Mozilla debuts new Firefox first run page
You know that web page you see when you start Firefox for the first time? If you are a long time Firefox user, maybe you don’t remember it and haven’t seen it in a long while. But it happens to be very important for Mozilla’s goal to increase user retention, so a team was formed to improve the previous version and create a new one that highlights a small number of Firefox features: the search bar, extensions, security and tabs.
I guess everyone has its preferences but I am not sure if tabs should be the first one listed. If it’s interpreted by the first time user as “this is our most innovative feature” and he happens to be an Internet Explorer 7 users, we can probably count him out. I think the spell checker and session restore (even if just mentioned as a tabbed browsing sub-feature) could do a great job in capturing new users’ attention.
John Slater, Mozilla Creative Director, says it is just the first in a series of tries so we’ll see how this goes on.
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September 5th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Thanks Percy. That’s a good point about the tabs. In this case, we weren’t necessarily trying to show off the most innovative features, just ones that made an immediate and easily understandable impact. We actually had more features listed on that particular panel but took them out in order to be as simple & direct as possible. (plus, we still get quite a few converts from IE6)
But, as you noted, this is the first step, not the final one. There will definitely be future iterations of this page, so we’ll see where it leads.
Stay tuned!
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September 5th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Great to see that Mozilla isn’t resting on its laurels here. Every IE user won over is another chip off the huge, mountainous Microsoft mountain.
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September 6th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Swap #1 & #4 and you have a better list. Tabs are so common now with all browsers now-a-days. Add-ons are what lead me to Firefox and what has kept me with Firefox.
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September 6th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Nice, spanish article bout this at DifundeFirefox.com, thx for this good news! ^^
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September 8th, 2007 at 11:31 am
1) The “Click on the close button on this tab to go to your home page” bubble doesn’t line up unless you’re set up to show the close buttons on each tab and you’re running the Windows XP theme (I use Windows Classic).
2) You don’t “click” Ctrl-T, you press Ctrl-T.
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September 13th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Very good. Nice slide effect. Good thing for new user rediscovering the web.
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April 25th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Exciting! I am sure that Mozilla will kill IE
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