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NYTimes Reports on Firefox
Soldrinero writes "Just three days after running a community-sponsored two-page ad, the New York Times is now running a news story on Mozilla Firefox. Our favorite browser is presented in a very favorable light, and there's a good discussion on both Firefox's useability-enhancing features and its security merits. Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'"
Why an ad if they make a good article for free ?
Word of mouth advertising is the best. With the NYT article, and "geeks" like us spreading the word about Firefox, more and more people are starting to use it.
Just the other day, I had a friend who couldn't go to any site on the net without IE crashing and the Send Report box coming up (does anyone actually send the reports??). Anyway, she was getting frustrated, so I pointed her to Firefox's download site. She downloaded it and now uses it exclusively. She loves the look and feel and says it seems much faster in rendering sites. I told her there may be a couple sites she will have to use IE for, but for the most part, Firefox will work.
She said she is going to tell her friends about it. As I said earlier, word of mouth advertising is the best way to get the word out....especially for people that aren't very knowledgeable technology wise.
found here: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=blog/1742
IAAL
that'd be fine except for the fact that the average home user does not want to learn linux... at least not yet. working as a home support tech, I've learned that all people want is to have their computers "just work". Plus in a printer and it works/is easy to install. cameras, scanners, etc etc. until linux reaches a point where it's as simple as apple's OSX or windows XP, it's not going to happen.
I dont really understand what FireFox is so much better than Mozilla, and why its such a big deal. How is it an improvement over Mozilla? Ive heard from others it has fewer features and options, and a more dumbed down UI. Dumbed down UI != ease of use. I think the less customisability software has the harder it becomes to use, for newbies and experienced users alike. It becomes more difficult for the user to customise the software for their preferences and usage pattern, and more difficult to accomplish certian tasks. The trick with useability is not to remove customisbility, but rather make software as customisable as possible but simply design a good configuration user interface that places more commonly used options more prominantly than advanced one, such as through placing the more advanced options on advanced options screens or other such techniques, thus keeping the more advanced options from confusing newbies but allowing people to gradually begin using them and discover them (and making it easy to discover them by making them all avialable through a good UI) as they become familiar with software. People often start out using software by using a subset of its features and then gradually add to their knowledge of the software and use a more complete set of its features, and different users have different needs and will use different features sets. This is why software should be as customisable as possible and not try to restrict features and functionality, but rather allow the user to customise the software to their tastes. One feature that seems useless to one person is likely essential to someone else.
My love for Firefox is accentuated daily by comparison to my continued use of IE at work. Due to security issues (which one could argue are based on MS software in the firstplace) I, as an end user, cannot install Firefox. Now the obvious solution would be to have IT migrate the institution as a whole to a new browser, but that is unlikely to happen in this particular institution for a variety of reason (monolithic administration, that ironically enough is run by committee, overworked IT, etc, etc)....
So, there are two issues here: 1. Has anyone solved this problem at their workplace? 2. IE 'market share' will always be artificially inflated by the captive user at work, which will also decrease an 'average' users chance to be exposed to Firefox.
-F
Or, if you don't like registering to read NY Times articles, just go here.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
For example take this, they support Netscape7, but lock out Mozilla and Firefox.
The webmaster did not want to believe me when I told him those browsers are essentially the same (I had a rather lenghty email conversation with him), but he will when he gets enough complaints from enough different people.
Why do people always point out that there are some IE only sites left? I can't remember seeing one lately.
This bears repeating:
Joe User can't fix a Windows problem any more than he can fix a Linux problem.
To drive home the point, how about this very reference from this morning? It took a sysadmin with VERY MUCH clue 5 hours to nuke all the stuff off a Wintel machine, and all it takes for it to come undone is one little click on the IE icon.
I cleaned up a friend's machine last month. The father was sure the kids were surfing pr0n sites and nasty bits that he didn't want them to go into. To prove it wasn't their fault I logged on and I opened IE. We waited about 5 minutes with my hands off of the keyboard while we chatted about this 'n that. I logged off and re-ran the spyware and malware scanners. 50 hits in 5 minutes. He was stunned.
I couldn't get him to go to Linux, but at least he's running Firefox now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
If you're complaining that Slashdotters like to pick on MS a little too much, you're right. But in this case, it's MS unwittingly picking on itself.
Rather than introduce ActiveX to default Firefox builds, you could just leave IE installed on max security (block all ActiveX, among other things) and only certain trusted sites enforced by IEAK, while deploying Mozilla 1.7 for mainline use. That's what we do.
And it's not just ActX now, we had to check all of our PCs for JRE when the recent vulnerability was announced, and installing JRE5 does not uninstall the defective JREs, annoyingly.
Corporate installs of FF 1.1 and/or Moz 2 would be nice with MSIs and options to retain trusted plugins like Flash, Acrobat and dictionaries. It's very annoying having to reinstall dictionaries when upgrading Mozilla.
I was mentioning this ad in the New York Times the other day to someone at work, and their comment was, "Oh, too bad we can't get the NYT unless we drive across the city to the big bookstore."
Maybe instead of shooting for such an expensive ad that people would only see once, perhaps donations could be made by people and groups to advertise Firefox in their local newspapers, where it is sure to be seen by more people, and cheap enough it could run more then once.
Hey, I'd donate $50 to have it appear in my local newspaper (that would be a small ad in the corner of a page), and if I asked some of my friends I am sure enough could be raised to see it appear more prominently towards the front and in a much more larger size.
I wonder if the foundation who put together the big ad would be interested in such an idea, or even fellow slashdotters?
Firefox is better than Mozilla because it does one thing and does it well. Mozilla tries to be apprentice of many professions, master in none. This makes Firefox faster and more secure (the biggest your pile of code, the easier it is to introduce bugs).
Obviously you have no idea about User Interface Design. When you are dealing with a set of users (web surfers) that are not familiar with a given field of expertise (IT, Computers) the last thing you want to do is to burden them with too many choices and seetings. A reminder of this is the mythical clock on VCRs (always blinking in 00:00). You want to offer only the important settings and keep as much as possible under the hood with sensible defaults. Firefox improves on Mozilla on this regard but I think it could do even better.
It is a well documented fact in User Interface Design that the more complex and rich an interface is the more confussed a newbie will be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Errm... "yum install foo"
How do you expect the novice or casual user to become comfortable with using the command line?
OpenOffice?
OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.
I had the same XPerience. I had installed XP SP1 on a system and deliberately turned OFF Windows Updates because I DID NOT WANT SP2 on that box. I noticed a couple of hours later that Internet access was kind of slow on my network, and when I went downstairs I saw that the cable modem light was on solid. At first I thought I'd been cracked and was running someone's DDOS attack, but then I looked at that XP machine ... sure enough, it was downloading Service Pack 2 even though I'd explicitly told it not to. They really want SP2 out there regardless of whether users want it. No need to slam the parent poster for Microsoft's arrogant (or ignorant, who knows) behavior. All I know is it pissed me off pretty thoroughly too.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
How do you expect the novice or casual user to become comfortable with using the command line?
There are graphical alternatives to that you know...
Besides, it's frequently been suggested that people who haven't used computers before are much happier dealing with a commandline than a GUI. (Can't find the URIs ATM but there have been studies that provide evidence for this).
OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.
I'm not convinced that "novice or casual" users use free form databases like Access - i.e. if they want to store addresses they'll use a contact manager, etc. instead of designing their own database to do it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
You can argue that Windows has superior software selection and installed user base. But you can't argue that it's not a broken piece of shit that is beyond repair.
A ground up rewrite is their best bet, and there's no way micros~1 will do that anytime soon.
But thanks for the most ignorant, mis-informed fallacy in a 2-line slashdot post, and your last line was only 1 word long.
The Farewell Tour II
Just the other day, my web designer complained that the only truly cross-browser javascript he trusted to work in all browsers was warn() and maybe onclick(). Even then he wasn't 100% sure.
I don't think onClick() works quite the same in all browsers. Last week I was designing an interface where I wanted to tie a help-window popup to disabled checkboxes and I seem to remember onClick() in the disabled checkboxes working for one of Safari or Firefox but not the other. A little question mark to the side now serves this function, taking up more space, but probably more usable too...
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers