Firefox3/Web Based Help System

Requirements

Client Side Requirements

These are the requirements for the parts of the system that will be part of FF.

• Must be usable by extensions
  • extension help should show up just like "core" Firefox help.
    • but they should be able to look a little different, right?
  • extension help maybe on a server controlled by moz and should still be accessible
• users must be able to give feedback on whethere a particular article was helpful.
  • it would probably be helpful to track people over time somehow too

Server Side Requirements

• Must serve properly localized content based on browser's locale
  • if content for that locale is missing then serve the content from another locale (e.g. if fr content is missing serve de content. if de content is missing serve en content).
• Content Management facilities.
  • must be easy to add, edit, and organize content.
  • full l10n and i18n support, ofcourse.
  • Who gets to edit and publish?
    • The issue of vandalism is very important here since the people viewing this content are coming for help so a link to goatse or some such would be very bad.
  • who sets doc id? Should they be human readable.
• Intelligent search

Possible Solutions

Client Side Solutions

XUL Help Widget

The widget would know how to retrieve and display help by itself. Might come in two varieties:

• Help button
• Help Menu Item

XUL Help Display widget

This is needed only if help is retreived from a web service.

Servers Side Solutions

The big worry for the server is whether it can scale since there is a potential for a lot of hits.

Media Wiki

This is used for other moz sites, wikipedia, and others. It is very likely to scale.

phpCake

Remora uses this. It is likely to scale.