Earlier this week I wrote about Mozilla’s response to my answers to their web developer survey and how they were building strong ties and customer loyalty through communication. On top of taking the time to respond, the information they provided was very helpful. Below are excerpts from the e-mail I received from Alix Franquet in response to my feedback, as well as some comments about the items discussed.

You mentioned you had trouble finding versions of Firefox to test, so I wanted to point you to a couple of places that might help:

It’s true. One of the biggest frustrations I had with trying to help test pre-release versions of Mozilla products was actually finding them. Alix’s response addresses this concern.

– The Mozilla developer news blog will also have the latest release announcements and point to the download page and release notes: https://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/

This looks like a good place to start for anyone wanting to stay updated on the latest releases of Mozilla products, as well as a good source of information for developers and testers.

– The nightly builds of Firefox are available at: http://nightly.mozilla.org/

This is for those wanting to help test the latest bleeding edge version of Firefox.

– When a beta is released, it’s available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-beta.html – since there’s no beta right now you are redirected to the latest release (Fx 3.6) but this will change once we have a Fx 3.7 beta 1 out.

If you’re feeling a little less adventurous, but still want to test early releases, you can take the current beta version of Firefox for a spin. This will allow you to preview some of the new features and improvements, but in an environment that’s more stable and predictable than the nightly releases.

– Thunderbird’s early releases are available here: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

The go-to place for Thunderbird’s early releases, including everything from alpha versions to release candidates. What I like about this page is that it provides a one-stop shop for all of your Thunderbird testing needs. Want an alpha release? They’ve got it. Only interested in beta versions? They’re there too. You don’t have to hunt down each release at a different location.

– If you’re interested in joining our test community, you should check out http://quality.mozilla.org/ – we’re always looking for new people to be involved! You will get announcement for new releases and test days.

And finally, this is where to go for anyone interested in joining the test community. There you can do everything from test products to submit your own code. Or, for the less hands-on but equally important tasks, help find and reproduce bugs or analyze crash data and user feedback.

Thank you so much for your feedback, we’re going to work on making it easier to find the different versions.

Alix ends her response by saying they’re planning to make finding this information even easier in the future. I think that’s absolutely critical to garnering user feedback and important test data. If users can more easily find the test versions they’re looking for, it’ll be all the easier for Mozilla to receive the feedback that’s crucial to improving their products.