Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Making the Web a little bit safer--one Plugin at a time

Today we release the second phase of the three phase project to integrate Plugin updates into Firefox.

This is a hugely important project, both for our users and for anyone who uses plugins. Plugins have become an integral part of every-day life on the Web, and as such, having them up to date has become essential to being able to do two things:
1) Enjoy the Web and all of its functionality
2) Keep yourself secure on the Internet

The problem is, that its very difficult to tell what plugins you have, if they're up to date, or if there is a newer version of the plugin. This is a problem that many Firefox users have been having a hard time solving for a long time, and so, we've been working to see if there was a way to improve things for everyone involved.

Our first phase has been a great success, with more than 10 million click throughs on our "What's New" page (as of Sept 16th) and millions of updates to the latest version of Adobe Flash. (Read more here and here).

Our second phase is exciting because we are taking a step closer towards direct integration into the browser. By going to www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/, Firefox users can check to see if their installed plugins are up-to-date.



Users will see one of four messages per plugin:
1) Up to date (Green)
2) Update Now (Red)
3) Update (Yellow)
4) Research (Grey)

Seeing a green button next to your plugin means that you have the latest version of the plugin. A red button means that you should update the respective plugin immediately, either because you have a very old version of the plugin or there is a known security issue with the one you currently have. The yellow button means that you have an older version of a plugin, but not one that necessarily puts you at risk. A grey button means that we currently do not have enough information about the respective plugin, and we invite you to investigate.

So far, we only have information for the most used plugins--for example, Adobe'sFlash, Apple's Quicktime, Microsoft's Silverlight and a few others. We're currently working on getting as much information as possible into our database, but we need as much help as we can get. (If you're a plugin vendor, feel free to send me an email so we can start getting your plugins information into our database).

This project, even at this stage, is a huge step forward because Firefox is the only browser that has ever attempted to integrate the plugin update process into the browser. Although we aren't at the integration stage yet, having this page live means that we can improve the security and overall user experience of Firefox users while we get to our goal.

The next phases of the project
2A) Make the page compatible for all browsers--in other words, make the page so that any one can go to Mozilla.com, on any browser, and see what plugins they have and which ones they need to update.
3) Integrate the work we've done into Firefox 3.6

This project has been long overdue, (and there's still a lot to be done!) but I'd like to thank Chris Hofmann, Aix Franquet, Mike Morgan, Les Orchard, Austin King, John Slater, Melissa Shapiro, Jonathan Nightingale, Chris Blizzard, Stephen Donner the Web QA team, Mike Beltzner, Steven Garrity, The Royal Order and Elise Allen for all of their support and hard work on this phase of the project.

And now, on to the next…

Cheers!

(As always, please feel free to send questions, suggestions or thoughts to lmesa@mozilla.com)

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Mozilla.com Optimization: Educating Firefox users about updates

Starting today, you will see a few small changes to the Mozilla.com website.

We've just finished building a Firefox Update FAQ page to respond to some of the issues Ken Kovash, our fabulous Metrics guru, discovered through the installer feedback tool. (You can read more from his blog post here).

In this study, Ken determined that of people abandoning the Firefox installation process, about 10% cited reasons related to not fully understanding what a Firefox update is.

The feedback feel into three categories:

Lack of Understanding about what an up-grade is:

"Will this overwrite my existing version or will it simply upgrade? I don't want to lose my settings and bookmarks."

"I thought this is an update that would keep all my bookmarks etc and install the new software.. However I'm not sure. Can you clarify ???"

"I already have Firefox, why am I installing it again"

"does version 3.5 replace my current version of FF or does it run separate?"

Confusion about how to update:

"i just want to update my current firefox"

"not sure if i uninstall old firefox? Do I uninstall it first then install newer version?"

"It appears that I have asked to install a whole new version rather than an upgrade which is normally what happens when new versions of Firefox comeout"

"I have Firefox3, so shouldn't this reload at the same location? Or do I have to uninstall the older version."

Other issues:

- Bad experience with other auto-updates (ex: Windows security mechanisms sometimes gives extra things that aren't needed), so user is conditioned not to accept updates.

- Worried it will break something (maybe from past experience)

- New version is not compatible with their OS (they have a pre Win2k/NT5, Unix distrib w/ older lib)

- Favorite extension isn't compatible with update

- Didn't notice or get a prompt to update

- Update/download takes too long

- Don't control the machine they're using/aren't allowed to update (not admin, using public/shared computer)

- IT discourages doing your own updates

- New version doesn't seem different enough (not worth the trouble) or seems too different (will feel foreign/hard to use)


The two fold Solution:


The best way to deal with all of these issues is to add accessible content on our major touch-points to help educate our users about Firefox updates, how to get them, and why they are important.


1) Create new Mozilla.com content about updating Firefox
2) Add content on SUMO support page about updating Firefox on all three platforms.




We'll do some more tests once the page has been live for a month to see if the existence of the Update FAQ and the touch points on Mozilla.com and SUMO have made any impact on the 10% of our users confused by the process.

Big thanks to Ken Kovash, John Slater, Cheng Wang, Chris Illias, Raymond Etornam, Stephen Donner, and Stephen Des Roches of Silverorange for all their hard-work and for getting this page out three days ahead of schedule!

Woohoo!





Monday, July 27, 2009

Announcing Moz Camp Hispano and Jornadas 2009

I am excited to announce that Mozilla will be in Santiago, Chile for a week of events in October 2009!

The first part of the week will be a two day Moz Hispano (October 5-6, 2009) followed by three days at the Jornadas 2009 conference (October 7-9, 2009).

The two day Moz Camp is the first of its kind in the region (outside of Brazil) and the first time Spanish-speaking localizers and contributors from all over the world will have the opportunity to meet face to face. We expect a presence at the invite-only Moz Camp Hispano event from contributors from Spain, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru and Mexico. We hope to spend the two days focusing on how the Spanish-speaking community can better collaborate to make Firefox the best product it can be.

The second part of the week-long meet-up would be Mozilla sponsored open participation in Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre (JRSL ). JRSL is an event organized by OpenCommunity, an association of communities working to promote open-source in Chile and South America. This will be the ninth year of JRSL and we are expecting participation from people from all over Latin America.

Mozilla Corporation will be sending 6 employees to facilitate and give key notes at both events:
Chris Hofmann (Director of Engineering and Special Projects)
Seth Bindernagel (Director of L10n)
Pascal Chevrel (L10n)
Daniel Mills (Labs--Weave)
Rey Bango (AMO/Add-Ons)
Laura Mesa (Marketing)

Spanish Press Release:

Fundación Mozilla es el principal auspiciador de JRSL Chile 2009

Además realizará el primer Moz Camp Hispano donde se analizará cómo la comunidad hispana puede contribuir de mejor forma al funcionamiento del navegador


La Fundación Mozilla será el principal auspiciador de las Jornadas Regionales del Software Libre que se realizarán entre el 7,8 y 9 de octubre de este año. Este evento será el primero de su tipo que se realizará en Chile y se espera una gran asistencia de toda Latinoamérica.

El auspicio de Mozilla permitirá contar con la exposición de cinco de sus principales miembros, Rey Bango, Pascal Chevrel, Daniel Mills, Seth Bindernagel y Chris Hofmann. Este último es Director de Ingeniería y Proyectos Especiales de la Fundación Mozilla y ha estado encargado de cosas tan distintas como el lanzamiento de Firefox 1.0, mantiene y mejora los contactos con las comunidades de traducción, ha sido coautor de libros sobre Firefox y Thunderbird, y además está impulsando la creación y entrada en funcionamiento de un sitio web de asistencia a usuarios de Firefox mantenido por la propia comunidad.

Además los dos días previos a las JRSL, los 5 y 6 de octubre, se realizará el primer Moz Camp Hispano, que será organizado y patrocinado por la Fundación Mozilla; en esta instancia se determinará cómo la comunidad hispana puede contribuir de mejor forma al funcionamiento del navegador y para esto contará con la participación de 30 invitados de toda América Latina.


For more information or suggestions, please contact me at lmesa@mozilla.com.

Thanks to Rodrigo Garcia and Francisco Collao Garate of Firefox Chile for their support and help.









Thursday, June 25, 2009

Affiliates Program--Bring on the Rewards!

The Affiliates program is moving on up!


Starting July 1st, 2009, every download you generate from your Firefox 3.5 Affiliate buttons gives you an opportunity for being rewarded as an active member of the Spread Firefox Affiliates Program.

Everyone with more than five downloads a quarter will be entered into a reward pool. We will randomly award ten individual Affiliates each quarter with incentives like a Flip Video Camera, an iPod Touch, an iPod Nano, Amazon Gift Certificates and exclusive Top Fox T-shirts!*

Awardees will be notified in the beginning of October 2009 for activities between July 1st-September 30th, so make sure your email in Spread Firefox is up-to-date!
You can learn more about the program here and make sure to check out the Affiliates Terms of Service.

Last but not least, any Affiliates buttons are eligible for this program, but why not update your buttons to our latest and greatest dynamic Affiliate buttons and help us "Upgrade the Web"?

Thanks to John Slater, Rhonda Spencer, Elise Allen, Alex Buchanan, Stephen Donner and the WebQA team for all their hard work--I'm really excited to see how this program continues to grow!

Happy Firefox 3.5 launch!

Note*: Once you have been chosen to receive a reward (not including t-shirts) you will be ineligible to receive another reward for a full year.

Upgrade to Firefox 3.5: Shaking Up the Affiliates Program




One of the projects I have been working on for the Firefox 3.5 is a new dynamic messaging campaign for the launch called "Upgrade the Web". The idea first started as an IE switch campaign but morphed into an upgrade campaign for all browser users.

There are three main touch points for this campaign:
-Affiliate Buttons
-Word Press Plug-In
-Google Gadget Ads

The idea is that each one of these Firefox promoters dynamically displays a different message to the viewer depending on what browser they are using. We made an effort to make the tag lines cute and cheeky (thanks Elise!) and to make the graphics snappily emphasize (Thanks Sean!) the "new and improved-ness" of Firefox 3.5.

Here are the buttons and their respective messages:



These same messages are also being used in the Word Press plug-in and the Google Gadget Ads.

Put these buttons on your blog or website and help spread the word about Firefox 3.5!

[You can get the Affiliate buttons or the plug-in from the "Upgrade the Web" program homepage.
To download the buttons (and get credit for the downloads you generate) you need to be a Spread Firefox member. ]


Thanks to Elise Allen, Sean Martell, John Slater, Alex Buchanan, Mike Hostetler, Chris Blizzard, Stephen Donner, Krupa Raj for all their hard work--Awesome job!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Creative and Affiliates Workshop Tomorrow! (9am PDT/ 16:00 UTC)

Join Tara and I for a fun workshop where we talk about how you can use your creative skills to help "Spread Firefox" and promote Firefox 3.5!
Here's what we're covering:
* Why Creative / Visual Design is important
* How to Contribute
* Design Guidelines
* Community Store / T-shirts
* What are Affiliates
* Why are they important
* Existing buttons / Creating Buttons

Thursday, May 7, 2009 9:00 am PDT

  • Dial-in Info: +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#
  • Or you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#. If you’re outside the US, use Skype to call in with our toll-free number.
  • If you can’t join the call — but want to ask questions — you can join us in #marketing on IRC (irc.mozilla.org).

Please sign up on Spread Firefox. We’ll be archiving the Air Mozilla episode and sharing the presentation if you can’t make it. We’re looking forward to tomorrow!

Friday, April 10, 2009

The World is Ending

Paul Kim is back on Facebook.

Let the mayhem begin.