Mozilla.org Relaunched
mpeach writes "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look unfortunately, but, according to the Firefox 1.0 Roadmap, release candidates of the latest browser are getting closer by the day."
Why not actually compare it to the previous design they had?
I, for one, think they have made some great UI improvements. Most people don't hit moz.org seeking news and whatnot about the project. Instead, they just want to know where to get The Better Browser(TM). More than once, I've had to hold a few slower-than-I'd-like hands in finding where to download the latest and greatest version of Moz and variants. I just wonder why they featured FireFox so prominently and put the full version of Moz in the "bottom" row.
Slow news day or infatuated with Mozilla? Heck, I like Mozilla and use it at home and work, but I don't drop everything to see what's happened with their website in the last day. Gee willikers.
Here's some other fine articles which could probably have been posted:
Philadelphia Considering Free or Low Cost Wireless For All
Microsoft to Exploit Japan's Post Offices to deliver SP2 (their word, not mine!)
The Road Ahead, According to Steve Ballmer
X-Rays Reveal Mummy Faces (Low Cancer Risk to Mummy)
Owls Use Poop to Lure Beetles
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They shouldn't be using "Free download" as the prominent eye-catching link. "Free download" does not mean the software is free, only that it costs nothing to download it. This semantic fuzziness is often used by commercial software vendors (and spammers) as a way to entice people to download trial and/or crippled software. They should instead say something like "Free software", "Free to get, free to use", anything that doesn't have the bad vibe that comes with "free download"
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Links to the bleeding edge 1.8 Alpha versions are not immediately apparent...why?
That was the first thing I noticed, I'd have to guess they are trying to go more mainstream and make downloading their brower less ambiguous for the masses.
It seems the website knows what system I'm running, as they offer for me to download the OS X version of Firefox, yet the screenshot of it to the right shows the Windows version. It'd be nice if they tailored this page to me a bit more and showed a screenshot with OS X chrome.
It looks great. Awesome. Great new site.
Expect lets make it more clear that Moz is free. "Free Download" makes me think of a demo, or a trial, or the __download__ is free but might cost more later.
It should say "x is a FREE product. Free to own and use forever."