MDN/Archives/Development/Redesign/Testing

MDN is undergoing a major redesign, with improved design, layout, page customization options and navigation. To ensure that the redesign is the best that it can be, we have made the new design available to anyone who would like to help with beta testing.

Notes and information

New features — look out for them as follows:

• The main difference you'll notice is that the new theme. It is aimed at being more easily red and to look more professional. Among the differences you'll notice:
  • The consistent usage of the same font (Open Sans) instead of the mix of fonts we had before. Only code, and therefore interfaces, methods, and properties, are using a fixed-width font.
  • Numerous pages have now a quick links columns aimed at simplifying the navigation.
• Certain pages have been converted into Zones, which are basically landing pages for specific focus topics like projects or tasks (Firefox, Firefox OS, Building Apps.) These have a distinct look and feel, and an integrated zone menu that persists between all the pages that under the zone in the document hierarchy. Examples:
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps

How you can help

Once the redesign is enabled, we would love you to go around the site and have a look at everything, as well as trying out some edits and other site contributions. Please let us know exactly how the site is working, what is breaking, and what you think needs improvement. Try the following:

• Reading a page, and using the web site to get relevant info.
• Editing a page.
• Looking at a page that has large code samples on it, or large images, or embedded videos.
• Editing a macro, if you have the right to do so.
• Performs searches and check the results.

To give us feedback, please use the following:

• The #devmo IRC channel on Mozilla's [IRC]
• The dev-mdc e-mail list: [1]
• Bugzilla form

What kind of feedback we are looking for? We are interested in:

• Your overall feeling: keep in mind it is an early beta and is a work in progress. It isn't a beta, we won't change anything until the launch.
• Navigational problems: the first goal is to be able to reach all the information. We know that it was difficult with the old design, we hope it is better, but we may forgotten something.
• Visual problems and glitches:
  • on the home page: Does the positioning of the element suit your needs? Some elements are emphasized by the color scheme or the position on the page: are these the right ones?
  • on the zone landing pages
  • in articles: we have in-content element that may not fit well, we are interested in a list. Especially if you use a lesser known part of the MDN that is not the Open Web document where we probably have missed it. We have added quick links, but these are experimental: feel free to tell us if they help you or not.
  • at different sizes. Keep in mind that even if we aim to support small screens, we are not done there yet. But anything 10" or greater shouldn't show major problem.
• Speed: we don't have performed any specific optimization here, but there shouldn't be less good now than before. If you noticed strange things, be sure to tell us.
• Search: we have a new search engine, not using Google anymore, so we are interested in the quality of the results. We have added the ability to set filters. Try using them, tell us if they work, if the quality of results is good and so on.

Really don't hesitate to give us information. The more feedback of good quality we get the more we will be able to consider in the next cycle beginning now.

Try to be precise and specific, it helps us. If you are using bugzilla, one problem per bug please, if you are using dev-mdc, you can of course put several points in your e-mail. But try to use different paragraphs, maybe numbered, so that it can be more easily referenced and evaluated.

We are very excited with this redesign and we want to improve it a lot in the next few months: your feedback is a very important element in achieving this.

Thank you in advance! And let's test!