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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
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?
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. :)
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
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.