A guide to linking to support articles

How do in-product links to SUMO articles work? http://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/%VERSION%/%OS%/%LOCALE%/TOPIC Examples: /1/firefox/13.0a2/Darwin/en-US/prefs-privacy /1/firefox/13.0a2/Darwin/en-US/36eol Do version os and locale really matter? jsocol sez (Backseat meeting): locale matters, it saves a redirect and time. otherwise these are unused in most, if not all, current redirects the /firefox/ ("product") part is used but all versions of Firefox since the inception of SUMO use this format so we have to keep supporting it so what's the motivation to change? No change is being requested at the moment :-) if we change, start with /2/ Thanks jsocol (oops I tried to tab complete). URLs on SUMO that being with /1/firefox/ (and then a bunch of variables) are targets for buttons or links within the browser chrome. For example, if you open the Options/Preferences panel, every tab and page has a "[Help]" button on it. When you click that, Firefox will open, for example, support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/14.0a2/WINNT/en-US/options-security (for some values of '%VERSION%', '%OS%' and '%LOCALE%'. The last part of the path is called the "topic." If you just click "help" from the menu, you'll get no topic, and just be sent to the home page.) Fennec chrome support URLs should start /1/mobile (or something, we haven't yet made them do this) to distinguish the product. The tuple (product, version, os, locale, topic) determines where the user actually goes. This allows the SUMO team to change the target of the Help button without breaking links/buttons in Firefox. (We have specific targets for all the topic values, and sometimes we can split apart users from OS X or Windows to the most relevant articles, or those with old/specific versions of Firefox, etc.) If this content[1] is being served via the web and is _not_ shipped with the browser, you don't need to (and shouldn't) use the so-called In-Product Redirect system, for two reasons: 1) You (likely) can't fill in all of the relevant values. Firefox can because it's doing this in chrome-privileged code. 2) People don't need to download a new version of Firefox to update the link. This content lives on servers? Just link to the relevant support articles. (Leave out the locale, e.g. just use support.mozilla.org/kb/<whatever-slug>.) If the SUMO team changes the correct target for the Learn More link, they'll need to leave a redirect in place and file a m.o bug to update the link.

How do in-product links to SUMO articles work? http://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/%VERSION%/%OS%/%LOCALE%/TOPIC Examples:

   /1/firefox/13.0a2/Darwin/en-US/prefs-privacy

   /1/firefox/13.0a2/Darwin/en-US/36eol

Do version os and locale really matter? jsocol sez (Backseat meeting):

   locale matters, it saves a redirect and time.

   otherwise these are unused in most, if not all, current redirects

   the /firefox/ ("product") part is used

   but all versions of Firefox since the inception of SUMO use this format

   so we have to keep supporting it

   so what's the motivation to change?

   No change is being requested at the moment :-)

   if we change, start with /2/

Thanks jsocol (oops I tried to tab complete). URLs on SUMO that being with /1/firefox/ (and then a bunch of variables) are targets for buttons or links within the browser chrome. For example, if you open the Options/Preferences panel, every tab and page has a "[Help]" button on it. When you click that, Firefox will open, for example, support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/14.0a2/WINNT/en-US/options-security (for some values of '%VERSION%', '%OS%' and '%LOCALE%'. The last part of the path is called the "topic." If you just click "help" from the menu, you'll get no topic, and just be sent to the home page.) Fennec chrome support URLs should start /1/mobile (or something, we haven't yet made them do this) to distinguish the product. The tuple (product, version, os, locale, topic) determines where the user actually goes. This allows the SUMO team to change the target of the Help button without breaking links/buttons in Firefox. (We have specific targets for all the topic values, and sometimes we can split apart users from OS X or Windows to the most relevant articles, or those with old/specific versions of Firefox, etc.) If this content[1] is being served via the web and is _not_ shipped with the browser, you don't need to (and shouldn't) use the so-called In-Product Redirect system, for two reasons: 1) You (likely) can't fill in all of the relevant values. Firefox can because it's doing this in chrome-privileged code. 2) People don't need to download a new version of Firefox to update the link. This content lives on servers? Just link to the relevant support articles. (Leave out the locale, e.g. just use support.mozilla.org/kb/<whatever-slug>.) If the SUMO team changes the correct target for the Learn More link, they'll need to leave a redirect in place and file a m.o bug to update the link.