MDN/Archives/Development/Redesign/Testing

MDN is undergoing a major redesign with improved visual style, layout, page customization options, navigation, and platform features. To ensure that the redesign is the best it can be, we have made it available to anyone who would like to help with beta testing. Remember that this is a beta, so while we are correcting issues quickly, you may discover some bumps along the way.

Overview of changes

The most notable differences include the new visual style and the new layout. Updates have also been made to the homepage, to site navigation, and to major features such as site search. Additionally, some topics like Firefox OS and Web Apps are now represented as Zones, documentation sections with secondary navigation and improved landing pages.

Testing

We would love for you to go around the site and take a look at everything. Try reading documentation, editing pages and making other site contributions. Remember that even though you will see our new design, you will be working with the same documentation everyone else sees. Any changes you make will be seen by all users, whether they are testing the beta or not.

Suggestions

Looking for some ideas? Try testing out the following.

• Documentation: Read our documentation just as you normally would. Pay attention to code samples, images and videos. Some documentation, especially lesser-known documentation, has not yet been updated to fit with this new design. Let us know if you come across anything that looks off.
• Homepage: Is the content of the homepage valuable to you? How about the positioning, size and style of this content?
• Navigation: Try getting around using only major site navigation. Can you find the information you need?
• Search: Try out the improved search system. Consider both the experience of searching and the quality of search results.
• Performance: How is performance? Is it better or worse than it was with the old design?
• Editing: How is the experience of editing? (Remember, your edits will be seen by everyone, whether they are testing the beta or not.)
• Template editing: Assuming you have the account privilege, how is the experience of editing templates? (Again, remember that your edits will be seen by everyone.)
• Responsive Design: The new design supports many different screen resolutions. How is the experience of using MDN on a tablet, phone, or other device?

Sharing feedback

Let us know what you think! Bug reports, change requests and general feedback are all welcome. The more feedback you share, the better the design will be.

There are many ways to contact us.

• Before anything else, please file one bug for each piece of feedback you want to share. We would love to hear from you on IRC and through our mailing lists, but if a bug is not already filed we will probably ask you to do so. Remember to use this form for all redesign feedback, as it will group feedback appropriately and ensure that the team sees it.
• Join the conversation in IRC. You can meet us in #mdn for general discussion, #devmo for discussion about documentation and #mdndev for discussion about development work that is underway.
• Join our mailing lists. The documentation community can be reached on dev-mdc@mozilla.org and the platform development community can be reached on dev-mdn@mozilla.org. When contacting the team through these mailing lists, please be specific and group your feedback into paragraphs or numbered lists.

Thanks!

We are very excited to be launching the beta of this new design, and are even more excited to be working with you to make it better. Thank you for all of your feedback.