Update:Remora Feedback

Alpha Feedback - http://preview.addons.mozilla.org

This page is for consolidation of the feedback on the new AMO Alpha. If you're more comfortable filing bugs, you're welcome to do that instead.

See also the announcement on the Mozilla webdev blog.

The feedback (bugs, suggestions) that we fixed/dealt with were moved to a reference page.

fligtar's comments

I like the overall look, but I have a few comments about certain aspects:

• The discussion header/footer is noticeably different.
• Discussions show a CakePHP favicon for me
• This may be a vanilla bug, not sure: "Comment by made 1 day ago days ago"
  • That was a l10n bug and is likely to be still present in different languages due to a l10n tag inconsistency in the vanilla code. I fixed it in English and German, though. --wenzel 18:44, 16 January 2007 (PST)

clouserw's comments

• Old URLs should redirect into the new format so we don't get 404s (bug 362526)
• Pages should validate
• Discussions can be started that aren't related to an addon (just click "discussions" in the header, then start a new topic)

wenzel's comments

• Search algorithm is improvable: The binary matching creates many hits with the same score in spite of their obviously different relevance.
• "find similar add-ons" sometimes shows different categories with the same name? (example)

dria's comments

• Seems to be a bug at [1] when not logged in. At very least there should be a significantly friendlier message suggesting the user log in :)

Dao's comments

• I don't see how the user is expected to find, say, Thunderbird extensions. AMO2 was too Firefox-centric, AMO3 seems even worse. http://www.erweiterungen.de/ does this better.
  • answer from cameleon: I fill the Bug 367574 – Ability to filter search of an Add-ons by application (Firefox or Thunderbird) on bugzilla about this problem.

DonGato's comments

• Doesn't discussion header looks bad? I think a right and left border is needed.

pascalc's comments

• on the right sidebar menu, the "Build your own" link should point to the localized version of the documentation (http://developer.mozilla.org/{locale}/docs/Extensions) if it exists
  • I agree. But I wonder how we can find out if it exists, before making the link. --wenzel 10:24, 16 January 2007 (PST)
  • The Extension part of the link is usually translated. So, there is no way how to do this automatically. I would go with 'http://developer.mozilla.org' . _('sidebar_navlink_build_your_own_href') The same issue is with Creating_OpenSearch_plugins_for_Firefox at search engines page. --Pawell 21 January 2007
• Website ignores Thunderbird, the front page should at least say "Add-ons extend Firefox and Thunderbird..." and not only Firefox
  • Thank you. Multi-app support is definitely planned however not yet supported in the alpha version. --wenzel 19:50, 18 January 2007 (PST)

RenegadeX's comments

It's hard to test the Preview site properly with the limited # of addons currently added, but I 2nd everything already said on this page. Have you guys learnt nothing over 3+ revisions of AMO? Users are tearing out their hair crying, "All I want to do is find a specific addon or browse the mass of addons quickly and easily" - and yet with each AMO revision, it continues to be a frustrating experience:

• On an Extension(or Theme)'s page, you have the Extension Name followed by Version# on the same line (good to see it back, thanks - v2 was not good). Further down the page you have Version# and timestamp, which is thus partially redundant & a waste of space. Suggestion: go back to something closer to v1's implementation (screenshot) which put it all at the top. Clean it up a little by putting the 'released on..' on its own line.
• Ditto the above - move it up, on the other listing pages (such as Recommended Add-ons).
• Why no Dictionaries link in the Menu? v2 never included it (to coincide with Firefox 2.0's introduction of the built-in spell-checker). Do that, and include a link to the Dictionaries extension Category on it, and vice-versa.

I could easily go on with my list but this is getting depressing. This thing was meant to be an improvement, was it not? Come on, this shouldn't be this difficult!' RenegadeX 04:26, 17 January 2007 (PST)

• Thank you for your extensive feedback. That helps us a lot to make Remora better. Regarding your "improvement" question: Keep in mind that the current public preview is still an "alpha" version. It is, almost by definition, incomplete, sometimes buggy, has rough edges and is far away from perfect -- or from its final state, for that matter. Therefore it is important that you tell us what you like, and what you don't, so you can influence how Remora will look and feel like when it's done. --wenzel 11:19, 17 January 2007 (PST)

Yoko's comments

• The plugins must be selected by UA of browser (linux's users not see the Windows plugins) as for the official Firefox web page.
• The thunderbird's and nvu's extensions are not very easy at find.
• I think that it's will good to multiply the section of extension. By exemple the developer tools's extensions can to be split in "PHP extension", "javascript extension", "webmaster extension", etc

Moe's comments (from blog)

• No separation between products. What if I’m only interested in Thunderbird?

Dolske's comments

Overall it's looking good! Here are my comments:

• Adblock got featured on the front page for one page load, but the preview image just says "1145".

• The little orange arrow in the green "install now" link looks too much like a UI element, implying a dropdown menu there.

• "Mozilla is providing links to these applications as a courtesy, and makes no representations regarding the applications or any information related there to." Given the legalese disclaimer, is "We Recommend" ok to say? The disclaimer in the footer also seems to be forced to 3 centered lines. Can this be flowed like normal text, non-centered, so it doesn't take up so much space?

• The Browse page linked from the right-hand navigation bar seems awkward. It only lists extensions and themes; no dictionaries, plugins, or search engines. But still, "Browse" seems a misfitting title for this page, since I'm not able to browse anything. Maybe "Other Addons" or "More Addons", since it's in proximity to "Recommended Addons"?

• Can "Recommended Addons" be things other than extensions? If so, things at this level should be identified as to why type of addon they are.

• The "Dictionaries" link on the right is a 404. Empty theme categories give just a plain "No addons in this category" page.

• The "Search Engines" page is inconsistent with the other top-level addon-type pages (should be a list of categories). Will Remora be incorporating the Mycroft content?

• Plugins... Oh boy. Entries should look like other addons (formatting, download button, etc.). Can we do OS detection here (like extensions?) and provide a single appropriate link? The links to plugindoc.mozdev.org should go elsewhere (wiki.m.o?). Mozdev isn't the right place for this kind of content. It might be worth considering giving each plugin its own page, and have the top-level plugins page list them (in a format similar to the categories on other top-level addon-type pages). Not to be a Suite hater, but the Mozilla Suite doesn't need to be mentioned here.

• s/Add a review/Add your review/? If there are no reviews, be a little more verbose, eg "No reviews for this addon -- add your review". (Doing this on a single line avoids a bunch of white space for unreviewed addons).

• Ditto the above for comments. The difference between comments and discussions isn't very clear. A better format might be (ignore Wiki's whitespace):

Discussions

This thing is awesome

(2 replies, last by SomeGuy on December 3rd)

This thing sucks

(no replies, posted by SomeGal on January 4th)

View all (14 topics)

Add a new topic <--- remove this link?

• If no discussions exist for an addon, don't show "See all discussions (0)". Just make it a single link (ala my previous reviews comment)

• When viewing discussions, there should be a note that you need to log in to add a new comment/topic.

• Add a pony.
  • I second that. --wenzel 14:22, 30 January 2007 (PST)

• Nice effect with the animation to show a review's content, but that makes it inconsistent with clicking on a discussion topic (which doesn't animate to show the topic's body, but takes you to a new page). The review text should just be shown by default (subject not linkified for animation), probably trimmed (with an appended "more" link that animates to show the rest?) so that long reviews don't take up more than a few lines by default.

Hmm, I guess that's enough comments for now! :-)

Pawell's l10n comments

• Links to MDC should point to corresponding localization (see Pascal's comment)
• The 'Home' link should point to {locale}.www.mozilla.com/{locale}/

• The construction of 'Browse all {addon-type}' can't be properly translated in languages with different genders and pronoun inflection

Example:

Browse all Extensions -> Procházet všechna rozšíření

Browse all Themes -> Procházet všechny motivy vzhledu

Moreover, we need to use the lowercase for the {addon-type} string in the middle of the sentence.

• The same holds for 'Popular {addon-type}'

Popular Extension -> Oblíbená rozšíření

Popular Themes -> Oblíbené motivy vzhledu

Thanks for your comments, Pawell.  These are very relevant, and unfortunately, the tools
we're using don't provide a way to handle declinations programmatically.  For
translating the examples you've provided, we're going to have to rely on 
localizers interpreting the context, and if necessary, leaving out the pronouns.
For example, instead of "Browse all Extensions" it would be translated as
"Browse Extensions".  We could add comments in the .po file to help recognize
the areas where this could come up.  Any thoughts on this? --clouserw

Juan's comments

• Show the extension image while browsing. The image conveys a lot of information. Having to click on the + sign to see it is not good enough. Use a thumbnail if the provided image is too big.
• It is nice to have the search box at the top. But it is hard to find. It looks part of the Mozilla site chrome. Give it a more prominent position.
• Too much white space.
• A *lot* depends on how "relevance" is determined when sorting the extensions.

[Jan 30 2007]

Archaeopteryx' comments

• Nickname is now surname, so you made me Mr Archaeopteryx
• Add possibility to undo expand information in list view ("No, this isn't something for me")
• Add a list of application categories (only add-ons for application A and so on) under the current navigation at the left (with icon would be good)
• Reduce the height of the header on the (trunk) home page - you have to scroll to see the recommended add-on name on a notebook
• Add expand/reduce function to developer page (user info)
• Wrong encoding of German special characters in [2]
• Link to top of discussions page reloads page because http instead of https used (example)
• Categories as RSS feed ... only a placeholder, I guess
  • yes. Most RSS feeds are implemented in trunk. --wenzel 17:43, 31 January 2007 (PST)
• Empty nickname field shouldn't be displayed (example)
• New discussion page: Drop down too small (because only one choice) and forum title string not yet translated
• If plugin list gets filtered by used OS, add the possibility to show all (for downloading possibility).
• "Adobe" vs. "Adobe Systems" on plugins page
• Maybe add the two (1, 2) extensions which are able to convert input fields to search engines to the search engines home page - it's faster than writing the search plugin on his own.
• too much waste of space in preview thumbnail page (example)
  • This example is extraordinary, because the pictures have a lot of white space around them. Other pages look much better. --wenzel 17:43, 31 January 2007 (PST)
• Disable Sancus WoW-account
  • This is part of the test data and not of production data, so: no. --wenzel 17:43, 31 January 2007 (PST)