Contribute/Canned responses

To help answer any questions that come in through the contact form on the Get Involved page or through volunteer matching sites, we have a number of canned responses for different contribution areas.

General

Can be used if someone fills out the form without indicating which area of interest they are writing about.

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If there's a type of activity you'd like to find out more about (marketing, coding, testing, localization...) please feel free to write me back and I'll be happy to help you get started on a project. There is a list of different project areas at

http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/areas.html

Coding

Hi, and thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla! Feel free to email me with any questions you have.

To get started coding for Firefox or other applications, one of the best things to do is taking a look at our Developer Guide to get familiar with our tools and code:

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Developer_Guide

I'd also encourage you to read this blog post that gives tips on how to get started with coding

http://www.joshmatthews.net/blog/2010/03/getting-involve-with-mozilla/

If you have any questions about any of this, posting to our forums or using our chat server are both good places to go.

http://www.mozilla.org/community/forums/

http://irc.mozilla.org

You're also welcome to write me back with any questions. I'm happy to help you find a specific bug or project to work on.

Coding 1.5 (personal approach - jdm)

Hi, and thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla! I'm Josh, one of the many volunteer Firefox developers. Feel free to email me with any questions you have.

Is there any specific part of Firefox you'd like to work on? What sort of programming experience do you have? There's a list of bugs that have been tagged as being good for someone just getting started [0], but it can be a bit overwhelming to look through. If you have an area of interest, I can help you find something to work on.

To get started coding for Firefox or other applications, one of the best things to do is taking a look at our Developer Guide [1] to get familiar with our tools and code. I know it's a lot of information; we're working on making it easier for new people to get started, but it's a slow process. I also wrote a blog post [2] based on my experiences that gives tips on how to get involved with coding.

If you have any questions about any of this, posting to our forums [3] or using our chat server [4] are both good places to go. On irc.mozilla.org, there's the #introduction channel specifically for people just getting started. You're also welcome to write me back with any questions. I'm happy to help you find a specific bug or project to work on.

Cheers,

Josh

[0] http://tinyurl.com/goodbugs

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Developer_Guide

[2] http://www.joshmatthews.net/blog/2010/03/getting-involve-with-mozilla/

[3] http://www.mozilla.org/community/forums/

[4] http://irc.mozilla.org

Coding (pbiggar)

Hi,

I'm Paul, one of the C++ developers on the Javascript team. Thanks for your interest in contributing to Mozilla.

We have a page explaining how to get involved with Mozilla at http://developer.mozilla.org/En/Introduction. In addition, I can help you with any specific questions you may have.

C++ not your language? Don't worry - we have projects in C, JS, CSS, HTML, PHP, Python, Perl, shell/make, and probably others. Let me know what you can do and I'll find a way for you to contribute.

Finally, most of our developers are willing to help in person, and you can find them on irc most of the day, in particular in the #introduction channel, which is specifically for newcomers to Mozilla. See http://irc.mozilla.org for how to access it.

If you have any more questions, or just don't know where to start, please feel free to contact me directly. I'm pbiggar on IRC, or you can email me at pbiggar@mozilla.com.

Happy hacking, Paul

Coding (Java)

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If you're interested in Java programming, take a look at the Rhino project. Rhino is an open-source implementation of JavaScript written entirely in Java.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Rhino

I'd recommend reading the recent discussions on the Rhino group and then posting there to get started working with the Rhino developers.

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.rhino/topics

Another thing to check out is our Developer Guide. This will give you a general overview of the code, processes and tools used in the community.

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Developer_Guide

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to write me back.

Design

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. For design projects, there are a couple of good places to get started.

There are monthly design challenges taking place at:

http://creative.mozilla.org/challenges

You're also welcome to add designs to our Community Store at:

http://communitystore.mozilla.org/upload

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to write me back.

Marketing

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. For marketing projects, there are a few good places to get started.

There is a Community Marketing Guide at:

http://guides.mozilla.org/Marketing

The Mozilla marketing group is also a good place to find out what others are talking about and talk about your ideas:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.marketing/topics

Every two weeks we also have an open marketing call. If you keep subscribe to the marketing list you'll see the call details and agenda.

If you have any questions about any of this, let me know.

Usability / User Experience

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If you're interested in browser design, I'd recommend checking out some of the opportunities related to our user experience projects.

Mozilla Labs has regular design challenges focused on interface design innovation:

http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/

There is a list of visual bugs that you can help us fix at:

http://areweprettyyet.com

You can also check out Test Pilot to try some of the newest and coolest user-interface ideas:

https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/

I'd also encourage you to read through and post on the usability group at:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.usability/topics

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to write me back.

QA

Hi,

We're happy to hear of your interest in Mozilla QA. Our team consists of five groups Web QA, Browser Technologies, Automation, Services, and Desktop Firefox.

You can see a quick overview of our teams in this page: http://quality.mozilla.org/

Depending your area or areas of interest I can help you explore some of the things you can help with.

We've just started a new development process that should allow us to release a few new features in the browser every six weeks, as opposed to tons of features every year or so. We are going to need lots of help tracking the status of new features, creating test plans for new features, creating test cases, testing these new features and making sure these are in good shape before they are deemed ready to go out in a specific release. You can see a list of features we are working on: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Firefox

Many of those features currently have no QA ownership, so depending on your interest and how much time you can invest, you could for example take on one of those features to test it. Of course, there are many more things we do on a daily basis which you can engage in to become familiar with the project before you commit to "owning" a feature. These tasks include triaging bugs that have been filed by community members but which have not been confirmed, verifying new bugs fixes, finding regression ranges for identified issues and so on.

If you'd like you can also come to one of our weekly testdays, where we gather on irc://irc.mozilla.com/#testday and we go through some of the tasks I described above. It's a good opportunity to say hi and get to know the team and other volunteers and try on some new features or just hang out. These happen every Friday from 8am to 5pm Pacific time, and you can find details of upcoming testdays and other events on http://quality.mozilla.org/

Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks you for your interest in participating in the project.

<< Your Name and Role >>

Add-ons

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. For more information about add-ons, I'd recommend taking a look at the Add-on Developer Hub. This site has documentation, tools and ways to get in touch with other people interested in add-on development.

https://addons.mozilla.org/developers/

There's a also the Add-ons Forum, where you can post questions and talk with other add-ons developers.

https://forums.addons.mozilla.org/

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

Firefox Suggestions

Thanks for your suggestion about Firefox. I'd encourage you to look at the available add-ons to see if there's already something that does what you are interested in.

https://addons.mozilla.org/

You may also be interested in creating your own add-on to add this feature. You can learn more about how to do that at

https://addons.mozilla.org/developers/

or

Thanks for your interest in providing feedback about Firefox.

I'd recommend trying out the new Firefox 4 release to see the latest features we've been working on. You can download that at

http://www.mozilla.com/

After trying that out, you can share your thoughts at

http://input.mozilla.com/release/feedback

If you're already using Firefox 4 and want to see what will be coming in the next version of Firefox, you can try installing a nightly build at

http://nightly.mozilla.org/

Mirrors

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. There is information about how to take part in our mirror network at:

http://www.mozilla.org/community/mirroring.html

You are also welcome to join the mirrors mailing list which is used to notify mirror admins of impending releases and changes to mirroring policy.

http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mirrors

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

Labs

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. If you're interested in learning more about Mozilla Labs, I'd recommend checking out the following links:

http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/

http://mozillalabs.com/how-to-get-involved/

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write back.

Security

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. To learn more about our security process, I'd recommend taking a look at our Security Center and then checking out and posting to our security group.

http://www.mozilla.org/security/

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.security/topics

If you have any questions about this, let me know.

Accessibility

Thank you for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. To learn more about our accessibility efforts, please take a look at the Mozilla Accessibility Wiki at:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility

I'd also encourage you to read through recent posts on the accessibility group and post there with information about what you're interested in:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.accessibility/topics

If you have any questions about this, let me know.

Support

Thanks for your interest in helping people with support questions and welcome to the Mozilla community.

A great way to get started with helping users is to use our Army of Awesome page to quickly respond to questions people have about Firefox. You can find it at:

http://support.mozilla.com/army-of-awesome

If you're interested in finding about other ways to get involved with our support community, the following page has some useful information:

https://support.mozilla.com/kb/superheroes-wanted

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write me back.

Firefox Question

For questions about using Firefox, please visit our support site at

http://support.mozilla.com/

or

I'd suggest using our Live Chat service to talk to someone in our support community about this.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Live+Chat?new_chat

or

Many crashes are due to out of date plug-ins and add-ons, so I'd suggest using our plugin checker to check for old plug-ins. You can also try uninstalling any add-ons you have installed to see if that helps.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Uninstalling+add-ons

If neither of those things work, I'd suggest using our Live Chat service to talk to someone in our support community about this.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Live+Chat?new_chat

Careers

For information about available careers, please check out our career site at

http://www.mozilla.com/about/careers.html

Students

If you're interested in talking to other students participating in Mozilla as part of a class or if you're interested in finding out more about projects that are well suited to students, I suggest taking a look at the Mozilla Education site at

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Education/

Drumbeat

Thanks for your interest in getting involved with Mozilla. There's more information about what Drumbeat is and how you can get involved at

http://www.drumbeat.org/about

I'd also encourage you to read through and post to the drumbeat forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.community.drumbeat/topics

Testing

Thanks for your email and welcome to the Mozilla Community.

You can download a nightly version of Firefox to help test what is coming in Firefox 5. You can download that at

http://nightly.mozilla.org/

The following page has information about how to test and report feedback on the nightly.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield/

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to post to our QA forums at:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.quality/

Localization

Thanks for your email and welcome to the Mozilla Community.

Localization is a very important area and there are many opportunities for getting started on a project.

If there is a specific language you are interested in, let me know and I can connect you to the right localization team. For a general overview of the localization process, check out the pages at

https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n

You're also welcome to read through and post to the localization forums at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/topics

or

Thanks for your email and welcome to the Mozilla Community.

To get started on a project, I'd suggest contacting members of the LOCALE localization team to learn more about where they need help. You can find their contact information at

https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Teams:??

For a general overview of the localization process, check out the pages at

https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n

You're also welcome to read through and post to the localization forums at

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/topics

Website Feedback

By the way, if you're interested in helping us improve our web sites even more, you're certainly welcome to get involved.

Our web sites are run as open projects and there are plenty of opportunities to get involved with web QA, web development and more.

Here are some links if you're interested in learning more.

http://quality.mozilla.org/teams/web-qa/

http://blog.mozilla.com/webdev/get-involved/

If you have any questions about any of this or would like to talk more, feel free to write me back.

Firefox 4 Toolbar Questions

Firefox 4 has all of the same features from earlier versions, although some of the toolbar buttons have been hidden to make more room for web pages.

You can change the default toolbar settings in Firefox 4 and set things up however you like. The following support articles have information about how to show, add and move toolbars and toolbar items.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-happened-bookmarks-toolbar

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/how-do-i-customize-toolbars