Mozillaca/hansschmucker/Firefox4Mom
This is basically a collection of notes on how a Firefox magazine should look if I wanted to sell it to my mother, or possibly my grandmother:
- Don't get political, just show the benefits
- Don't assume anything other that the person can turn on a computer
- Don't follow the usual "if you're familiar with a, go to b" tutorial pattern, instead write complete articles
- Pick up buzz from legacy media
Example Article
(This is just a short testing article to get a feel for the style needed. Keep in mind I'm not a native speaker)
Going "online"
Today more and more is happening on the Internet, or as more and more people call it just the 'net. Not all of it is good: the nature of the net mirrors society. There are crooks and criminals just like you'll find in the streets. But there are also plenty of people like you and companies who know that a happy customer is the best kind. Maybe some of your friends are already online?
The net basically consists of two parts: The first part are the documents. There's a reason they call them webpages. The wonderful thing about the net is that anybody can put such pages on the net and everybody anywhere will be able to get to them. It's so simple, but it has allowed the net to become the biggest collection of documents in a very short time. Finding anything can be a bit tricky but the tools for that keep improving and are way beyond what any encyclopedia index can offer you.
The second part are the services: Services are really really webpages, with one tiny difference: You can use them to ask the person who is providing the service questions, or ask them to do something for you. Google is the most famous of these service providers, but there are millions of others. Ask Google for "coffee in san francisco" and it will tell you webpages that know the answer (or answer the question by itself if it can). Or ask your bank to send money to your favorite charity and they'll do so.
Most communication is also done using such services. You've probably heard people talking about sending e-mails. But what they're actually doing is asking some service provider to send an e-mail on their behalf. Basically anything you do on the net you don't do yourself, instead you ask somebody else to do it.
Staying secure in this world isn't in this world, but it's doable if you follow similar rules like in your everyday life. A lot of the talk you hear about people being defrauded actually has little to do with the technology, but more with people not using their common sense. You wouldn't just hand your wallet to anybody who asks for it, even if he was telling you that he's working for your bank, would you? Surprisingly, this is more or less exactly what most people who fall victim to cyber-criminals do.
- Stay out of dark alleys:
When you look down an alley you immediately decide if this is a neighborhood where you want to stay. The same is true for the net, and although you can't tell by how well the houses look, you'll often notice something odd: Ads for questionable products are a good indicator, deals that seem to good to be true another.
