Currently the browser starts with the www.mozilla.org homepage. The alpha release might be a good opportunity to craft a start page that might be more appropriate. Items might include "Welcome to the Mozilla Alpha -- don't expect a finished product", "report bugs here", "here's what we're about", "we are NOT Netscape", etc. And of course a prominent link to the www.mozilla.org homepage. All things that exist on www.mozilla.org, but with links pulled together in a nice welcoming package. In addition this is *REALLY* needed for the mail component -- currently it starts with an annoying NETCENTER page advertising Communicator 4.7. That *has* to be stopped one way or another. A BLANK page would be better, really hurts the mozilla.org != Netscape story. If you guys think this is a good idea then bugs should also be filed on the browser to point to these new pages once they exist. (This idea shamelessly ripped off from an anonymous comment on MozillaZine)

we have been using the release note page for the last milestone builds. is that one ok for m12 or are we suggesting a new scheme for this milestone?

I suggest that such a start page is put locally to increase the startup time (at least the percieved one). My personal opinion is that the netcenter ad in the mail client should go away and that the space should NOT be used for any online content.

I could hack up a start page as described above -- including a prominent link to the release notes -- if required ... if so, how much time have I got to do it?

Added a new start page for mail/news at http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/start.html Since this page is meant for use by mozilla, some enterprising soul may want to reformat the document with css. As for the main start page, using the release notes is the right thing to do for milestone builds. I'll ask verah to add a link to bugzilla under 'releated links'. There's no hurry to come up with a special page just for the daily builds. Removing target milestone now that mail/ news is taken care of. I had originally wanted the new start page to be a new page created especially for testers that helps people get started testing and reporting bugs and serves as a demo of mozilla's capabilities. e.g. layout using css, if feature X enabled, then display special content (mathml, bidi, etc).

I think the start page issue is a non-issue by now. Reassigning to Asa for confirmation, suggesting worksforme.

Gerv put together a nice start page. I think we can probably close this out. Gerv?

Yeah. I can't believe this has been open for two years and no-one did anything about it :-( Gerv

vrfy fixed, better late than never