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Firefox Seeks Full Page Ad in New York Times

blakeross writes "Join us over at Spread Firefox as we raise funds for the most ambitious launch campaign in open source history. A portion of each donation will go towards taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times celebrating the release. All donors will be listed in the ad, the signatories of a declaration of independence from a monopolized and stagnant web."

19 of 753 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by Cougar_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apart from Slashdot, I can't find a page that doesn't render just fine in Firefox

  2. Portion of the donations by Portigui · · Score: 5, Informative
    The poster mentioned that a "portion" of each donation will go towards taking out the add. This made me curious as to what the rest of the donation was going towards and I found this in the FAQ.
    This effort will fund not just the full-page ad, but also a large portion of other launch-related expenses and thus make an important contribution to the Mozilla Foundation's bottom line.
    I also thought it would have been interesting to see a mock-up of what they are intending to submit.
  3. Re:Ummmm.... by MvD_Moscow · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's called marketing, better something than nothing. If you've got some better ideas send them to the Moz Marketing mailing list.

    http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/marketing-public

  4. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

    I can't RTFA (/.'d) but for all but the odd website here or there, I find firefox renders as the author intended. I won't say correctly since I believe in most cases, firefox is rendering correctly, just the author/site deesigner wrote for a broken browser (IE).
    I can browse slashdot, do my banking, pay my bills, hit a few of the forums sites I frequent, use several different webmail programs, order flowers for my wife, buy plane tickets, book a rental car, etc. etc. all through Firefox. The odd site that breaks when I browser to it, gets ignored, and I move to the next google result.

  5. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by Enonu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wow, talk about pessimism.

    Every single person I've converted to Firefox from IE has been more than pleased. All the techies I know have already converted, and the newbies appreciate Firefox's clean-cut, easy-to-use interface just as much if not more than IE's. It's also been shown by numerous studies across the web that Firefox/Mozilla has sizable market share now, making it force to drive the web. For example, w3Schools reports 17% for October of this year.

    In other words, I already see the public making the change you think isn't happening. I also believe that it's only going to get better from here.

  6. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by fimbulvetr · · Score: 5, Informative

    BS.

    I login to citibank.com at least once a month. I click the "Sign on to"->credit cards button.
    I login, pay my bill surf, and leave.
    I login to usbank constantly, as well as my local credit union. None bicker about the browser.

  7. Re:What is the cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Around $120,000 depending on which section. To get the best part it will easily run you two to three times that.

  8. Re:What is the cost? by roj3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The ad cost is normally over $100K.. HOWEVER.. there is a special, highly discounted rate for non-profits. The rate is the "advocacy advertising rate."
    There are further discounts when you are flexible on the date that the ad will run. This one will run within a 3 week window.

  9. Re:What is the cost? by heytal · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the FAQ:

    # How much does the ad cost?

    As a non-profit organization, the Mozilla Foundation will receive a highly discounted rate. Being flexible with the placement of the ad and the date that it runs also lowers the cost. ...

    The ad will not necessarily run on the day Firefox 1.0 comes out (November 9), because we get better pricing if we provide a (small) window of time rather than an exact date.

  10. Re:How much? by roj3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Mozilla Foundation is a NON PROFIT organization. 501(c)3.

    The campaign is a fundraiser for the launch of Firefox 1.0. Look.. for $30 you get your name in the New York Times -- the first ever full page ad for Firefox.

  11. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by SoTuA · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yet none of the page fonts look the way they do under IE. Under IE the page fonts look clean and crisp. Under Firefox they look like blocky text. Reminds me of what Netscape and Mozilla looked like under X.

    To wich I say "WTF"? I can't see anything different re: the fonts.Can you?

  12. Re:How much? by linuxci · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is suspicious about this? The spread firefox website is linked to in recent builds of Firefox (Help > Promote Firefox), Blake Ross is one of the original Firefox developers and has written the Firefox guidebook. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organisation and therefore all money made has to go to furthering the foundation

  13. Re:Am I missing something? by roj3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    actually all the names will be reviewed (by me). We will only be including real, verifiable names.

    I had also thought that some might try to have URLs or "Lisa Simpson" or "Seymore Butz."

  14. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by PeterPumpkin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Firefox can't render custom scrollbars or formfields

    Oh no custom scrollbars! The world is ending! :P To customize form fields, add "-moz-appearance: none !important;" to the field's style, and then add style accordingly.

    Having to ditch extensions entirely everytime there's an upgrade

    Not anymore. Having upgraded from 0.9.3 to 0.10, it automatically updated extensions. Some didn't have equivalents right away, but soon did later. This won't be a problem anymore, as they aren't going to change the architecture anytime soon.

    Having to restart the browser everytime you install an extension

    And IE is any different?

    Adblock doesn't block ads nearly as well as IE with Admuncher installed (it even blocks text ads!)

    Um. Troll alert. Admuncher is a system level ad filter. It is browser/program agnostic.

    The TalkBack agent appears way too often for my tastes.

    What are you really trying to say? :P

    The only reason I switched in the first place was tabbed browsing.

    I doubt it. You didn't switch to simply try it out, like 99.9% who use/used firefox?

    But you can get SlimBrowser or Avant Browser now and they'll add tabbed functionality to IE.

    And, as everyone conveniently forgets to mention about these IE knockoffs, they come with their own security vulnerabilities along with all of IE's.

    And I'm sure IE7 will add tabs.

    Three cheers for vaporware!

  15. Re:Public needs to change to make the change... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 4, Informative

    * Firefox can't render custom scrollbars or formfields

    Show me the part of the css/html spec that defines this. I can show you the part of the faq that says its downright WRONG to do it.

    * Having to ditch extensions entirely everytime there's an upgrade

    Didn't happen when I switched from 0.9 to 1.0PR.

    * Having to restart the browser everytime you install an extension

    Yeah. Sucks. Same as IE though. Atleast with extentions like sessionsaver, restarting doesn't make you lose anything.

    * Adblock doesn't block ads nearly as well as IE with Admuncher installed (it even blocks text ads!)

    Adblock blocks text ads just fine. Anything that has its own display element is blockable (And this includes PRE, P, SPAN, DIV, etc.)

    * The TalkBack agent appears way too often for my taste

    Download a build with it disabled? I only see it when my browser crashes, which is only due to bad Java causing bad memory leaks.

    --
    Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
  16. Careful...don't get too full of yourselves by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 4, Informative

    I like and use Firefox. But to be perfectly honest, it isn't the huge leap over IE that people want it to be. The achievement has been in getting something to run as well as IE, which is monstrously difficult in itself (one of the very first times an open source group has equalled commercial software in terms of user experience).

    The primary benefits of Firefox are:

    1. Security. You don't get spyware and such. You can also get the same result if you disable ActiveX controls and other features in IE, but most people don't do this. If Microsoft changed the defaults--which they won't because many sites depend on them--then IE would be on part with FF.

    2. Tabbed browsing. This is a fairly small interface feature, though a very useful one. If Microsoft added it to IE--and they undoubtedly will, because it's easy to do--then there goes the biggest visible difference.

    I realize that FF has other nice features (and I fully agree with people who cite them, because, again, I like and use FF), but those are the biggies. And the big negative feature is simply this: Sites that rely on ActiveX controls don't work under FF. Yes, I know, security, blah, blah, blah, but most people only see the "not working" part.

  17. Re:Watch out! by goatpunch · · Score: 5, Informative
    Apple ran a great ad in the SJ Mercury when Windows 95 came out. It was a full two pages that just said: CONGRATU.LNS

    Wasn't it the slightly uglier and funnier:

    C:\ONGRTLNS.W95
  18. Re:Sheesh... by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Informative

    On Windows XP you can add /Prefetch:1 to the shortcut target. It makes Firefox load a ton faster, I'm not sure why they don't add it by default..