Firefox Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 97. Find the Right Forum for Your Issues

Find the right people to discuss the outcomes
of your Firefox investigations with.

There are lots of places in the Mozilla community where you can
participate. If you walk in blindly, you can accidentally spoil the
ambience of the forum you've chosen and raise the
ire of the other participants. This hack explains the range of places
to go.

Overall, finding a spot to participate depends on several dimensions.
One thing to consider is whether you want to acquire information
(pull), deliver information
(push), or swap information
(converse). Another is whether you want to be
objective and analytical or subjective and expressive.

9.8.1. Picking Forums for Pulling Information

You can look for information that's feather-light
and simple or that's deeper and more technical.
Starting with the lightest, here are some suggestions. Overall, there
are numerous web pages on the topics of Mozilla and Firefox. Search
engines such as Google are your friends. Seek and you will find:

For marketing hype, the evangelism zoo, and the sound of drums, try
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/.

For an informed, independent overview, search for
Firefox at http://www.wikipedia.org.

For more sedate news, public issues, and progress updates on the
product release cycle, try http://www.mozillazine.org or http://www.mozillanews.org.

The bulletin board forums at http://forums.mozillazine.org are packed with
useful conversations, common issues, and problem-solving discussions
from the fan base.

The Mozilla Foundation's own web site (http://www.mozilla.org) contains a huge and
eclectic mass of information. You'll never discover
it all by following the homepage links; use the search feature. There
are also numerous mailing lists, some closed and some public,
scattered throughout the web site.

The Mozilla Foundation newsgroups are archived at http://www.gmane.org. and at http://groups.google.com/groups?q=netscape.public.mozilla.*.

The Mozilla Foundation newsgroups at http://www.gmane.org. They
contain deeper technical discussion of the finer points, speculative
thinking, and the occasional technical summary from the core
developers.

The W3C (http://www.w3.org), ECMA
(http://www.ecma.ch), and IETF
(http://www.ietf.org) web sites
contain the authoritative documents on web-related standards.

Mozilla's Bugzilla database [Hack #98] at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org is the final
decision-making place for technical features and fixes. A great deal
of history is captured there.

The ultimate source of information on Firefox is, well, the source.
Read it at http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla or download a
copy [Hack #93] . Use the
CVS Log link when a specific file is displayed
to see its gory history.

9.8.2. Picking Forums for Pushing Information

Not everyone wants your information. Put it where it counts and where
it will be appreciated. From mostly subjective to mostly factual,
here's a range of options.

Current trends in Firefox self-promotion require that you build a web
site with an actively maintained blog and an RSS feed. Cover your
site with Firefox branding. Next, you must form good relationships
with other well-known self-promoters in order to cross-market and
expand your audience. Having done so, find people less organized or
newer than yourself. Demonstrate your expertise to them so that
others can observe your power. That consolidates your position. At
some point, you must produce content worth reading or using, but that
is increasingly less relevant. In short, it's all
rather medieval.

I'm a bad example to follow, since I mostly leave the work I do to speak for itself. I'm a lousy self-promoter. Any attempt to dazzle, dominate, or curry favor happens more by accident than by design.

There are Mozilla- or Firefox-specific news submission opportunities
everywhere. The ones with the greatest focus or greatest exposure for
technical Firefox audiences are at http://www.slashdot.org, http://www.spreadfirefox.com, http://www.mozillazine.org, and http://www.mozillanews.org.

Since Firefox is a web browser, web pages that demonstrate feature
use, abuse, or failure have a great deal of merit. Construct your
demonstration page, and then ask someone else in the community to
review it. Perhaps post its location in a forum.

Providing critiques of Firefox is a tricky business. If you are
negative about the product, you are unlikely to persuade any useful
person of anything. Just as all major software vendors are
solution providers, so too must you be. Provide
solutions, explanations, or ways forward if possible. If you need to
vent frustration, the USENET newsgroup http://www.w3.org and at the newer and more
speculative http://www.whatwg.org
where public feedback can be left. Do extra homework for these
forums.

9.8.3. Picking Forums for Conversations

If you want a conversation, there are also several places to go.

The forums at http://forums.mozillazine.org are a great
place to spend idle time. Some members there have consistently posted
10 messages a day for over a year. Choose the most general
after dark forums for such purposes. Some of
these forums are of more specific use, too.

The http://update.mozilla.org) is a place of
mixed fortunes for conversation. Some channels are highly technical,
and idle banter, or even insightful end-user remarks, are not
welcome. Look for a Firefox channel served by another network if you
want small chit-chat.

The