L10n:Firefox/Productization
Web services in Firefox are those localizable functional areas within the browser, specifically, Live Bookmark (RSS Feed), Search Plug-Ins, and Content Handlers (RSS Readers, Web Mail and Web Calendar). You can read more about web services at L10n:Productization.
We believe that localization teams are in the best position to provide recommendations on what local providers we can use for Web Services because you're in the market, work in the language, and know your users. This is, therefore, meant a guideline for how you should be formulating your recommendations.
Live Bookmark
Our goal for including an RSS feed in the live bookmark is to demonstrate dynamic, changing and relevant content. We would suggest you choose something your users are interested in and that is locally relevant.
We have used these additional questions in some cases to further evaluate suggestions. These may be helpful when informing your recommendations:
Relevance
- Is the website relevant to the users in the locale?
- Is it updated frequently (at least once per day?) - the purpose of the sample feed is to show how the Live Bookmarks feature works
- For news sites: is it a popular, well-known and well-established general news website?
Quality
- Are you satisfied with the quality of articles (are they objective, gramatically correct)?
- Does the feed happen sometimes to contain any ads?
- Have you had any problems with the site working with Firefox?
Search
There are typically six search plug ins listed.
Generic search
The default option should expose the quickest path to the best result on the world wide web for the user (indexing a large portion of the global www). Global search. The second position can be used for the next best local language provider, meaning, coverage within the local language and/or locale (indexing a smaller portion of the www but producing better local language results). Local search. A good test is if you were to run a set of comparative queries; the secondary engine should produce the best local language results and the primary/default position should produce the best global results
e-Commerce search
These search engines should allow users to get connected to new and used products they want to buy as quickly and painlessly as possible in a "trusted" site. For example choosing the most popular auction, general shopping, or classified type sites that have the desired user experience are good choices. There should be no more than two.
Specific interest search
Where user are using popular search engine's to search more specific areas of interest that are very popular in your language or locale. There should be no more than two.
In all cases user experience should be taken into account and given preference for what is desired in that language/locale. if you have questions about what that means, please contact stas@mozilla.com or stas on IRC.
RSS Readers and Content handlers
They should be translated in your language (because it makes the application unusable if it's not in your language), provide for the user experience intended for (e.g., minimal to no advertisements within the user experience), and no more than 3 (if possible) choices. Choosing based on popularity is fine.
The "Getting started" page
The objective of this page is to provide the users with a few task-based starting points they could use to enjoy the web and discover sites that will help them get the most out of Firefox (and the Internet in general). This page will be aimed towards beginning and intermediate Web users. We want to promote community/user oriented collaborative sites with good user experience in the locale and good standards support.
Within each category we'd like to include two to three suggestions on the www, one add-on related suggestion and one related Firefox features. The categories include:
- Work are samples of tools for working that are web-based or build on web technologies, follow open standards (i.e., not flash based).
- Learn is to provide users with useful, reference type links. More specifically when users want to find out about specific things these links can act like a reference tool set.
- Connect are examples of social networking sites, like chatting, forums, etc.
- Play are sample of entertainment either interactive or recipient only
Some examples from en-US
| Web Service | Provider | Rationale |
| Live Bookmark | BBC | news is generally relevant and interesting and changes quickly. Lately we've looked at BBC feeds that are science/nature and/or technology feeds. |
| Global search | Best user experience and broadest results | |
| e-Commerce Search | Amazon | Broad set of products, simple search interface with no/limited advertising, popular shopping engine |
| Specific interest | Wikipedia | Good user experience (no ads, simple interface), popular site |
| RSS Reader | Bloglines | Popular, minimal advertising, simple interface |
There are two new protocol handlers for Firefox 3: mailto and calendar. To enable these protocol handlers you can check for more detail and send the link to organizations when asking them about inclusion. If you're interested in more information, you can also check in on Mark Finkle's blog.
These guidelines are new for Firefox 3. After launch we intend to review the usefulness of these guidelines in providing you with valuable guidance to make good user recommendations in your languages and locales.
For additional information try these links: