" would go to the existing about page

Comment 8

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> I'd appreciate some feedback on these proposed bookmark names and the URIs that
> I've concocted for them; I'm guessing which ones could benefit from knowing the
> product name and version number as opposed to being general URIs.

"http://en-US.www.mozilla.com" should probably be used for the URIs to match the new URI scheme (http(s)://%LOCALE%.%SERVICE%.mozilla.[com|org]/%LOCALE%/).

Comment 9

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Re #8, yes, website links should use 'www' as %SERVICE%.

Re #7, I'm not so fond of having version numbers in the link. The idea of having the version is attractive, but this will only give you the version with which the profile was created.
In addition, having the links being version specific, even if it's just branch versions, adds a whole new slew of potential bugs to updates.

We could use a special protocol for those links and a protocol handler that would resolve them similar to bug 347944, inserting the current locale and version. On the other hand, I'm not sure I really like having x-moz-replace:// or so links in bookmarks.html.

Comment 10

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Re #8, yes, website links should use 'www' as %SERVICE%.

K, so that's all of them except fxfeeds.

> Re #7, I'm not so fond of having version numbers in the link. The idea of
> having the version is attractive, but this will only give you the version with
> which the profile was created.

Hm. Good point. We'll have to deal with that using server-side detection on the portals, then.

Comment 11

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

The HREF for the feedurl is still missing, the Latest Headlines only specifies the FEEDURL. That currently goes to http://fxfeeds.mozilla.com/, redirecting to http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/livebookmarks. I don't see that exposed in the UI though for both 1.5 mac and 2.0 win, so maybe we should specify it to be not there.
On the other hand, I just added a livebookmark to my 2.0 profile, and fx adds the HREF for the site that it got the feed from.

Comment 12

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> - Getting Started should go to an app-version specific page like Firefox Start
> (see bug 345805)

Scratch the reference for bug 345805; on second thought, I think the Getting Started target should be a page for all versions of Firefox that leads users to the most common features; bug 345805 will be the page that's targeted by the startup.homepage_override_url preference.

(In reply to comment #11)
> The HREF for the feedurl is still missing, the Latest Headlines only specifies
> the FEEDURL. That currently goes to http://fxfeeds.mozilla.com/, redirecting to
> http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/livebookmarks. I don't see that exposed in the
> UI though for both 1.5 mac and 2.0 win, so maybe we should specify it to be not
> there.
> On the other hand, I just added a livebookmark to my 2.0 profile, and fx adds
> the HREF for the site that it got the feed from.

I'm not sure what the takeaway from this is, Axel. Are you saying that it should be en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com/en-US/headlines ?

Comment 13

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Revision of the proposal based on comments

[] Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
  # Getting Started  (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/)
  # Latest Headlines (http://en-US.fxfeeds.mozilla.com/en-US/)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[] Mozilla Firefox
  # Tips and Tricks    (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/help/)
  # Customize Firefox  (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/customize/)
  # Getting Involved   (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/community/)
  # About Mozilla      (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/)

Comment 14

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Couple more changes to the titles, adding the feed URI as per Axel's comments, changed the "About" section to be Firefox specific. Patch coming up.

[] Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
  # Getting Started  (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/)
  # Latest Headlines (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/livebookmarks/)
feed://en-US.fxeeds.mozilla.com/en-US)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[] Mozilla Firefox
  # Help and Tutorials (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/help/)
  # Customize Firefox  (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/customize/)
  # Get Involved       (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/community/)
  # About Us           (http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/about/)

Comment 15

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new default bookmark set

I hacked the favicons back in and everything. :)

Comment 16

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new new default bookmark set

Comment 17

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Comment on attachment 234164 [details]
new default bookmark set

We should remove all of the LAST_* and ADD_DATE bits that aren't necessary or appropriate, otherwise looks good.

Comment 18

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 234170 [details] [diff] [review]
new new default bookmark set

carrying over r=mconnor from previous file, this addresses his nits.

Drivers: this is a new default bookmark file that streamlines and localizes bookmarks for new profiles. Will file followup bugs to actually make these pages exist by the time b2 ships.

Comment 19

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new new new default bookmark set

and again, swear to god that textwrangler didn't save my changes last time ...

Comment 20

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

I'd prefer to have "About Mozilla" instead of "About us", or at least put in our docs that either is fine.
It's a pretty strong bonding between user and us, that doesn't transport well in all cultures; at least for Germany, it wouldn't.

Comment 21

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #20)
> I'd prefer to have "About Mozilla" instead of "About us", or at least put in
> our docs that either is fine.

Yeah, "About Us" is how we want to play it in en-US and probably en-GB, but you can feel free to make a note (whereever you do; should I do this in the file itself?) that localizers can feel free to de-personalize this as per cultural norms.

Comment 22

[Phil Schwan]

One more: some kind of "Bookmarks Add-ons" was requested by cbeard, per bug 343023 (which you can dupe against this, if you think it appropriate).

Comment 23

[Mike Schroepfer]

Comment on attachment 234172 [details]
new new new default bookmark set

a=schrep for drivers.

Comment 24

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #22)
> One more: some kind of "Bookmarks Add-ons" was requested by cbeard, per bug
> 343023 (which you can dupe against this, if you think it appropriate).

Cbeard and I talked about it yesterday, and we'll handle that in the portal page for "Customize Firefox". I'll mark the other bug.

Comment 25

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

*** Bug 343023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 26

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new new new new default bookmark set

I misintepreted Chris, and he actually thinks we *should* have top-level bookmark that masquerades as a menuItem.

I spoke with Shaver, and he was able to convince me (after some doing) that bookmark extensions were a very interesting vector that he was working on for the Firefox2 launch, and that there would be enough worthwhile extensions there to expose them seperately from the other customizations.

I either relented or saw the light. You decide.

Comment 27

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new default set in action

Comment 28

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: alternative: using a favicon for the Bookmark Add-ons... shortcut

In case you don't like the no-favicon version, there's this one, too, using a Tango Project graphic that's CC by-SA licensed (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

Comment 29

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: using the tango "plus"

Jay Goldman has said he'd do a different icon that matches our themes better, 'cause he's a prince like that.

Comment 30

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: new new new new default bookmark set w/favicon

Jay's icon is better.

Comment 31

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: preview of the new bookmark set

Comment 32

[Chris Beard]

Comment on attachment 234295 [details]
new new new new default bookmark set w/favicon

thanks beltzner, this looks great!

Comment 33

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 234295 [details]
new new new new default bookmark set w/favicon

Drivers:1 new uri and icon, requesting cross commit. Double check the format on the uris, plz? :)

Comment 34

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Just to mention that I was pretty confused by the screenshot.

It looks like I would bookmark Addons, i.e., add a bookmark to addons. I wouldn't expect to find addons to aid me with bookmarks.

Both title and icon make me think so.

Sorry.

Comment 35

[Jeff Walden [:Waldo]]

(In reply to comment #33)
> Double check the format on the uris, plz? :)

You're URL-encoding the bookmarks icon (i.e., using %nn codes), which wastes space; use base64 encoding to create the data URLs.

I think http://www.software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/data/data will work for generating base64 URLs here, but I haven't tested.  :-)

Comment 36

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

I would be very surprised when something trying to look like a menu item right down to the ellipsis opened a web page on top of my current page. That ellipsis is supposed to tell me that you'll be opening a dialog, not clobbering the filled-out form in my current tab.

Comment 37

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: final bookmark.html file for checkin on branch and trunk

This patch carries over r=cbeard and a=drivers, please checkin to branch and trunk. Note that these URLs won't exist until bug 348568 gets finished up.

Comment 38

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Attachment: screenshot of what will be created by the checkin

Comment 39

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

(In reply to comment #36)
> I would be very surprised when something trying to look like a menu item right
> down to the ellipsis opened a web page on top of my current page. That ellipsis
> is supposed to tell me that you'll be opening a dialog, not clobbering the
> filled-out form in my current tab.

Yeah, I'm surprised to see the ellipsis paired with a destructive navigation, too.  Should I file another bug on that, or is this the right place?

Comment 40

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

(In reply to comment #39)
> Should I file another bug on that, or is this the right place?

This already was the right place: as checked in it's "Get Bookmark Add-ons"

Comment 41

[davidtryse+bz]

Sorry for commenting on a closed bug but I just wanted to give a user case against removing all the Quick Search items. I know they can easily added by existing users but..
..I spent most of last year traveling. I installed firefox on probably 40-50 different machines in internet cafes in various countries (anytime it wasn't there already and the connection was good enough to download). Each time I'm on the net I typically search google several times, look up a couple things in Wikipedia and check one or two words in a dictionary (I'm not native english). Setting up these quick searches once for a new user is ok but if you have to do it over again every time you use a computer it would get annoying. I'm sure there are more user cases as well where it is beneficial if firefox comes powerful and usable already "out of the box".
If the problem is confusing new users then a better option might be to have a "what is this" bookmark at the top of the Quick Search folder that leads to a mozilla.org page which explains what they are/how to add new ones/what are the default ones (I doubt removing the default ones will make quicksearch more discoverable).
Thanks for your time and again, sorry for commenting on a closed bug.