Firefox Phases
The following are guidelines for how we classify the various components of Firefox. We call them phases, or goals. The aim is to get you focused on the most important parts of Firefox. We aim to get you translating user facing strings before anything else. We also leave a bunch of strings to the end and classify a number that you can safely ignore. Following the phases you might never get a 100% translated Firefox. When you are done this phases help direct your focus, put your energy into new strings that your user will actually see.
Phases
The following are to be completed in the order that we list below. We give the phase name as well as a description of what might appear in that phase.
Must Translate
These are phases that we must complete to be included in a Firefox release. When translating new strings follow this order. Also when reviewing checks you can use this order so that you focus on the most important translations first.
| Phase | Details |
|---|---|
| langpack | Critical translations to be able to a build Firefox language pack. |
| androidshared | Shared between Desktop Firefox and Firefox Mobile. |
| tbshared | Shared between Desktop Firefox and Thunderbird. |
| user1 | Anything that appears when first starting, using menus or browsing the web in normal use e.g. File, Edit, View menus; Find bar at bottom, error pages, first run dialogues (Moving from secure to insecure pages, browsing offline, etc), About page, Rights notification. Excluded: some configuration menus that are too complicated, e.g. character set selection * One entry needed from ext ext/rep/ch/report* that appears in the help menu "Report Broken Web Sites" Translation related feature. |
| lang | Only do the most important languages (also read regions) i.e. your language and languages commonly refered to or used by your users. DO NOT translate everything! |
| user2 | Extensions/addons, Download manager, Bookmarks, Places, File browsing/downloading, Private Browsing, Session Restore, Sync, Video, PDF viewer, Health report, Crash reporter |
| user3 | Still focused on use: print dialogue, other XXX... menus accesible, Tab Groups WebRTC related features. |
| config1 | First layer of Preference dialog is translated including dropdowns |
| user4 | Page info, page source, page properties, report broken websites, dom inspector, about:rights page, about:permissions, profile reset, WebApps |
| config2 | All XXXX... are translated, e.g. Cookies, charset names, Advanced settings |
| install | Anything related to installation. Not critical as mostly people use languag packs but allows a team to focus on installation when needed. Also include migration |
| platform | platform specific configuration |
| other,1 | Everything not yet classified |
Optional
These you can do if you are targetting the specific audience mentioned.
| Phase | Details |
|---|---|
| developers | All web developer centric parts of Firefox. If web developers who speak your language mostly work in English then rather leave this untranslated. |
Safely Ignore
You can safely ignore any strings that appear in these phases.
| Phase | Details |
|---|---|
| security | Certificate lists, etc. Since most of this is not understood by anyone in English and most users will never see it rather leave it untranslated. If someone does see something here like an error it will make more sense to see it in English so that they can search the Internet for the error. |
| notnb | Not important stuff that you can safely leave right till the end. These are things like jokes and pages that nobody will ever see. Rather focus on areas that impact your users. |
| never | Things that we will never translate. Examples of things that you will see here are XML error messages. Since these are only translated into French, German and some other languages for the XML spec leave them untranslated. |