Update:Remora Feedback: Difference between revisions

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= Alpha Feedback - http://preview.addons.mozilla.org =
= Beta 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 [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=addons.mozilla.org&version=3.0 welcome to do that] instead.
This page is for consolidation of the feedback on the new AMO Beta.  If you're more comfortable filing bugs, you're [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=addons.mozilla.org&version=3.2 welcome to do that] instead.


See also the [http://blog.mozilla.com/webdev/2007/01/02/amo-3.0-alpha-public-preview/ announcement] on the Mozilla webdev blog.
== Accessibility ==
* Changing text size results in bad layout. Ways to correct this: #otherAlso should specify min-width rather than width; class .addon has a background image of addon-tr.png - the vertical size of this image is not very big, so it quickly results in missing borders when text size is increased a fraction.
* Unfortunately #otherAlso has been taken out of the flow and is absolutely positioned resulting in it overlapping other content at non-default text sizes.


The feedback (bugs, suggestions) that we fixed/dealt with were moved to a [[Update:Remora Feedback/Alpha Feedback Fixed|reference page]].
These sort of problems also tend to present themselves at higher DPI - have you tested at 120dpi?


== fligtar's comments ==
== SEO ==
I like the overall look, but I have a few comments about certain aspects:
* The title "Firefox Addons" should be an H1, not an H2 so that search engines will pick it up. At the moment, the H1 is an image saying "mozilla" - not really something a search engine would find... Also, I'm not sure why font sizes and font colors are specified for that H1 given that it only contains an image.
* Having the search box at the bottom is too annoying. I don't want to have to scroll down to search. I also think there should be a search box somewhere on every page, as before the reskinning. AMO search doesn't suck now (hopefully) so we should make sure it's used instead Google on site:addons.mozilla.org which is how I currently find things. ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365918 bug 365918])
* A meta description would give a search engine something to pull off the page.
* Home is listed on both the top menu and the side menu. It seems a little strange and would be more appropriate to only be on the top menu.
* The sidebar still doesn't show the active page with a gray background (li class="selected")
* The discussion header/footer is noticeably different.
* [http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/discussions/comments.php?DiscussionID=1&page=1#Item_0 This] may be a vanilla bug, not sure: "Comment by  made 1 day ago days ago"
* Discussions show a CakePHP favicon for me


== clouserw's comments ==
== Overflow ==
* Old URLs should redirect into the new format so we don't get 404s ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362526 bug 362526])
Even at normal font size, URLs in the body text of the addon description break out of the .addon class container. This looks bad. You could give the addon class a overflow:hidden but that's usually unsatisfactory. Gecko still doesn't implement text-overflow:ellipsis (bug #312156) or word-wrap (bug #99457) so the only other option is to inject <wbr> (or equivalent numeric entity) at alternate characters in long strings as chatzilla does.
* If there are no addons in a category, an unfriendly/unstyled message is flashed, and the user is redirected to the front page. ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365853 bug 365853])
--[[User:Rbirkby|Rbirkby]] 11:06, 15 February 2008 (PST)
** maybe these category links should not even be displayed if they don't carry any add-ons. --[[User:Wenzel|wenzel]] 20:59, 2 January 2007 (PST)
* Pages should validate
* on the /addons/display page, the "bad trip" link does nothing
* Discussions can be started that aren't related to an addon (just click "discussions" in the header, then start a new topic)
* When a user creates an account, they only see a "created successfully" flash. When they try to login, it says they have to confirm their account first, but it never says how. -- will fix. [[User:Wenzel|wenzel]]
* The "More..." link under "Popular Extensions" on the browse page goes nowhere.
* Since search engines are addons now, if you type a search engine id into the URL, you get a really ugly display page


== wenzel's comments ==
The "Other applications" control partially obscures "My account" and "Logout".
* Browse Add-ons page is kind of unfriendly and doesn't quite say what it is/does.
* Browse Category page has a "more" link for new and updated add-ons which leads to the new add-ons RSS feed (atm it's even a 404); it should maybe lead to a new page showing the new add-ons for this category only.
* Browse Add-ons page could use category specific RSS feeds.
* Search algorithm is improvable: The binary matching creates many hits with the same score in spite of their obviously different relevance.
* Developer usernames link to different places atm (URLs or nonexistent pages); we need a user info page and have them link there.
* "find similar add-ons" sometimes shows different categories with the same name?  ([http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/addons/display/398 example])


== xeen's comments ==
== Reviews ==
* When browsing by category I don't know which category I am in ("Subscribe to this Category" isn't useful either. What about 'Subscribe to "XYZ"'?) (sancus)
It's rather unobvious that adding a rating/review for an extension requires you to be logged in. I'd highly recommend adding a one-line note above the submit button for not-logged in users saying something like "requires registration", or you'll risk pissing off would be commenters who don't want to go through the trouble of registering yet another account.
* Categories with only 1 extension/theme directly link to the theme, which is confusing (sancus)
* "Other Add-ons" only lists extension names but doesn't offer a link to "traditional" browsing with summaries.
* Extension summaries should be limited to a certain length so that we don't have 2 pages description when browsing extensions. I kind-of see this when looking at the extension's page where the same description appears twice. Is this supposed to be "long" and "short" description?
* I don't see any developer link or page where I can upload/manage my extensions/themes (not yet implemented?)


== dria's comments ==
== Firefox/OS Version ==
* Seems to be a bug at [http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/discussions/post.php?AddOnID=398] when not logged in.  At very least there should be a significantly friendlier message suggesting the user log in :)
It seems that there is no simple way to specify the Firefox version and OS the extensions shown should be compatible with. Nor is this information shown anywhere in the lists. This results in the rather frustrating situation that one might have to browse through a long list of extensions only to detect when trying to install the extension that it is not compatible with your browser.
This problem gets even worse if somebody just wants to download an extension for a different browser (e.g. when an administrator running Linux prepares software and extensions for a Windows installation).


== dolske's comments (from blog) ==
Especially for the launch of Firefox 3.0 this will be important as otherwise people will have too much difficulty in finding FF3.0 enabled extensions/themes.
* How is browsing an extension category going to work? There seems to only be a limited subset of extensions on the preview site, so it’s hard to tell. It looks like a category page has 1 major featured extension, 2 minor featured extensions, and then just a list of other extension titles. It’s a bit hard to browse the current AMO, but a big block of title links seems too condensed.


== jMax's comments (from blog) ==
== Advanced search ==
* The add-on licenses should be exposed, so the user knows what he's about to install.
There should be some form that allows a more advanced search, especially the specification of a FF version and/or OS that the addon must be compatible with. Other advanced search features should be an option to exclude or include "experimental" addons or limit the extensions to those of specific authors.


== Gijs' (Hannibal's) comments ==
== Usability / UI revisions ==
* There are small 'medals' next to extensions on the category pages. However, they don't have tooltips, are not links, and don't resurface on the actual addon page. What do they mean (and can we make that more clear in the actual addons UI)?
* People who are used to the term "themes" (existing users) are having difficulty finding them in the current hierarchy.
* Could we sort categories, so it becomes easier to find something specific? Right now there's just unsorted lists of about 12-15 items, which is not very easy to use.
** Potential solution: Finish changing the name of the category from "Interface Customizations" to "Themes & Appearance"
* The "New and Updated" list on the "Extensions" page is missing the corner background.
* There's inconsistency between what down-arrows mean on menu headers (there's a drop-down menu available here) vs. what they mean on "Add to Firefox" buttons (up for debate! "down"load?)
** Potential solution: remove the down arrow from the "Add to Firefox" buttons.  The arrow doesn't really have much useful semantic meaning -- it doesn't really convey "add to firefox" -- so it's really just clutter.
* The issue of not knowing whether a given add-on is compatible with your version of Firefox/other application is a big deal
* Listing stuff from the sandbox (experimental) by default is not useful, since even if the person goes to the trouble of creating an account in order to access it there is no useful status information such as when it was created, how long its been in a queue or what version it is compatible with. Why not only list experimental add-ons if the person is logged in?
* Clicking on a category button such as "security and privacy" for Thunderbird add-ons gives three add-ons, in vertical columns. This is hard to read, and unexpected. Its also hard to browse all of the entries for this category since thats not one of the choices in the "see all privacy and security" box. Whats wrong with alphabetical sorting as a choice? If nothing else sometimes a user has a rough idea of the name and wants to try to find it via browsing rather than searching.
* If the user is navigating add-ons or themes for a specific application only add-ons and themes for that application should be shown. For example, in the Thunderbird add-ons privacy and security category the first page shows the Hip Hop Radio Extension for Firefox. Thats experimental and Firefox specific.
* If I search for the Lightning extension while running Firefox under Linux it has a "Download Now (Windows)" button for that extension. This is confusing as all of the other add-ons have "Download Now" and it choose the wrong platform when it tried to be helpful. If I click on the entry it shows separate download links for each platform. However, if I look at some other extension such as ltnPlus it uses "Download Now" both in the summary and when I click on the entry. Behavior needs to be more consistent and predictable.
* There should be more consistency in categories among the different products. Firefox has interface customizations and toolbars, which are generic enough they would be useful in Thunderbird and probably other applications. Firefox has "other" while Thunderbird has "miscellaneous", whats the difference? Firefox has "photos, music and media" while SeaMonkey has "photos and media", why are they different?  
* Looking at the number of categories (14 for firefox, 11 for SeaMonkey, 6 for Thunderbird, 3 for sunbird) one gets the impression some applications are not first class citizens. You would expect SeaMonkey to have the same categories (or more since its really a superset) as Firefox. Obvious categories such as Spam are missing for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.
* Other web sites (for example Amazon) adapt recommendations for the user, and let you provide feedback to tailor the recommendations. If I look at the Firefox recommendations the first item is Zotero, something for automatic capture of citation information from web pages. Thats not exactly mainstream :) It has 5 reviews and 13,126 downloads, which doesn't sound like much.  Its not one of the "featured" add-ons. Its not obvious why it was chosen, or that its tailored for me.
* There isn't any information to help deal with abandoned add-ons. For example, Frank DiLecce has written a lot of popular extensions. His web site is long gone, he is no longer using the mozillaZine forums, he hasn't updated his extensions for years, and nobody has been able to contact him for years. Its not clear whats the legal status of his extensions, which prevents anybody from taking over their maintenance.
*Searching for Noia (for the Noia themes) returns three entries. Two of them have identical names -  Noia 2.0 eXtreme. You have to click on each entry to see that one is version 2.36 and one is version 3.0. That information should have been shown on the entry (the summary).
* Many add-ons require the user to figure out how to bypass the version check. If the add-on causes problems they sometimes need to use safe mode to let them access the menu to disable or uninstall the add-on. This information isn't available in the applications help. It would help if the web site provided some generic installation help for add-ons, even if all they did was provide links to a few SUMO and mozillaZine KB articles.
* The web page for Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.0.43 displays three images (under "More Images") as three vertical lines. If you try to display any of them you get an error message about it can not be displayed because it contains errors.
* The date of release for addons and themes should be visible when browsing.


== Dao's comments ==
== Search Results Page ==
* 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.
The SRP should support sorting and filtering of the search results, similar to the sorting options already available on the "browse extension by category" page. Filtering can filter results by specific product/version/locale ...
* Old URLs don't work, e.g. http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/firefox/398/ vs. http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/addons/display/398. I don't see the purpose of /addons (it's already in the subdomain) and /display.
See bug 401136[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401136] for details.
** The URL redirects are already filed as a bug ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362526 362526]) --[[User:Wenzel|wenzel]]
 
== DonGato's comments ==
* There is no information about the last update of an extension (at least in the home page and most probably in the newest page as with current AMO, but I can't say as this page is not available in the preview). This is an important information while browsing extensions.
* 'Welcome to Mozilla add-ons' should stand up more in design but not space. Currently is taking a lot of space and not being necessarily clear.
* Doesn't discussion header looks bad? I think a right and left border is needed.
 
== trev's comments ==
* Default Locale field on /developers/add seems to encode entities twice, e.g. I see Fran&amp;#231;ais there
* If you don't select the addon type, you will get a second message: "That file extension (.xpi) is not allowed for the selected add-on type." That pretty pointless.
* Having to re-upload files on errors is not nice at all. Files should be kept and the input field should be replaced by the file name to indicate that they are already there.
* Isn't it possible to detect add-on type automatically? The file will need to be unpacked and analyzed anyway.
* When I fill out all fields correctly I get the error "Could not move file". Stuck at step 1.

Latest revision as of 01:57, 22 April 2008

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

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

Accessibility

  • Changing text size results in bad layout. Ways to correct this: #otherAlso should specify min-width rather than width; class .addon has a background image of addon-tr.png - the vertical size of this image is not very big, so it quickly results in missing borders when text size is increased a fraction.
  • Unfortunately #otherAlso has been taken out of the flow and is absolutely positioned resulting in it overlapping other content at non-default text sizes.

These sort of problems also tend to present themselves at higher DPI - have you tested at 120dpi?

SEO

  • The title "Firefox Addons" should be an H1, not an H2 so that search engines will pick it up. At the moment, the H1 is an image saying "mozilla" - not really something a search engine would find... Also, I'm not sure why font sizes and font colors are specified for that H1 given that it only contains an image.
  • A meta description would give a search engine something to pull off the page.

Overflow

Even at normal font size, URLs in the body text of the addon description break out of the .addon class container. This looks bad. You could give the addon class a overflow:hidden but that's usually unsatisfactory. Gecko still doesn't implement text-overflow:ellipsis (bug #312156) or word-wrap (bug #99457) so the only other option is to inject (or equivalent numeric entity) at alternate characters in long strings as chatzilla does. --Rbirkby 11:06, 15 February 2008 (PST)

The "Other applications" control partially obscures "My account" and "Logout".

Reviews

It's rather unobvious that adding a rating/review for an extension requires you to be logged in. I'd highly recommend adding a one-line note above the submit button for not-logged in users saying something like "requires registration", or you'll risk pissing off would be commenters who don't want to go through the trouble of registering yet another account.

Firefox/OS Version

It seems that there is no simple way to specify the Firefox version and OS the extensions shown should be compatible with. Nor is this information shown anywhere in the lists. This results in the rather frustrating situation that one might have to browse through a long list of extensions only to detect when trying to install the extension that it is not compatible with your browser. This problem gets even worse if somebody just wants to download an extension for a different browser (e.g. when an administrator running Linux prepares software and extensions for a Windows installation).

Especially for the launch of Firefox 3.0 this will be important as otherwise people will have too much difficulty in finding FF3.0 enabled extensions/themes.

Advanced search

There should be some form that allows a more advanced search, especially the specification of a FF version and/or OS that the addon must be compatible with. Other advanced search features should be an option to exclude or include "experimental" addons or limit the extensions to those of specific authors.

Usability / UI revisions

  • People who are used to the term "themes" (existing users) are having difficulty finding them in the current hierarchy.
    • Potential solution: Finish changing the name of the category from "Interface Customizations" to "Themes & Appearance"
  • There's inconsistency between what down-arrows mean on menu headers (there's a drop-down menu available here) vs. what they mean on "Add to Firefox" buttons (up for debate! "down"load?)
    • Potential solution: remove the down arrow from the "Add to Firefox" buttons. The arrow doesn't really have much useful semantic meaning -- it doesn't really convey "add to firefox" -- so it's really just clutter.
  • The issue of not knowing whether a given add-on is compatible with your version of Firefox/other application is a big deal
  • Listing stuff from the sandbox (experimental) by default is not useful, since even if the person goes to the trouble of creating an account in order to access it there is no useful status information such as when it was created, how long its been in a queue or what version it is compatible with. Why not only list experimental add-ons if the person is logged in?
  • Clicking on a category button such as "security and privacy" for Thunderbird add-ons gives three add-ons, in vertical columns. This is hard to read, and unexpected. Its also hard to browse all of the entries for this category since thats not one of the choices in the "see all privacy and security" box. Whats wrong with alphabetical sorting as a choice? If nothing else sometimes a user has a rough idea of the name and wants to try to find it via browsing rather than searching.
  • If the user is navigating add-ons or themes for a specific application only add-ons and themes for that application should be shown. For example, in the Thunderbird add-ons privacy and security category the first page shows the Hip Hop Radio Extension for Firefox. Thats experimental and Firefox specific.
  • If I search for the Lightning extension while running Firefox under Linux it has a "Download Now (Windows)" button for that extension. This is confusing as all of the other add-ons have "Download Now" and it choose the wrong platform when it tried to be helpful. If I click on the entry it shows separate download links for each platform. However, if I look at some other extension such as ltnPlus it uses "Download Now" both in the summary and when I click on the entry. Behavior needs to be more consistent and predictable.
  • There should be more consistency in categories among the different products. Firefox has interface customizations and toolbars, which are generic enough they would be useful in Thunderbird and probably other applications. Firefox has "other" while Thunderbird has "miscellaneous", whats the difference? Firefox has "photos, music and media" while SeaMonkey has "photos and media", why are they different?
  • Looking at the number of categories (14 for firefox, 11 for SeaMonkey, 6 for Thunderbird, 3 for sunbird) one gets the impression some applications are not first class citizens. You would expect SeaMonkey to have the same categories (or more since its really a superset) as Firefox. Obvious categories such as Spam are missing for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.
  • Other web sites (for example Amazon) adapt recommendations for the user, and let you provide feedback to tailor the recommendations. If I look at the Firefox recommendations the first item is Zotero, something for automatic capture of citation information from web pages. Thats not exactly mainstream :) It has 5 reviews and 13,126 downloads, which doesn't sound like much. Its not one of the "featured" add-ons. Its not obvious why it was chosen, or that its tailored for me.
  • There isn't any information to help deal with abandoned add-ons. For example, Frank DiLecce has written a lot of popular extensions. His web site is long gone, he is no longer using the mozillaZine forums, he hasn't updated his extensions for years, and nobody has been able to contact him for years. Its not clear whats the legal status of his extensions, which prevents anybody from taking over their maintenance.
  • Searching for Noia (for the Noia themes) returns three entries. Two of them have identical names - Noia 2.0 eXtreme. You have to click on each entry to see that one is version 2.36 and one is version 3.0. That information should have been shown on the entry (the summary).
  • Many add-ons require the user to figure out how to bypass the version check. If the add-on causes problems they sometimes need to use safe mode to let them access the menu to disable or uninstall the add-on. This information isn't available in the applications help. It would help if the web site provided some generic installation help for add-ons, even if all they did was provide links to a few SUMO and mozillaZine KB articles.
  • The web page for Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.0.43 displays three images (under "More Images") as three vertical lines. If you try to display any of them you get an error message about it can not be displayed because it contains errors.
  • The date of release for addons and themes should be visible when browsing.

Search Results Page

The SRP should support sorting and filtering of the search results, similar to the sorting options already available on the "browse extension by category" page. Filtering can filter results by specific product/version/locale ... See bug 401136[1] for details.