I dig the Spread Firefox website. It's clean, colorful where it needs, pretty easy to use. It does very well to provide a place to empower and manage evangelism about the wonderful web browser but I can't help but think they left out one detail.
What if a new, completely green user stumbles upon this website looking to download Firefox? With so many blog entries linking to this site and how it's ranked in Google it's possible there are a lot of potential users coming to the site.
Now I understand that Spread Firefox isn't meant for distributing software, yet nothing really stands out that says 'Download' or 'Get' in the main navigation. The only link provided to "Get Firefox" above the page fold is a small badge located under a login box on the left side (opposite the site navigation).
This is probably fine for a good portion of users but when you're in the middle of a browser land war, you can't afford to let users slip by. Especially when you're trying to deflate an 800 pound gorilla like Microsoft. I would suggest that the good people at Spread Firefox add a prominent download link across the top of the page, throughout the site. You'll excuse the lack of the FF Meta, I don't have that font in the library.
Of course the simple addition of a Download tab would help a lot. The combination of both would possibly assure that no one falls through he cracks.
Go Fox!
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Great point. Have you sent it to actsofvolition.com? Steven is working with Mozilla and Firefox on branding and usability and could get the mockup in front of the folks that matter.
Also, I loved that your mockup was done in IE. Hilarious.
Interestingly enough, I was thinking this same thing. It's mostly because I ended up on the Spread Firefox site somehow during one of my surfing sessions, and decided I'd download it to make sure I had the most recent version. I couldn't remember when I last grabbed it. I'm not a web newbie by any means, but I'll be if I could find a download link easily. I was looking for one of the many badges they make available on the site to indicate a download!
I haven't been too involved in the SpreadFirefox.com site, but I'm not passing the buck - I'll talk to the SpreadFirefox.com guys and let you know. Good suggestion.
I was also thinking that the website should also sniff the browser you are using and serve up a link appropriate to your situation, be it using Internet Explorer, Safari, Omni, or an older version of Firefox.
Damn straight.
Good call.
The Fox Rox.
Yeah the small download banner is too hard to find. It took me too long to find it and yes a browser sniffer would be nice. The site worked too nice in my IE6 to make me want to change. :)
check out this post over at DigitalMediaMinute:
http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1087/use-ie-flaw-to-promote-firefox
his is a great idea, so IE users see what they're missing in a sense.
But he links to spreadfirefox.com. i thought just what you did Greg, and did my own version of this, but linking straight to the mozilla.org download page for FF. too many people (savvy and not) will have trouble finding the download for now...
send em straight to it!
We (I say "we" because I'm one of the sfx admins and not because I have a fondness for the Queen's English) did at one point have a prominent download link, but it got removed to conserve real estate and keep the campaigns as the focus. At any rate, your feedback's been heard and will no doubt meet with some discussion among the sfx cabal. Thanks for the comments!
Well, I think it's great to get good feedback like this on Spread Firefox. I'll certainly see what I can do as I work up the redesign for the Drupal 4.5 conversion.
I agree that finding the download link is all but unintuitive right now--but that's not simply by omission. We actually intended SFX to be for the Firefox community--that is, those who ALREADY have the browser and want to help spread the word. Therefore it was a conscious decision to make the download link somewhat inconsequential on the page... However, now that we're getting a lot more general hits, I think it's time that we used the site for the dual purpose of promoting Firefox as well as creating community.
In fact, in the redesign I hope to make a much broader difference between the content served to the general, not-logged-in users and what gets served to actual SFX members. Perhaps the large download banner could either be displayed with the kind of hack mentioned on Digital Media Minute or I could only display the banner when you're not logged in. Any thoughts?
I don't think the Spread Firefox website needs to be dual purposed, it just needs an easy to find link to the distribution website. If you're running low on screen real estate then use something shorter, but I do think the link should be kept on top, under the navigation.
Jim's idea is a good one but it only targets Internet Explorer users, whereas if you use the data already being sniffed by your web servers you won't have to bother creating display hacks for every browser or have to use cookies to decide if the user needs to see the link.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing Greg. Where the hell do I download it? ;-D
It is a good suggestion, but how would your demonstrated idea work in practice? The site isn't fixed width, but your image would be.. Splitting the image into sections and using background-repeat could work, but there might be some rather stretched out sections.
Nonetheless, yours in an important point.
You know what struck me most - your pngs were previewed your images in IE.
Um, I had no trouble spotting the download button, surrounded as it was in a sea of white. Planethalder.
I think you should have run further with the browser detection idea Greg. If a user comes to the site with Firefox, the GetFirefox banner div should display:none. If they're using most other browsers they should see the banner. Finally, if they're using IE...they should see the banner and shortly thereafter be redirected to browsehappy.
I think it's a great idea! However, you should remove "click here" from the beginning, since it's pointless, and because they bug the hell out of me, then it would fantastic! You should let the SFX team know about the idea, if you haven't already.