Contribute/Canned responses

To help answer any questions that come in through the contact form on the Get Involved page or through volunteer matching sites, we have a number of canned responses for different contribution areas.

Accessibility

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. To learn more about our accessibility efforts, please take a look at the Mozilla Accessibility Wiki at:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility

If you have any questions about this or if this is not your interest, let me know.

Accessibility (long version)

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. To learn more about our accessibility efforts, please take a look at the Mozilla Accessibility Wiki at:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.

Since accessibility issues can be very broad in scope, I suggest you be very specific regarding the area(s) of accessibility you are interested in pursuing.

If you have any questions about this or if this is not your interest, let me know.

or

I am sorry to hear you're having problems accessing the internet in some fashion. Please tell us about your problem in detail by posting to our support site http://support.mozilla.com/kb/ask, we'll see what we can do to help.

Add-ons

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. For more information about add-ons, I'd recommend taking a look at the Add-on Developer Hub. This site has documentation, tools and ways to get in touch with other people interested in add-on development.

https://addons.mozilla.org/developers/

There's a also the Add-ons Forum, where you can post questions and talk with other add-ons developers.

https://forums.addons.mozilla.org/

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

Auto-responses

Text for the auto-responses can be found at

• https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/tree/master/apps/mozorg/templates/mozorg/emails

How does the auto-response work?

• Someone fills out the form.

• If they choose an area of interest that has an auto-response, that message is sent out immediately.

• The original inquiry from the form is still delivered so a point person can review and reply manually if there is a need to address a specific question.

• The auto-response has a reply-to address set for the point person for that area of interest, so you will get an email if someone replies to the auto-response.

Tracking which areas have auto-responses and which areas don't want them.

• Support (yes)
• L10n (no)
• QA (yes)
• Coding (no)
• Add-ons (yes)
• Marketing ?
• Student reps (yes)
• Documentation (yes)
• IT (no)
• Automation (no)
• Research ?
• Thunderbird (no)
• Accessibility (no)
• Firefox Suggestions (yes)
• Other (yes)

Blogging

Hi!

Thanks for your interest in helping Mozilla by blogging.

A great way to get started is to write a post on your blog about what Mozilla or Firefox means to you. Please email me a link when you have posted it. I'm also interested in what your experience is with blogging, what topics you'd like to write about, and anything else you think is relevant. Please include that in your email.

If you use Twitter, you can tweet a link to your post with the hashtag #webstory, to get more people to see it.

Here are some resources about Mozilla to help you with blogging about Mozilla:

• Mozilla's mission: http://www.mozilla.org/mission/
• Our style guide, including brand and logo guidelines: http://www.mozilla.org/styleguide
• Press announcements: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/
• News and tips for Firefox users: https://blog.mozilla.org/theden/

If you really want to "drink from the firehose", Planet Mozilla is an aggregation of blogs by many different Mozilla contributors, working in many different areas of the Mozilla project. You can read it on the Web at http://planet.mozilla.org/ You can also subscribe in a feed reader (see the buttons on the web page), which makes it easier to pick and choose what articles to read. If you see a post that catches your interest, you could write a blog post that puts your own perspective on that topic.

Thanks again, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Careers

For information about available careers, please check out our career site at

http://www.mozilla.com/about/careers.html

Coding

I'm Josh, one of many Firefox developers. Glad to hear from you! Feel free to have a look at http://whatcanidoformozilla.org if you're interested in joining a particular project or team. Meanwhile, I'll tell you about some general opportunities for writing code for Firefox.

To get started with the codebase, have a look at http://developer.mozilla.org/En/Introduction.

If you need any help, you can obtain it on IRC. I recommend visiting

1. introduction, which is specifically for newcomers. See

http://irc.mozilla.org for how to access it.

Feel free to contact me anytime if you're having any problems!

Happy hacking, Josh

Coding (Java)

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If you're interested in Java programming, take a look at the Rhino project. Rhino is an open-source implementation of JavaScript written entirely in Java.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Rhino

I'd recommend reading the recent discussions on the Rhino group and then posting there to get started working with the Rhino developers.

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.rhino/topics

Another thing to check out is our Developer Guide. This will give you a general overview of the code, processes and tools used in the community.

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Developer_Guide

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to write me back.

Coding (Webdev)

Thanks for offering to help us build Mozilla's websites.

Start by joining us in #webdev on IRC. http://mzl.la/irc_getting_started will help you get connected, and http://mzl.la/webdev_irc lists some WebDev channels.

Next register an account on Bugzilla. Bugzilla can be daunting, so check out http://mzl.la/bugzilla_for_humans (15m video HIGHLY recommended).

Now look for a WebDev mentored bug in https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webdev/GetInvolved and contact the mentor - over IRC, email, or comment on the bug.

Finally, with your mentor, fork the github repository for the bug's website and you're ready to start coding.

This is a lot of information, so let me know if you have any questions as you get started.

Regards, Luke

Design

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

For design projects, there are a few good places to get started.

http://areweprettyyet.com

http://creative.mozilla.org/

http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to write me back.

Documentation and writing

Thanks for your interest in helping with Mozilla's documentation and other writing activities. There are several ways you can help:

• Write Firefox Knowledge Base articles http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/improve-knowledge-base
• Write Thunderbird Knowledge Base articles http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/improve-knowledge-base
• Help with Mozilla Developer Network docs http://developer.mozilla.org/Project:en/How_to_Help
• Write about Mozilla-related topics on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mozilla

Thanks again for your interest and let me know if you have any questions about how to get started.

Drumbeat

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. There's more information about what Drumbeat is and how you can get involved at

http://www.drumbeat.org/about

I'd also encourage you to read through and post to the drumbeat forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.community.drumbeat/topics

Firefox Question

I'm sorry to hear about some of the issues you are running into with Firefox. Perhaps we can help solve your problem with a simple fix.

I suggest asking about this on our Firefox support site at

http://support.mozilla.com/kb/ask

Please be specific and also post any error messages if available and/or a crash ID so that we can have a more complete understanding of the issue.

Thanks, we're here to help.

or

Sorry to hear you're having problems with Thunderbird.

I suggest asking about this on our Thunderbird support site at

http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/home

or

If you're having problems using Facebook with Firefox see the following:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Problems%20using%20Facebook%20in%20Firefox

or

Many crashes are due to out of date plug-ins and add-ons, so I'd suggest using our plugin checker to check for old plug-ins. You can also try uninstalling any add-ons you have installed to see if that helps.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Uninstalling+add-ons

If neither of those things work, I'd suggest using our Live Chat service to talk to someone in our support community about this.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/chat

GOOGLE TOOLBAR

There will be no update of the Google Toolbar to work with Firefox 5 or any later version of Firefox because Firefox users have most of the features built-in and have alternatives.

Google Toolbar Help: An update on Google Toolbar for Firefox http://googletoolbarhelp.blogspot.com/2011/07/update-on-google-toolbar-for-firefox.html

Toolbar not available for Firefox 5 or newer versions : - Toolbar Help http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=1342452&topic=15356%29

For translation and spell checking you do not need an extension at all https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/852325

To Be Used As Needed And Added To The Reply:

Please refrain from the use of foul language and/or cursing when asking our volunteer support team for help, we're here to assist in solving your issue, thanks.

Firefox Suggestions

Thanks for your suggestion about Firefox. I'd encourage you to look at the available add-ons to see if there's already something that does what you are interested in.

https://addons.mozilla.org/

You may also be interested in creating your own add-on to add this feature. You can learn more about how to do that at

https://addons.mozilla.org/developers/

or

Thanks for your interest in providing feedback about Firefox.

I'd recommend trying out a preview release of the next version of Firefox to see the latest features we've been working on. You can download that at

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/channel/

After trying that out, you can share your thoughts or if you are only interested in making a suggestion or providing feedback regarding your current version, you can do so here:

https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback

Firefox 4 Toolbar Questions

The latest version of Firefox has all of the same features from earlier versions, although some of the toolbar buttons have been hidden to make more room for web pages.

You can change the default toolbar settings in Firefox 4 and set things up however you like. The following support articles have information about how to show, add and move toolbars and toolbar items.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-happened-bookmarks-toolbar

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/how-do-i-customize-toolbars

General

Can be used if someone fills out the form without indicating which area of interest they are writing about.

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If there's a type of activity you'd like to find out more about (marketing, coding, testing, localization...) please feel free to write me back and I'll be happy to help you get started on a project. There is a list of different project areas at

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/areas.html

General Test

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

A great way to get started is to spread the word about Firefox. Grab a button and put it on your site, blog, Facebook or wherever.

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/buttons/firefox.html

If you'd like to learn more about other ways to help out, take a look at

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/areas.html

If there's a type of activity you're interested in, please feel free to write me back and I'll be happy to help you get started on a project.

Labs

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If you're interested in learning more about Mozilla Labs, I'd recommend checking out the following links:

http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/

http://mozillalabs.com/how-to-get-involved/

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

Legal

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

I would encourage you to introduce yourself and join the discussion on Mozilla's legal forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.legal/topics

I'll also forward your information directly to our legal team.

If you have any questions about this or would like to talk about how to get involved in other areas of the project, feel free to write me back.

Localization

General inquiry

Hi,

Thank you for your email and welcome to the Mozilla Community! We're excited that you're interested in joining our localization (L10n) effort.

Joining our L10n effort is easy. Within five easy steps you can start contributing to the project! We have a wiki page specially designed to help you get started. Please visit http://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Contribute and follow the five steps to get involved.

Could you also please provide me with some additional information about yourself, such as languages you speak, country you live in, and technical background?

You can also visit the following wiki pages to learn the details of how we localize:

• L10n:Localization Process: A good description of the whole process.
• The L10n Quick Start Guide: A resource of technical tutorials you'll need to know as you get more involved.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

[name]

Follow up to general inquiry

We're very excited to have you join the Mozilla localization (l10n) effort! Your skills and dedication will be very valuable to your l10n team.

Next step, follow the steps outline on http://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Contribute. When you contact your l10n team, please CC me on that email so that I can help to make sure you receive a prompt response.

If you have any questions or difficulties, please let me know.

Welcome!

Marketing

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. For marketing projects, there are a few good places to get started:

• There is a Community Marketing Guide at: http://guides.mozilla.org/Marketing

• The Mozilla marketing group is also a good place to find out what others are talking about and talk about your ideas:http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.marketing/topics

• Every two weeks we also have an open marketing call. If you subscribe to the marketing list you'll see the call details and agenda. This is a good way to ask questions and meet fellow marketeers.

• Become a Firefox Affiliate (affiliates.mozilla.org). Add an affiliate button to your website or blog and tell the world about Firefox.

• Follow @firefox on Twitter or friend on Facebook - you can get a sense of what we're up to there and see if you want to learn more - http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/connect/

• Sign up for Mozilla & You http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/newsletter/ and monthly news!

If you have any questions about any of this, let me know.

Marketing: Post-Fx 6 + Webify Me

Thanks for offering to help! We just released Firefox 6 and announced our Webify Me campaign. The best way to get started is to share the news. Here's how:

• Firefox 6*

Mozilla Blogs - please share: Windows, Mac and Linux: http://mzl.la/n7abiy Android:http://mzl.la/rnEFmY Hacks: http://mzl.la/pX1eQC

Twitter post - please retweet: Get the latest Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux update w/new dev tools and improved Panorama performance http://mzl.la/n7abiy http://twitter.com/#!/firefox/status/103487878193102848

Firefox website buttons - Grab a button and put it on your site, blog, Facebook or wherever: http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/buttons/firefox.html

• Webify Me*

Webify: Visualize what your Web looks like now and share it to your friends via Twitter and Facebook. Here's how to get started:

Visit the Webify Me website: https://webifyme.org/ Answer a series of fun questions Receive your own personalized visualization of your web. Add your collage to the gallery Share it to your friends on Facebook and Twitter

If you have any questions, please let me know. You can join the marketing mailing list for more opportunities + to meet other volunteers. http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.marketing/topics

Thanks!

Marketing Test

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

A great way to get started is to help us spread the word about Firefox. Grab a button and put it on your site, blog, Facebook or wherever.

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/buttons/firefox.html

If you'd like to learn more about other ways to help us with marketing, please join the marketing forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.marketing/topics

If you have any questions about any of this, let me know.

Non-Contribute Request

I'm sorry, but your entry is beyond the scope of the purpose of this form, which is to direct your interest in contributing to Mozilla and its products and communities. We are not able to see a connection between your response and Mozilla. You can learn more about Mozilla here: www.mozilla.org/about/

If you would like to refine your response so that it relates more directly to Mozilla's activities, we would be most happy to help you find a way to participate. Mozilla depends on a broad and diverse set of contributors, and we appreciate your interest.

Mirrors

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. There is information about how to take part in our mirror network at:

http://www.mozilla.org/community/mirroring.html

You are also welcome to join the mirrors mailing list which is used to notify mirror admins of impending releases and changes to mirroring policy.

http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mirrors

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

QA

Hi,

We're happy to hear of your interest in Mozilla QA. Our team consists of five groups Web QA, Browser Technologies, Automation, Services, and Desktop Firefox.

You can see a quick overview of our teams in this page: http://quality.mozilla.org/

Depending your area or areas of interest I can help you explore some of the things you can help with.

We've just started a new development process that should allow us to release a few new features in the browser every six weeks, as opposed to tons of features every year or so. We are going to need lots of help tracking the status of new features, creating test plans for new features, creating test cases, testing these new features and making sure these are in good shape before they are deemed ready to go out in a specific release. You can see a list of features we are working on: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Firefox

Many of those features currently have no QA ownership, so depending on your interest and how much time you can invest, you could for example take on one of those features to test it. Of course, there are many more things we do on a daily basis which you can engage in to become familiar with the project before you commit to "owning" a feature. These tasks include triaging bugs that have been filed by community members but which have not been confirmed, verifying new bugs fixes, finding regression ranges for identified issues and so on.

If you'd like you can also come to one of our weekly testdays, where we gather on irc://irc.mozilla.com/#testday and we go through some of the tasks I described above. It's a good opportunity to say hi and get to know the team and other volunteers and try on some new features or just hang out. These happen every Friday from 8am to 5pm Pacific time, and you can find details of upcoming testdays and other events on http://quality.mozilla.org/

Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks you for your interest in participating in the project.

<< Your Name and Role >>

Security

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. To learn more about our security process, I'd recommend taking a look at our Security Center and then checking out and posting to our security group.

http://www.mozilla.org/security/

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.security/topics

If you have any questions about this, let me know.

Systems Administration

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

To learn more about how to get involved with the IT community at Mozilla, take a look at

https://wiki.mozilla.org/IT/Community

There is information there about projects as well as information about how to get in touch with other people in the community interested in systems administration.

Student Reps

Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry about getting involved with the Mozilla Student Reps program. To learn how to start representing Mozilla at your college or university, please sign-up here:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/newsletter/studentreps

On the registration form, please opt-in to the newsletter which includes important program news and campaign updates.

Once you complete the registration the form, you are considered an official Student Rep. You should receive a confirmation email with instructions to join the next Student Reps 101 online training.

We look forward to keeping in touch with you through the Student Reps channels listed on the website: http://studentreps.mozilla.org. Good luck -- and thank you for promoting Mozilla and Firefox at your school!

--The Mozilla Student Reps team studentreps@mozilla.com

Support

Thanks for your interest in helping people with support questions and welcome to the Mozilla community.

If you're interested in finding out about ways to get involved with our support community, the following page has some useful information:

https://support.mozilla.com/kb/superheroes-wanted

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write me back.

Testing

Thanks for your email and welcome to the Mozilla Community.

You can download a nightly version of Firefox to help test what is coming in future releases of Firefox. You can download test releases at:

http://nightly.mozilla.org/

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to post to our QA forums at:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.quality/

Thunderbird

(If the inquiry is regarding a support issue or bug report, use the text on https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Response_text#tb-kb_via_Mozilla_Contribute_page)

Hello! Thanks for your interest in helping out with Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. We are a non-profit that relies heavily on volunteer contributors.

There are a number of ways you can contribute to Thunderbird:

- Help with Testing and QA http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing
- Help Thunderbird Users http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/superheroes-wanted
- Improve the Knowledge Base http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/improve-knowledge-base
- Translate Thunderbird Help http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/localize-thunderbird-help
- Write an Add-on http://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Thunderbird
- Fix a Bug http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/
- Spread the word by blogging or tweeting about Thunderbird


Members of the Thunderbird team can usually be found on the #maildev IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org. Feel free to drop in and say "hi". If you have any questions, write me back and I'll be happy to help.

Welcome to the Thunderbird community!


User Research

Thanks for pinging the user experience research team!

There are four ways you can contribute to creating more awesome user experiences at Mozilla.

1. Join Test Pilot Test Pilot is a platform collecting structured user feedback through Firefox. The Test Pilot studies explore how people use their web browser and the Internet - get the add-on: https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/.

2. Download Firefox Beta for Android We'd love to hear your feedback http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/beta/

3. Say hi and talk to us at #UR IRC channel Chat with us on at irc://irc.mozilla.org/#UR

4. Read and comment on our blog http://blog.mozilla.org/ux we'd love to hear from you in the comments.

UX

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla.

Check out the Mozilla UX blog to learn more about what projects are going on and what you may be interested in helping with.

https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/

You can talk directly to members of the UX team on our chat server at

irc://irc.mozilla.org/#UR

For help using our chat server, there's more information at

http://irc.mozilla.org

Website Feedback

By the way, if you're interested in helping us improve our web sites even more, you're certainly welcome to get involved.

Our web sites are run as open projects and there are plenty of opportunities to get involved with web QA, web development and more.

Here are some links if you're interested in learning more.

http://quality.mozilla.org/teams/web-qa/

http://blog.mozilla.com/webdev/get-involved/

If you have any questions about any of this or would like to talk more, feel free to write me back.