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Firefox Plans Mass Marketing Drive
Ivan Mark writes "Christopher Beard, the VP of products at Mozilla Corporation, told ZDNet UK on Monday that there is a 'strong likelihood' that Firefox 1.5, the next major version of the open source browser, will be released on 29 November. Beard said they are planning a 'big marketing push.'
'You will have real people telling you about Firefox's features-- what's cool and great,' said Beard. 'People can create the video and upload it to the Mozilla site. The video will then be reviewed and put on our Web site, with a link from their location.'"
Do not tell me I'll need a Media Player installed because I have Linux media players of all colors installed on my system.
I've seen a crashing Firefox too recently, but most of the time, a plugin was directly involved while loading the page (Java, for example). I must say though, that a plugin shouldn'be able to crash Firefox itself, although it does. Couldn't firefox load the plugin somehow in an new thread which can die anytime it wants?
Also a good opportunity for aspiring models. "Firefox is the open-source, standards-compliant web browser for everybody. With automatic pop-up blocking and enhanced privacy features, Firefox lets you take back the Internet. Plus, look at my tits."
The 1.5 release has some nice new features, but there is one constant in every release: Firefox gets an augmenting chunk of memory.
After a couple of hours, it is getting some 100 Mb of memory.
And counting.
I hate it to restart with all those tabs open.
How much work would it be to get Mozilla to display Open Document Format documents? Presumably it's already got 90% of what is required.
It would be a big boost for the format if anyone with Firefox could read it.
A good point, but do consider that increasing the user base must surely have a positive effect on development as well. Somebody who uses Firefox is more likely to think about contributing to it than somebody who doesn't -- whether that be simply via bug reporting, plug-in development, or even direct source contribution.
The Firemonger project is also boasting a lot of new features when it releases its FireFox & Thunderbird bundle. Just have a look at the cool new screenshots.
If marketing didn't work, and products really had to stand on their own merits the world would be a whole lot different than it is today.
Personally I think that what the open-source community needs in general terms is more marketing. The closed-source guys get it -- they get it because they didn't win market share by writing a better product (not even better than the other closed-source guy). The closed-source companys won market share by MARKETING.
Plain and simple.
And now that they face a new competitor (open source) they respond in a time-tested manner: marketing.
It should be plain and obvious by now that the steady stream of "articles" (c|net, zdnet etc) are just part of a marketing campaign; hidden under the umbrella of 'news'.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Mozilla Corporation has revamped the concept of web services. We pride ourselves not only on our feature set, but our newbie-proof administration and user-proof use. The micro-CAE factor is web-enabled. If you architect intra-vertically, you may have to transition super-super-macro-nano-extensibly. What does it really mean to seize "wirelessly"? If all of this may seem dumbfounding to you, that's because it is! The project management factor is interactive. Do you have a plan of action to become innovative? Do you have a plan of action to become blog-based? We always redefine customer-directed branding. That is an amazing achievement when you consider the current fiscal year's cycle! The channels factor can be summed up in one word: intuitive. We have come to know that it is better to brand interactively than to reintermediate magnetically. If all of this may seem discombobulating to you, that's because it is!
...and more bug fixes. I push Firefox to a lot of my clients, but the infamous memory leak issue pops up on occasion, forcing certain users back to IE. Also, plug-in support for Firefox flat sucks. Plug-ins are the #1 complaint I get from users. The WMP plug-in blows chunks, and there's no readily available alternative that the user can get to without jumping through hoops. To them, it's easier to open IE where it "just works". How about when Firefox randomly deletes a user's bookmarks? They love that too.
It's a great browser. It's got awesome features, and I don't think it lacks in that department, but I do think it needs some polishing if market share is to grow much beyond what it is today.
You, sir, have just written all you need to procure millions from venture capitalists. Congratulations! I recommend taking the money to buy yourself lots and lots of toys. Don't worry too much about actually putting out a product or generating any revenue. Those two paragraphs are worth MILLIONS!
In the (rare) occasions in which Firefox crashed on my Mac, Session Saver was a great helping hand (I don't use its automatic restore for every startup, just for browser crashes).
Don't know whether it restores data such as server-session-id cookies (which would be needed to salvage this insurance app incident, for example), but having such an option available as a plugin is what made me stick to Firefox in both Windows and Mac OS X.