416514 - do not serve favicon on getting started page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

[Note, cross posting to Firefox::Theme and Websites::www.mozilla.com since the icons need to both ship with Firefox and be served up by our web servers]

The favicon for all localizations of the Getting Started page (http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/) should be a help icon, instead of a red dinosaur head.  Many users will not know that this is our logo, or even that Firefox is made by Mozilla, so the current icon is at best confusing, an at worst slightly derogatory to novice users who could potentially view at as an analogy to their ability to adapt to new technologies.

Ideally we would also be able to use a different style of icon on each platform.  I can provide new favicons for XP, Vista, Linux and OS X.

There are currently 6 favicons cached in Firefox, here is what I think we should use:

-Getting Started = help icon
-Get Bookmark Add-ons = extension icon
-Help and Tutorials = help icon
-Customize Firefox = extension icon
-Get Involved = mozilla logo (same)
-About Us = mozilla logo (same)


Talking to reed, philor and fligtar on irc, they indicated that we need to:

1) update the cached favicons in bookmarks.html, which also needs to be latel10n since this file is localized
http://mxr.mozilla.org/firefox/source/browser/locales/en-US/profile/bookmarks.html?raw=1

This will involve preprocessing the file to get the correct icons on each platform.

2) find a way to serve the correct icon to each platform after the user clicks on the bookmark and the favicon gets updated.  This could be achieved by:
       a) use javascript to check the OS and set the correct favicon
       b) setup netscaler cache rules to return a certain image based on the user agent

This bug covers part 2

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Note that part 1 is covered in bug Bug 416515

Also, Reed suggested this javascript library for manipulating favicons: http://ajaxian.com/archives/favicon-access-via-javascript

Comment 2

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> [Note, cross posting to Firefox::Theme and Websites::www.mozilla.com since the
> icons need to both ship with Firefox and be served up by our web servers]
> 
> The favicon for all localizations of the Getting Started page
> (http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/) should be a help icon,
> instead of a red dinosaur head.  Many users will not know that this is our
> logo, or even that Firefox is made by Mozilla, so the current icon is at best
> confusing, an at worst slightly derogatory to novice users who could
> potentially view at as an analogy to their ability to adapt to new
> technologies.

I mentioned it briefly on IRC, but just to put it in the bug:  Our company logo is derogatory?  I think that's a huge stretch and not a very compelling argument here.

> Ideally we would also be able to use a different style of icon on each
> platform.  I can provide new favicons for XP, Vista, Linux and OS X.

I'm not sure how different you are thinking of making the icons, but this just feels like it will be confusing.  When I'm scanning a list of bookmarks on my laptop I'm not expecting a site to have a different favicon than when I'm looking for it on my desktop.

> There are currently 6 favicons cached in Firefox, here is what I think we
> should use:
> 
> -Getting Started = help icon
> -Get Bookmark Add-ons = extension icon
> -Help and Tutorials = help icon
> -Customize Firefox = extension icon
> -Get Involved = mozilla logo (same)
> -About Us = mozilla logo (same)

Generally favicons have been used to represent an entire site.  People use it as a source of identity for the site - when they see the icon they know they are at the right place.

Having many favicons on a single site (not to mention per OS) will be inconsistent and, I think, unclear.

Comment 3

[Paul Kim]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Generally favicons have been used to represent an entire site.  People use it
> as a source of identity for the site - when they see the icon they know they
> are at the right place.
> 
> Having many favicons on a single site (not to mention per OS) will be
> inconsistent and, I think, unclear.

i think what alex is on about here is that the in-product pages he's referencing (getting started, get bookmarks, help and customize) serve a hybrid role -- they're certainly served up from mozilla.com but their purpose is intimately tied to the product.

wil's right that swapping in favicons willy nilly makes no sense for _most_ of a site like mozilla.com; however in this case i think it does make sense to do page specific favicons for these specific pages only as they have a product-level purpose that would benefit from better visual cues. feels to me like this is the right call for end users of firefox.

other thoughts, comments?

Comment 4

[John Slater]

One other quick thought on this to provide some additional context: Paul, Beltzner and I have done an audit of the in-product pages being created for FF3 and have actually cut several of the FF2 ones out of the mix entirely. Hopefully that simplifies things a bit for everyone...it would certainly reduce the amount of special favicons that would need to be created if we go that route.

Here's the list of what's in and what's out:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_3/In-Product_Pages

Comment 5

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>Our company logo is derogatory?  I think that's a huge stretch

I really didn't mean to start anything similar to what happened over the about:config bug, and my primary point is that the icon simply makes no sense.  The secondary point, that the user could infer that we are calling them a technology dinosaur because they are so dumb they don't know how to use a Web browser, is only a worst case scenario.  I wouldn't call it a huge stretch, but it is a stretch.  Anyway, I know people really hate "the user is going to feel sad" arguments.

However, the point that a dinosaur is an illogical metaphor for help is not really much of a stretch.  So from a purely interaction perspective, I still think this is important to fix.

Comment 6

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Note: quick version of fixing this bug spun off to bug 426976 

Comment 7

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

The solution to bug 426976 is to just not show a favicon at all.

Comment 8

[John Drinkwater (:beta)]

Isn’t this something where the moz-icon://stock/ protocol would be perfect to solve the platform-specific icon issue?

Excuse me if I missed the actual problem though…

Comment 9

[Laura Forrest]

Doing a bit of bug housekeeping here and came across this. 

Closing for now since this hasn't been updated in 3 years. If you think this is still important to fix, and applies to the current mozilla.com, please re-open. Thanks!