Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio )

A command line view of IT

« Wordpress fixes password reset security flaw | Sean Michael Kerner Blog | Apple patches Mac OS X for BIND DNS - 2 weeks late!? »

Mozilla Firefox Test Pilot takes off

By Sean Michael Kerner on August 12, 2009 3:11 PM

From the 'Yo Quiero Mozilla' files:

Eight months ago, Mozilla announced a new effort called Test Pilot to help get user feedback. Today Mozilla is now making that effort available with the Test Pilot add-on for Firefox.

The basic idea is that the add-on will make users part of the Test Pilot community where Mozilla will give users various tests. The whole effort is supposed to sanitize any personal information to protect individual user privacy.

"As a Test Pilot, you will not only be able to try out the newest features and user interface ideas before anyone else, but also see and learn how those results may contribute back to the product design," Mozilla states in a blog post.

It's an interesting idea and one that I suspect will have good traction for Mozilla. After all, Mozilla's products are all opt-in (on Windows at least).

Then again, I don't see Mozilla as having had difficulty getting people to try out new things in the past. Think of the recent Firefox 3.5 release, the beta releases (arguably a type of test) were widely used by tens of thousands of users.

The way I see Test Pilot is as a way to get even more feedback, for a number of different things, ranging from new features to usage behavior.

One interesting thing, to point out is that Mozilla is using its traditional add-on method (for now) to get the Test Pilot extension used instead of the next generation Jetpack add-on approach.

I signed up and got the add-on and the first test is actually a 9 question survey that was a lot wider than the 1024x768 resolution I have (yeaah i know..but that's the resolution I use for writing).

No email signup was required, I assume they've got my IP address as part of the HTTP request but beyond that no personal info was asked for or given. The questions were basic enough, just an attempt to baseline the user demographic in terms of equipment, age and knowledge.

Once this program ramps up, Mozilla will have its own on-demand army of users that will provide answers and stats. It'll be interesting to see what numbers actually come out of this program and how much it will influence future technology releases from Mozilla.

Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) | Share