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MozCorp Announces Firefox 1.5 Extension Competition
vain gloria writes "The Mozilla Corporation has launched a competition to Extend Firefox by developing an innovative new extension for the soon-to-be-released latest version of their popular browser. The competition runs until January 6th and the three big prizes are Foxified Alienware PCs. Keen developers may want to grab a copy of the 1.5 Release Candidate and get a head start. Better check your passports first though, as those outside the US, EU and Canada (or in Québec) are ineligible to enter."
"Better check your passports first though, as those outside the US, EU and Canada (or in Québec) are ineligible to enter."
On second thought, if that is necessary for you to remember where you live, then maybe you shouldn't be entering the contest.
Stupid of them to leave out Japan and other parts of Asia ... there's lots of good geeks who could build good extensions there.
I wonder how the little guys (ex: SVG Switcher for FF1.5) will compete with the big guys (ex: Web Dev Toolbar).
I just hope that the small guys are judged fairly and those with years of experience don't just take over the whole competition. Or maybe that's okay, because in the end (perhaps) it will be the big serious guys against eachother and all the newcomers pretty much don't have a chance.
Just my opinion, I wonder what others might think.
Without the 30-40 extentions that I make use of on a daily basis I would have properly have moved to Opera by now, but the extentions make firefox great so I continue to use it :)
As well as the excellent extentions like adblock, tabbed browser prefs and sessionsaver its also the little extentions like GMail Delete Button, Wellrounded and MediaPlayerConnectivity that make Firefox a great browser.
Good idea that their running a competition as I'm sure it'll ensure their are even more great extentions in the future, I just hope developers update then as time goes on.
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
It's okay... Quebec's language police probably would confiscate the computer in anyhow, since it's unlikely that "ArticlesÉtrangers" appears in a significantly larger font than "AlienWare"....
Why not buld a bit torrent client into Firefox? See this bug on Bugzilla for a start point; I'm pretty sure you'd have a good chance if you put this together!
I've read TFA, and I can't see anywhere where the rules prohibit entries from Japan etc. The only thing in the rules I can see that mentions geography is "These official rules will be void where any provision thereof would be found invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction. If you are a resident of such a jurisdiction, you may not participate in the Contest." and later, "...he/she is a resident of a jurisdiction where these official rules may be enforced in their entirety and without modification."
Nowhere does it specifically limit the contest to USA,CAN,EU that I can find - I'm wondering where the OP got this? Can anyone shed further light on the subject?
theres alot of talent in antarctica, why should they be excluded?
Better pop-up extentions? 1. A popup blocker that works %100 of the time. Even with Firefox 1.5 Beta2 build, I still get a popup by clicking this link http://www.activewin.com/awin/default.asp and then clicking anywhere on the page at all. Appearently they have a javascript that knows when you're 'touching' a webpage? I have to highlight text to read better so I don't know why this is going on. I do have my settings set at opening pages or user clicked popups in the same window as the current tab. Don't know if that's causing it or not. Is there a nicer Windows news website than Activewin? I'm really starting to hate that pop-up infested site. 2. Flash pop-up detector. Go here. http://www.cleveland.com/ a flash ad flys across the page. I like using Flashblock that blocks all flash (yeah, right) until I allow it to. Happens sometimes on yahoo.com news pages too. I guess I'm asking for a noscript type extension, but is dormant until I ask it to block scripts for a webpage since it's only these websites driving me nuts right now. A blacklist if you will. I spent more time messing with NoScript extension then going to my daily 45 websites. Plus I like installing a new clean install of firefox and updated extensions meaning I don't have time redoing this crap all the time. Disabling SOME scripts for websites would be cool too. Spellcheck as you type for Firefox would be a killer extension too. :)
Quebec does have special rules and regulations, but mainly the problem with contests is that there is a FEE to be paid to the province in order to have a contest. Yes that's right, if you want to include Quebec in a contest, you must first pay up, something about a fee to make sure the contest is not bogus... to protect the consumer or something like that I seem to recall.
It's not political or anything, Quebec just has REALLY strict contest laws that require the contest promoters to jump through a lot of hoops. Most contests here in Canada are usually advertized as being "contest void in Quebec" or whatever to that effect.
Here's a bit more info
Yeah. We are part of the Canada. We are important. They don't want us to leave but we can't even participate to Mozilla contests. WTF?
Who says we dont want you to leave?
I love Firefox and everything, but when I upgraded to one of the 1.5 betas (because everyone told me about all the new things that were going to be in it, which were admittedly small stuff like being able to reorganize my tabs) half of my extensions went bye-bye. Some came back when they were fixed, but others... not so much. A little while after the second beta came out I decided to get that too, thinking that I was over the extensions I could no longer use and that enough time had passed so that the ones I used (and surely every other person using Firefox) must have been updated as well. Not the case.
Needless to say, I went with reckless abandon into RC1 and will probably go to the official version as soon as it's out, just to get there. My hope is that the developers of most of the extensions I used were waiting for a more stable build and so in the future I should just wait until those come out instead of jumping into the newest upgrade for a few random features.
Now, there's going to be a dozen people telling me "Quit complaining, start programming" but I hope this comes off more as "constructive criticism" than anything else because of the web-browser user base (all 87% percent of the US or whatever number it is), a good 75 have never, can never and will never program (unless it becomes simplified to the point of telling your computer in plain language what you want it to do and it cobbles together something... "I want something to remember my recipes and generates a shopping list and gets approximate prices from the internet" and 30 seconds later a fully functional database comes out.)
Although the percentage of coders to non-coders may be higher with Firefox, the high priests of Firefox are desperate for a piece of that mainstream market. If I show Firefox and all that I can make it do to a friend who wants it installed, I don't want to tell that friend "now, never, EVER install an update because you'll lose half of the functions you've become accustomed too, at least for a little while but possibly forever" because they'll say screw it and stick with IE.
I loved Aardvark (it was so handy in cleaning up Mapquest stuff, news articles...) but it's become increasingly broke and in RC1 it's apparently fully dead until I hunt for the website (it didn't play well with the updater) to see if it's got an update. Stop-or-reload... same thing. Grease Monkey? Gone. Try searching for a torrent using the new Firefox. Now, these middle-adapters, the ones you have to prove the value of software to, aren't known for being upgrade happy (think your mom, still running IE 5 how many years after 6.0?) or else they may have tried Firefox earlier, but when they do upgrade, they don't want to switch to a different, competing extension becuase there's is broken, nor do they want to lose functionality they've become used to.
The extensions are awesome, best part of the browser but I think down the road the breakability of extensions is going to throttle the number of new-users. Think of old Netscape where slowly it became a nerd-only alternative, depsite their protests that it was more secure/more capable/better browser but IE kept winning people over because it (a) kept adapting to enable new features (I can't think of any, but that's because I haven't used Netscape since 2000), and (b) retained most of it's features.
IMO, people would rather use something that lacks features but has all the ones they're attached to than use something that introduces them to new features, and then takes them away.
Not every extension is going to be the next big thing... that extension so useful that the browser gods themselves reach down to integrate it into their next version, but if there's a user base at all for it, they're not going to like being told they can't use it with the newest toys because the developer didn't think there was enough of a user base to continue his support. Yeah, it's his or her decision to not update, but the user isn't going to care... they're going to blame Firefox.
Then again, this whole theory only applies to the semi-casual users who know enough to find and love extensions and not to the people who don't know anything about extensions or will just be using the browser as is.
The reason why Quebec is excluded is because here in Quebec the lottery is regulated by the RACJ, a goverment agency. The lottery have is own laws, and therefore if the Mozilla Fundation do not accept to fill the papers that loto Quebec ask for they cannot participate.
S ection=4&noGrappe=5
See : http://www.racj.gouv.qc.ca/section.asp?lang=en&no
Also, I would be great if the slashdot community would stop bashing Quebec about the "language police". THERE IS NOT LANGUAGE POLICE IN QUEBEC, this is bullshit!. There are only laws that make in sort that everything must be written in french on commercial products, and that the french must occupate the same space than the english. That's all! So if a consummer see a poorly written french on a products or an ad, it can make a complaint to the Quebec french language office that will HELP the seller to translate is products to french. You heard it right! They will HELP without any fees!
Why this? Hey we are 6 millions french (and 1 million english) in Quebec. There's 330 millions english speaker around US! How you would expect US to keep our language without laws? If you were 6 millions english speaker with 330 millions spanish what would you do if you were actualy enjoying your cultural heritage? You would not stand up to protect your liberty of speaking whatever language you want?
That's why the law is there.
See Wikipedia if you want to lean a bit more about Quebec. Very good description IMHO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec
(Oh and sorry I know my english isn't that good..)
Meeting legal requirements for contests limited just to the United States is often a very difficult chore. I see how much work the attorneys in the advertising/competition group in my firm go to for each such proposed contest, and am glad I'm not in that group.
It gets exponentially more difficult when you go into other countries, with completely different rules and regulations.
So in contrast, I am impressed that they went to the trouble of making it as international as they feasibly could without bankrupting themselves on legal fees and delaying the contest for another year while it was approved.