Slashdot Mirror
Speakeasy Embraces Firefox
xdavexxx writes "
Speakeasy, one of
the largest DSL providers in the United States,
recently announced that it will begin offering a specialized version of Mozilla Firefox to its customers. In
doing so, they are one of the first internet companies to offer an official
customized version of Firefox to its customers. This custom version of Firefox will
keep the Firefox
Google home page, but have the Speakeasy logo and feature a Speakeasy
toolbar filled with links recommended by Speakeasy. No money was exchanged
between the Mozilla Foundation
and Speakeasy, as Firefox is open
source and is freely available for use by anyone. Speakeasy's reasoning for this is simple;
to increase the reliability and speed of its internet service." It should be pointed that Slashdot (and OSTG) have a partnership with Speakeasy.
hope more companies start doing that
This isn't exactly new. When I signed up for dialup service through Southwestern Bell back around 1996 or so, I was mailed a CD with Netscape Communicator 4 branded with SWBell logos. I wonder what took so long to have this done with Firefox. After all, Firefox can trace its roots to Netscape. It is good to see Firefox being embraced by a rather large ISP, however.
What we need is sort of what AOL was rumored to be doing with the next version of Netscape - IE integration. Before the flames start, hear me out.
Some websites require IE right now. It would be nice for n00bs if they could use Firefox or any alternative browser without this worry. With an IE integration feature, we could amass a list of the websites that need IE rendering and Firefox could automatically render them with IE, if needed. Everything else gets Gecko. And maybe "the community" could put together an action team to help those on the list get off of the list.
Perhaps there could be job creation involved, to boot.
More
How they have modified it? Have they simply added their own set of extensions, sort of an "extension distribution", including a theme extension for branding purposes? Or, have they embedded part of the code in another "shell" of sorts? If so, what is the container technology, i.e. MFC/Java/C++, etc. Also, does this mean that it will be incompatible with Firefox, or at least not compatible with its extensions?
Well it is a double edged sword. What if the stuff they add makes the browser worse (like spyware)? I know of more than one software licence that required you to change the name of the product if you redistribute a changed version of the software to avoid people getting it confused with their "official" version of the software.
Back to the topic at hand, if pc venders such as HP or Dell would bulk it with their OS, and hide the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, numbers might increase.
I can see the average user wondering where the "internet" went, though...
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
So far they've been too adaptive for that.
They *were* adaptive until they had control of the marketplace. Now they dictate the standards and have very little incentive to innovate.
Until people embrace another OS in both the corporate environment and in the home, we're stuck with 'em.
That is correct. But large organizations that reach maturity in their marketplace get lethargic and develop so much bureaucratic momentum that when the change comes, it is usually fatal for the corporation. Only those with a good management structure can survive to keep themselves in the game (ala IBM).
Back to the topic at hand, if pc venders such as HP or Dell would bulk it with their OS, and hide the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, numbers might increase.
I agree, but what do you think the odds are for that happening?
I can see the average user wondering where the "internet" went, though...
I think people who have been using the internet for more than 10 years are already saying that. Those who enter the system 2 years from now probably won't miss a thing.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I love speakeasy. Since I switched to their service from AT&T, I have almost no unexplained downtime and no problems with customer support. Their support reps actually speak fluent English without annoying Indian accents and so far all my issues were resolved within a day and no support reps ever mislead me or gave me wrong info (happened with Verizon and AT&T quite often).
Based on the packages that they offer and on cool things like wi-fi resell and open-server policies, it looks like the ISP is definitely for geeks. Also, I believe that if more ISPs provide users with free software that actually works, IE share will be reduced. 99% of non-techie users that I know use software provided by their ISPs. Anything from browsers to anti-virus programs. If things continue going this way, we'll see more open source products distributed to customers.
I hope Speakeasy continues to do what it is doing and keep its level of customer support along with other innovative ideas that many companies seem to forget as soon as they become profitable.
By recommended, I'd assume sponsered links. But after checking they were actually legit links. I have seen other extensions that set their affliate codes, the last one i saw was the amazon search tool which tags all the search results with their affliate code.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I'd be all over their offerings. $39.95 is just too much for low-end ADSL these days. Everyone else is offering it for $29.95. They should at least throw in a fixed IP into the deal to make it attractive.
Wouldn't it be nice to answer all spyware calls with "I'm sorry, but we don't support Internet Explorer. Have you tried the firefox software that was bundled with your dsl?"
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
They are paid for their work, in various ways, not the least of which is free code from their fellow developers.
With luck Speakeasy will pay them with some free code as well.
Instead of using JS (which can be turned off), maybe consider using IE's conditional comments? If you're just targetting IE anyway, that's ideal - no way to turn it off (AFAIK), and only works for IE-based browsers.
Oh, don't worry, if the ISP's start switching browsers, firefox will become the marketleader. IIRC, once upon a time ISP's distributed netscape by default, IE made valiant inroads, and then the ISP's started bundling IE which led to a mad marketshare rush that left netscape a niche player. I think firefox is edging up to that marketshare tipping point now, where it's going to become the default browser to bundle with things, and thereby getting automatic installs on many, many machines.
Though admittedly, there is much less reason to bundle a browser with your service/software nowadays, when every OS has a browser bundled in by default.
The logical answer is yes. Assuming they do so, Speakeasy is doing two important things for the Firefox devs.
From what I understand, this is good for the Mozilla foundation.
I for one would like to see an open source video streaming format that works well in all the major browsers. There doesnt seem to be one ATM considering that whereever there is streaming content there is either Quicktime, Real or Windows Media. Perhaps this is an area where open source just cannot compete?