Firefox 3 Help Documentation?

As we’re getting a better overview of what to expect with the upcoming Firefox 3 release, it’s time to decide what end-user documentation we want to include in all locales. In Firefox 2, there is an in-product help available (Help > Firefox Help in the menu) with a specific set of topics.

The in-product documentation has traditionally covered the basics, such as how to navigate a web page, and references like keyboard shortcuts and the Options/Preferences window. While that general approach still makes sense, Firefox 3 includes new exciting features that we might want to cover as well. For example, Places and the “Awesome bar” might be features that we’d rather introduce our users to than how to manage cookies.

Since we are going to use SUMO (support.mozilla.com) as the new “in-product” help (technically, no longer in-product), we are planning on doing a content migration from the current content to SUMO for all locales that have translated content. This would save a lot of time for the localizers, who would then only have to update the content for Firefox 3, rather than writing (or copying & pasting) everything from scratch. The script is mostly done; we just need to decide what we want to do with the current content. What should be kept? What should be added? What should be removed? What about its structure?

I’ve started a discussion thread in mozilla.support.planning. Firefox 3 developers and support content writers: please join the discussion and help figuring out what content we need!

Note that the English version of SUMO will eventually cover all new features in Firefox 3; this discussion is just about the subset of articles that we want to declare as part of the in-product help experience, and as such, in need of localization/translation.