Mozilla launches Ideas platform to improve communication with its userbase

silversurfer

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Mozilla Ideas is a new platform by Firefox maker Mozilla to improve communication with the Firefox userbase. At its core, Ideas works similarly to Uservoice and other services of its kind. Firefox users and developers may post new content on the platform, and everyone else may comment and vote on the idea.

The introduction on the main page reveals Mozilla's intentions with the platform:
This is where we grow our next generation of ideas, designs, experiments and products. You can take a look at the big problems we're working on, challenges we're exploring and bring your ideas to the conversation as we shape up and ship our next generation of software and services.
The service is powered by Crowdicity, a third-party service. An account is required to interact with the service, e.g. to post new ideas, leave comments or vote. A Firefox account is not supported, but you may sign-in with any email address or by using social media accounts.
mozilla ideas
Users may access the latest, top voted, most discussed or even random topics on the Ideas platform. Current ideas include re-adding the compact interface option, improving the master password protection, or providing a higher contrast default theme.

A click on an idea displays its description, user comments, stats, and options to subscribe to the idea or give it a thumbs up vote. Mozilla employees participate on the site, but they are not highlighted in any way.

Ideas features challenges as well. These are topics that Mozilla would like to gather ideas for. Current challenges include "stay safe and private online", "search and navigate the web", or "customizing, extensions and themes".

Users of the site may publish ideas related to a challenge, and when you select one, all active ideas that have been posted already are shown.

Closing words​

Mozilla Ideas serves two main purposes: first, to improve communication with the Firefox userbase, and second, to move user posts from Mozilla's bug tracking site to the new Ideas platform. Mozilla employees are interacting on the Ideas platform, and it is likely that popular ideas will get the attention of the organization. Whether that will lead to changes on the platform remains to be seen.
 

Vasudev

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After upgrading to FF89 some menu items are moved up/down, my muscles seems to click on reload tab but it opens new tab and to delete bookmarks, the text is now Remove Bookmark instead of delete.
 
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Mozilla launched a new Ideas platform this June on the third-party platform Crowdcity. The main idea behind the platform was to bring users and Mozilla employees together to share ideas related to the Firefox web browser.

Registered users can post ideas and everyone else may vote on these ideas and leave comments. Mozilla would then decide whether to implement ideas in Firefox or not.

Six weeks later, Mozilla's Ideas platform looks like a ghosttown. Users are still publishing comments on the site but the last idea was posted three weeks ago to the site. Users are still submitting ideas, but are held in moderation when submitted. A quick test submission to the site confirmed this.

Site moderators have not published any new idea in the past three weeks. When you look at their activity, you find that they stopped their activities about three weeks ago.

The rest
 

silversurfer

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Mozilla could bring Vertical Tabs for Firefox

Users had voted to request Vertical Tabs for Firefox at the Mozilla Crowdicity community. The feedback portal, which was slow to pick up the pace, is abuzz with activity. A Product Community Manager at Mozilla, has finally responded to the request with good news. He wrote that since the request has emerged as a top idea in the community, it has been reviewed by the developers at Mozilla. They are looking at ways to improve the tab management, and are researching the possibility of adding support for Vertical Tabs in Firefox. This of course does not mean that the feature is certain to be added, which is why I wrote "could" instead of "will".

We don't know what Mozilla's implementation of Vertical Tabs could look like. Hopefully, it's not just a sidebar that auto-hides, we need to hide the tab bar from the top. For now, I think users can rejoice that the option is being explored, and keep our fingers crossed.
 

SpiderWeb

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They were on the right path on everything until the CEO fired all the developers for no rational reason. All Firefox needs to be great is full PWA support so people can use Firefox to run web apps.
 

silversurfer

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Mozilla is shutting down its Ideas platform and creating Mozilla Connect instead​

Ideas used the Crowdicity platform and users needed to create an account on the platform for interaction purposes.

Mozilla is sending out emails to users of its platform currently in which it informs them that it is shutting down Ideas; this is not the end of it all though, as Mozilla is working on creating Mozilla Connect, which will serve similar purposes. Mozilla Connect will be a community site that allows users and Mozilla employees to share ideas, provided feedback and interact with each other.

The email highlights several of the advantages of Mozilla Connect over Ideas:
  • Firefox account is supported.
  • Improved labeling system that helps everyone find posts quickly.
  • "Clearly defined areas" for ideas, feedback and discussions.
  • More participation by Mozilla employees.
Ideas content will be reviewed by Mozilla before the content is archived and personal data is deleted. The email does not make it clear whether Ideas content is migrated to the new platform or if Mozilla Connect is started from scratch. Mozilla did not include a date for the shutdown or the launch of Mozilla Connect in the email, but it promised that existing users will be informed about the launch first.
 

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