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Marketing Mozilla
garzpacho writes "Despite a 10% market share, Firefox isn't quite mainstream, especially with fairly flat growth after its initial explosion. With the approaching October release of Firefox 2, the team is looking for ways to gain greater mainstream acceptance — and adoption. This article and slideshow look at some of the company's unusual marketing efforts to date and speculate on the future. From the article: '[T]o widen its current user base, Mozilla will need more than elaborate marketing events. Because the new version of Internet Explorer is expected to be more competitive with Firefox, Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser. Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or... [linking] to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected. The idea being, the browser becomes more valuable the more your friends use it, so you've got a reason to become a Firefox evangelist. Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but... there will be new features not found in current browsers.'"
It sure gives me the warm fuzzies, mabye the warmth could spill over a little to others too.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
My work here is dung.
1) Speed
I am running IE 7 RC1 now and it is slow. Dog slow. It makes molasses look like freaking Speedy Gonzales on meth. Firefox starts up quick and doesn't chew up as much CPU time when running.
2) Greasemonkey
If IE 7 has anything like Greasemonkey, I haven't found it.
On the other hand, Firefox still uses up memory like it's got some birthright to as much as it can horde. And it doesn't have as large a viewing area as IE 7.
It just needs to be installed with an icon on the desktop at a major computer manufacturer. HP, Dell, Compaq, whatever... All that other stuff is fluff/bloat. Users are not going to install Firefox to find out what it is unless they are either a nerd or have a nerd friend who puts it on.
Yes Sirree, a browser Suite is what we need.
We need a web authoring tool, integrated email and istant messenger clients. This is the way forward, the Firefox team just needs to ignore every lesson learnt in the Netscape vs. IE war.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Ben Franklin
I still can't believe that God awful advert won the contest when the clear winner was Weeeee!
Summation 2
The mozilla suite was replaced by discrete components because thats what people wanted - AND ITS WORKED.
I hope history doesn't repeat itself, use the KISS principle.
liqbase
Is Seth unfamiliar with Flock, I wonder? It's exactly what he's asking for. And I haven't exactly noticed it threatening to swamp Firefox in terms of popularity (though in fairness it hasn't reached 1.0 yet -- but I really doubt it will blow FF away even then, except maybe among some niche audiences).
Read my blog.
Some of the suggestions that the author makes seem like a strategy to turn Firefox into bloated software. I think one of the reasons Firefox is so great is that it's download size is so small. If the memory footprint were a bit smaller it would be even better.
I think if Mozilla convinced more IT Managers that it is the browser that their users ought to be using, IT Departments everywhere begin to set Firefox as the default browser on all of their computers and more people start realizing the benefits of Firefox.
Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.'" Is it just me, or has there been an RC out for FF2 for a while now? And we even have a FF3 alpha, Minefield?
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
What about Trixie.
That is what happend to Netscape and turned it into a bloated steaming pile that opened the door for Internet Explorer to gobble up all the marketshare in the first place. Please keep it what it is: a simple, elegant, feature-rich BROWSER.
Make it 100% compatible with current standards, uncrashable, give it a much MUCH smaller memory footprint, integrate it with the main OSes (a skin does not integration make), make it fast in rendering. And please work WITH the community: most Linux distros are based on a package manager and don't like software to go all upgrade happy on itself every two days.
That would make it worth using again. After a promising start, it got worse and worse with every release.
But instead, they are focusing on marketing techniques and gimmicks in order to spread the fox. It would be cool to have a good, not a well marketed, browser. Besides, do they really think they're in MS's league when it comes to marketing software?
Global warming is a cube.
that 10% ins't mainstream.
All I have to say is don't start bundling it with a bunch of crap or loading it with a bunch of extra "features" that hardly anyone will use. It just makes everything clunkier and more difficult to find the settings/controls you're looking for.
Firefox appealed to me because of simplicity with the option of adding things that I wanted. IE7 is a clunky piece of trash...it looks like sh*t and I can't stand it. Keep it simple for the n00bs, the l337 h@x0rz can use extensions.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I'm switching RIGHT NOW!
j/k
"Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2"
Can the author really not realize this is an open-source project and that the developers make it a point to open this project up? This link demonstrates the beauty of open source projects -- here is as much (probably more) as you want to know about the development work.
http://developer.mozilla.org/
Provided the Firefox share is high enough that webmasters will make their sites work with it, I don't see the point of bloating FF in an attempt to gain even higher market share.
Paid Q&A/Research
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser.
Please don't do it!
I use Firefox because it's simple, it has a minimal resource footprint (unless you start getting addicted to extensions (*looks sternly at Forecastfox*)), and above all renders QUICKLY.
I don't know why IE can't replicate this, but still IE takes forever to render some pages long after Firefox is done loading. But that nimbleness is precisely what keeps me with Firefox. Start loading it with everything including the kitchen sink, and I personally will find the next, simpler browser.
-Styopa
Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser. Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or building tools like a link to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected.
Anyone else wishing someone would create a stripped down version of Firefox optimized for speed, without all the crud? They could call it something like Phoenix, or even Firebird, to distinguish it from Firefox.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Since when is gaining market share an objective of open source projects like Mozilla? In other words: Who gains anything by increasing the Mozilla marketshare? Personally I don't give a f#$% what browser other people use, although I advise Firefox to anyone... As long as M$IE is around (as a non standards compiant browser), webdevelopers keep on spilling time working around annoyances.
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_2_for _developers
New features for end users
Firefox 2 provides the same clean, streamlined, interface as previous versions, with small improvements to make it easier to use. In addition, it includes improved security features and useful tools to make the Internet experience safer, faster, and better than ever before.
User experience
* Inline spell checking for text areas lets you compose with confidence in web forms.
* Microsummaries provide a way to create bookmarks that display information pulled from the site they refer to, updated automatically. Great for stock tickers, auction monitoring, and so forth.
* Extension Manager user interface has been enhanced.
* Search engine manager lets you rearrange and remove search engines shown in the search bar.
* Tabbed browsing enhancements include adding close buttons to each tab, adjustments to how Firefox decides which tab to bring you to when you close the current tab, and simplified preferences for tabs.
* Autodetection of search engines allows search engines that offer plugins for the Firefox search bar to offer to install their plugins for you.
* Search suggestions allow search engines to offer suggested search terms based on what you've typed so far in the search bar.
Security and privacy
* Anti-phishing feature to warn users when the web site you're looking at appears to be a forgery.
Or maybe not.
I'm a big fan of Mozilla (well, Firefox) and, unlike a lot of people here, I would dearly love to see a number of plugins actually come bundled into the default build because they truly are useful (for example, adblock) and some actually put directly into the code because they seem silly to be as an extension (for example, tabmix plus).
However, these pieces of functionality are all generic and are of benefit to everyone. I simply cannot see how spell checkers, tagging, blogging or skype can be of interest to the masses (they certainly are of little interest to me - even though I may need the spell checker from time to time).
In order to keep everyone happy, I'd suggest an option in the installer which provides you with 5 or so top extensions (already pre-ticked, with an option to deselect all) and if you continue with them enabled then firefox will automatically download and install them for you.
Not only do you keep the "I want no extensions" purists happy, but you keep those people (like me) who can't help feeling that Firefox should do a little more out of the box than it currently does.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Mozilla browsers are opensource, and as such can never be hijacked by any one company to change what standards they support, in order to try and extinguish or majorly harm opposition. That fact alone is a great reason to use eg. Firefox over anything else, as long as it's a good functional browser (which it is). If *ONLY* the general public could be made to understand that...
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I agree with what people say about Firefox in that it should be kept simple and use extensions to increase the versatility as a browser.
Team this with Googles attempts at browswer based applications, and you have a formula for a BIOS Browser based OSless system.
That it is the kick in the hiney Microsoft wants to avoid. Lets look at it:
Mozilla Firefox:
Browser, extensions; Chat, VOIP, games and a super amount of incredible extensions you can't name inone post.
Google:
Search, Mail, Video, Chat, and recent;y a good try at the Office Suite of programs.
All browser based. I see the future coming, and for 80% of the people, if we can educate them, does not involve Microsoft, or any monopolistic, agressive companies.
Pete
Yes, always...
In term of electronic discussion, the more, the better...
Whenever you try something subtil (and sometimes not so subtil) either other will miss the point or misunderstand...
[joke]Why not try to tag your post ?[/joke]
"Firefox 2 - Now that 1GB of RAM is the acceptable minimum, you might be able to run this for more than an hour!"
Although it probably depends on market segment, my site shows 32.4% Firefox in the last month.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Firefox is a Web Browser. That's it. Nothing all that special. However, if you start to branch out and throw lots of untested software into this massive jumble of code, it's going to get slow, buggy, and will once again be relegated to the back burner. I would think that this team would realize this above almost everything else.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy unix philosphy? i guess the first part went something like: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. i hope this doesn't turn firefox into a bloat-laden, ad-infested piece of crap.
but i don't oppose someone coming up with a "firefox suite" where other features of the browser are handled by extensions, not by the browser itself. as it is, i really like the way firefox is being handled.
. o O ( TwO hEaDs ArE mOrE tHaN oNe... )
Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.
Are they keeping these details under wrap? Isn't this open source software?
The original appeal of firefox was that it was small and fast because there was no extra crap in it. why would we go back to the original mozilla suite that was bloated and horribly slow?
"...if you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed..." -Homer
But it will never compete in the corporate environment. Not in mine anyway. I'm having a hell of a time convincing the Help Desk to install it on all the machines. 90% of the firm is still using IE, only a select few including I have adopted FF. Reasoning? Supporting FireFox when connecting to various intranet applications STILL isn't supported? For FireFox to take hold, they would have to recode the majority of their applications. And while Exchange over the web works fine in FF, it really does work better with IE, guess the proprietary crap does lend IE the advantage there. In the end, I'll still use IE for some of the work related functions, but by keeping FF the way it is currently, I'll remain a huge fan and use it for EVERYTHING else.
Put Firefox, Firebird, AVG Free, Ad-WARE, etc... (or whatever. Other than Fire*, the exact programs are irrelevant).
Actually charge more than the media - I know sacrilege here on /., but most folks have the impression that you get what you pay for. Plus the "extra" money can be used to fund developmnt.
Now, the free advertising: press releases, articles written for IT magazines AND small business magazines and any other place that you can think of.
...there's an awful lot of people paid by big companies, like google, now... Whenever they make a stupid change (like making user tracking easier with the "ping" non-standard attribute, for example), they swear it's got nothing to do with that... The team might originally have been about a sleek, standard-conformant browser, but, looking at their current behavior, I'd say they're all about market-share and being "accepted" (by incorporating their every wish) by the big companies (that happen to pay them heftily). "Corporate sellouts" by the book. You want a free browser following the UNIX philosophy? You'll probably have to write it yourself (Unless Konqueror or Links suit you)...
By all means provide better functionality through plug-ins, by all means offer the browser with an optional bundle of plug-ins... but DO NOT integrate all these things into the browser, or only supply Firefox bundled with everything including the kitchen sink.
Almost everyone I know who uses Firefox does so because it's relatively lightweight, a good quality browser and can be extended through plug-ins they can choose to install. Firefox was supposed to be about simplicity - a usable web browser without the fluff, bloat, padding of other browsers like IE or even the Mozilla suite. When you take that away, you remove the reason why people choose Firefox.
Congratulations - if Firefox starts heading in the direction outlined, you've just lost your core market.
Want to know how to get Firefox out to a bigger audience? Get PC manufacturers to bundle Firefox with their Windows installs. Get major websites that write IE-only sites to support Firefox. Good luck with those ones...
While a free, fast web browser is beautiful, consider:
a single cross-platform, cross-protocol GUI platform.
I find little joy in writing UI code. The concept of a single target that Just Works on all known OSs and lets me blow off Tcl/Tk, Gtk, Qt, wxWidgets, Swing, Windows.Forms, and every other kinda-the-same-only-different GUI kit is highly attractive.
Not to besmirch the fine efforts of people smarter than me, but I lack the attention span and patience required for the aforementioned smattering of technologies.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I've installed Firefox on about 1500 computers over the last two years. Why? I was a long time user of Opera becuase of it's flexibility and customizability. When I discovered Firefox extensions, I made the switch, and started switching my customers. Keep the browser nimble but highly customizable or I will switch again.
"Accidentally" leak a video of mozilla doing the nasty on the internet and it will become an overnight household name. Worked for Paris Hilton.
I'll consider using Firefox again once the developers stop marking bugs as INVALID, despite the exhibited behavior going against the standard. Particularly since it works correctly in the other major browsers.
Until then, I'll stick with Opera, thanks.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Mozilla's new marketing slogan:
At least we're not Microsoft.
I will forever be a student.
The Mozilla Suit?
Given that Firefox is somewhere around 10% of the browser market (and that is a *huge* absolute number of installations, sufficient to support active development), why do we care if its share grows? In fact, there are distinct benefits to being only 10% of the market: you're not the main target of 'badware through the browser' exploits.
At some point, I was somewhat surprised that Mozilla made a good amount of money from its search box, and it may make sense for them to seek greater market share for that reason. If that is the case, more power to them, but let's be aware of motivations.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Can you explain us why a project being open source sould have any relationship whatsoever with the very purposes of the project?
The purpose of the Mozilla project is to defend a web open to everybody, having significant market share is key to reach this goal, if you don't understand it, then you have a total misconception about what the mozilla project is about.
The mozilla project, the openoffice project or the ubuntu project are there to make a difference on the desktop, to defend the interests of the end-user at large, not only of the computer geek.
Of course, you can also choose to not want to change things, to keep a 0.5% market share, curse all those websites that are IE only (because who cares for 0.5% market share?), let the technical future of the web and the desktop be decided and owned by the proprietary software market leader (yes I am talking about Microsoft here but if they weren't there, it would be another proprieatay software monopoly).
Basically, that's the difference in wanting to change the software industry for the good of the end user (your mother included), or not.
me too !
The main distunguishing feature I see from IE is the amount of customized ability that Firefox can have.
Gaia Online pushes FireFox because of the Gaia toolbar.
DeviantArt pushes FireFox because of the navigational apps available.
Fanfiction.net pushes FireFox because it insists IE is just plain 'badware'.
Webcomics push FireFox because of the Morning Coffee extension.
Everyone has their reasons for FireFox, but no unifying purpose. What extension can FireFox use that EVERYONE wants?
And no, ForecastFox doesn't count (but it's close)
Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but... there will be new features not found in current browsers.'" Click here to find out more!
I guess those crafty open-source bastards were hiding their secrets pretty well!
Leave Firefox as it is: a browser. A highly extensible browser, but still just a browser. Why in the heck would they want to reinvent the Mozilla Suite / SeaMonkey approach, especially when it still exists?
If they want to add more standard cruft to "compete" with the more bloated offerings, then offer two versions: Firefox, and "Firefox Enhanced" or "Firefox Complete" or something. Bundle it with a whack of standard, "Officially Mozilla Approved" (TM) extensions in a single download, so that Joe User doesn't have to figure out how to install them individually and sort out any conflicts or incompatibilities.
Forget about all that fluff and bloatware. The best marketing move Mozilla can make is to get Firefox installed as the default browser in new PCs.
[alk]
The best marketing is word of mouth. As was mentioned, coming pre-installed is also right up there. Third is integration. We all want a snappy browser, but when I tell someone about how good ff is I often hear, "yeah, I tried that but I couldn't get it to play my videos" or something like that. Even though they are intrigued by the things I tell them I can do with ff, not being able to do something that they already do with ie puts an end to it. If your marketing to the masses that means windows.
Dear Mozilla,
So your main competitor copies your product (Firefox). So he has a near monopoly position in the mass market. You're not the only company ever that's gone through this problem. My first advice is to study what others did and react accordingly.
My second advice is to go through the following exercise:I'd say that Firefox is a "power-user oriented product" that offers a)security, b)stability, c)extensibility, d)low-bloat-factor, e)adherence to W3 standards.
If you agree with the above product USP, then it's easy to understand that your market audience is probably no more than eg. 30% of the mass market, which means you're doing pretty good already, and that normal growth, not stunt-based growth should be expected. Also, better not alienate your current users by making a bloated bug-ridden mess of a browser just to enlarge your user base.
But most important, lead the way. Don't let Microsoft just catch up. Innovate!
<before>now</before>
Your suggestion will confuse non-geeks who will inevitably download the wrong version, then complain that it doesn't work, and then go back to using IE, dismissing firefox as "broken".
It's really about access to content. Seth is right that adding more features to access content will help drive more users to Firefox. Making Firefox into a Skype enhanced Flock is probably not the answer. Making it easy to add extensions and themes when you install could possibly be the right solution - or at least make the default home page show more about extending firefox. This way users could add the extra features they want and even pick a look as part of the process of getting to know FireFox. And it would review very well in the press becaus no one else has anything like it.
BTW Access to content is how MS won BrowserWar I. IE was installed on the pc, and when you hit an IE only site, or ones with MS specific nav-controls you switched. Eventually, you just quit with Netscape because of bugs and IE only sites.
-- $G
I managed to convert probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the staff here to using FF at home, and it wasn't even something I worked for. After certain vulns came out for IE last year with uncertain (but certainly distant) patch release dates, I convinced The Man that we had to dump it for something else. I got authorization, then went around installing FF on everybody's box and deleting all their IE shortcuts, and we set the policy to only a few select people for a few select sites that absolutely are necessary and absolutely require IE may use IE in those cases. (Honestly, this was not hard. Most people barely notice the difference.) :)
Here's the important part, though: As I installed FF, I would explain, in dummy terms, why we were doing it. Basically, I laid the anti-IE FUD on thick, but as it happens, it was both FUD and the truth, so what can I say? After I got it installed, I gave them a quick walkthrough of differences (tabs and middle-clicking links, shortcut toolbar, search box, and stuff like the 'plugin needed' warning, popup blocked warning, and the security warnings (in IE, you usually click the checkbox for 'do not show me this again'. In FF, you -don't- click the checkbox, for 'warn me every time'. It's the little stuff...) After I got done showcasing FF, I'd write down 'getfirefox.com' for them. Many of them have told me the switched.
Weird tidbit: You all know the Babbage quote about wrong figures in, right figures out, right? It is just mind-boggling how many people believe, and have a hard time having explained to them that it is not the case, that when we change to FF that we are 'changing internets' / 'getting a new ISP' / 'getting a new operating system'.
Unpleasantries.
on my website www.soulfire.cc
firefox has 62%
MS IE has 30.1%
also on my website linux has 18%
windows has 77%
mac only has 0.2%
From the parent comment: "(it's funny users will download spyware at the drop of a hat but get nervous around legit software)"
That's because spyware is marketed in a more effective fashion. Yes, the spyware marketing is a lie, and a destructive lie. However, spyware is marketed as simple. If you investigate Firefox, you will find many, many articles with the general subject: "How to spend a day doing highly technical things that may or may not make Firefox work correctly". For example, Google "Firefox memory". Or, Google "Firefox unstable". Or, "Firefox Crash".
Sure, Firefox has extensions, but they often make Firefox unstable. The Firefox team thinks that it is entirely acceptable to market Firefox extensions, but when the extensions cause Firefox to be unstable, to excuse the instability by saying that it is caused by an extension.
From the Slashdot story: "With the approaching October release of Firefox 2, the team is looking for ways to gain greater mainstream acceptance - and adoption." This is nonsense, in my opinion. Firefox is, once again, the most unstable program in common use. If anyone on the Firefox team actually cared about Firefox acceptance, they would fix the bugs, which were first reported 3 years ago. Note that the main bug report linked is always marked invalid. That's not because anything has been done about the instability of Firefox; it's because people on the Firefox team don't want to, or don't know how to, fix the very, very serious bugs.
The 1.5.0.4 version of Firefox was quite stable, if the Flashblock extension was installed. The 1.5.0.6 version is unstable again. The CPU-hogging bug is back!
This comment posted from a copy of Firefox that is constantly using about 5% of the CPU, even when all pages have been loaded, and there is no active content. That's 2.8% on the way to 70% or more, which will soon make it necessary to close Firefox and reboot Windows XP.
The problem appears to be that Firefox does not allocate enough resources. If you open several Firefox windows and several tabs in each window, and leave them open for several days, or suspend or hibernate your computer a few times, you will find that Firefox has started to hog the CPU.
Apparently everyone on the Firefox team wants to add features or work on easy bugs. Apparently also, browser programmers are not necessarily heavy browser users. People who often do research on the internet are likely to cause Firefox to become unstable.
Just plain wrong. Your data is a lie no matter how many times it gets repeated. The moz suite always had just the stand-alone browser. Here it is in individual words again. A stand alone browser. Still does in the Seamonkey version. Go look if you have never seen that. Blows your claim out of the water. You could always just download that and that alone. All the way back to netscape, remember navigator as opposed to communicator? All FF adoption did was set back development by *years* and gave MS breathing room to phart around and try and fix IE by borrowing features from moz and opera. And it worked, too, it HAS given them breathing room, and FF has NOT lead to any mass adoption of open source OSes, despite the astroturfers insistence it would act as some sort of gateway lead-in thing. If you have proof to the contrary, let's see it. Linux has no larger a desktop marketshare now than it had three years ago, according to any benchmark/stat available. FF has done nothing but help keep people on the MS cash gravy train.
Not everyone has been fooled by the setback. I call FF a widely successful *sabotage* effort. Think SCO from a different angle, look to who profits.
I work at a university and we have to review every Windows laptop before it can join the wireless network (for antivirus software). Lately, I have increasingly seen more and more OEMs bundling Firefox on new laptops. I know the students aren't installing it (well most) as they always say all the software is the same since purchase (including the crapware and trial AV) and just know that they have to click on the red icon for the Internet.
These people don't know how to install software (even a dialog that says to just click next is a pain) so the only way to get them to use it is preinstalled. That's why I'm really glad with 1.5+ FF automatically will install the updates and restart the browser.
"Less is more" - not "Small is the new Big". I want my browser to only do what I want -- and nothing more. Don't fill my browser full of crap, please.
The best way I can think of getting firefox into the hands of the masses is to have OEM's bundle it and put an icon on the desktop labeled "Internet".
I'm sure many OEM's would jump at the chance to stick it to MS. The same bundling bullshit that has hurt them can be thrown in their face. Not even the Dells and HPs of the world, but the Emachines and small systems builders.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I hope history doesn't repeat itself, use the KISS principle.
You mean Mozilla action figures, lunchboxes, pinball machines, condoms and caskets, right?
firefox needs to advertise their rock stability. Wait, firefox crashes on me 2-3 times a day. Maybe they should spend their google millions making it more robust before they spend it on advertising.
and why don't they support CDATA? Opera does.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The Firefox lacks the enterprise class features completely. Until it has them solidly and nearly perfectly, it will not take over IE in many environments. What is missing is
- Supported MSI packages (for SMS deployment)
- The AD/kerberos authentication against ASP.NET services
- Good looks & feel. GTK-WIMP both looks and feels very alien on a Windows desktop. (It's quite honestly plain trash.) It's a usability issue and should be considered a BLOCKER bug.
Firefox has to mate better with websites - especially those that require logon. It has to work the same as IE in a corporate setting. Until then and until we can figure out a better way to do MS Update, we'll have to keep IE around.
Awesome, by the time they reach Firefox 4, in barely a couple of years, it will have so many 'functions' that it will be like an OS inside the OS, à la emacs
OK, done trolling for today :-)
You just got troll'd!
As I recall, what turned Netscape into a steaming pile was its acquisition by AOL, and the AOLification of the app.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
It doesn't matter what FF does: if people have never heard of it they won't install or run it. So I propose this:
Buy 1 second of ad time for the next Superbowl (less if you can get it). Cost is about $85k per second. Not cheap. But it will be so odd that it will be discussed for weeks before it airs in newspapers and on TV. Probably run dozens of times like the 1984 Apple ad. And slowed down so people will have time to figure out "what the hell was that?" And that will be worth the equivalent of millions of ad dollars.
And production values can be cheap. Just a static frame with the logo, web url, and something along the lines of "For a more secure internet!" Cheap cheap cheap ('cause all your money is going to the network).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I think mozilla has great marketing! How can this banner not appeal to people of all political stripes? In fact, the people who came up with the black/white PSP ads for sony really ought to take a lesson from Mozilla's marketing team. Mozilla's ads are the most inclusive and harmonious i have ever seen. In addition to the imagery, the messages on the banners ads are great too:
Work and there will be flour!
That really communicates the superior nature of mozilla's product.
For the good of the code!
That red star really wants me to download the source code and compile my own browser. take that M$ and your stupid IE!
Man, these marketing geniuses really should teach a class or something. I mean what better way to promote a web browser to the masses than with a heavy handed political message endorsing a totalitarian government! brilliant!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
"Who gains anything by increasing the Mozilla marketshare?"
I think you answered yourself there: "webdevelopers [who] keep on spilling time working around annoyances." At some point along the marketshare continuum, webmasters could theoretically forget about *IE* compatibility the way they once ingored Netscape compatibility.
Come to think of it, there's your guerilla marketing strategy: Publish a library of standards-compliant HTML snippets that render properly in FF but not IE. FF-friendly webmasters can make heavy use of such elements, with a cute, Fox-emblazoned button explaining what readers can do if they're using IE and the page isn't displaying properly.
Seriously, developers should be the crux of Mozilla's efforts here. Sell developers on custom client-server functionality on the cheap (as an extension of course), and you have the potential to introduce FF as an application platform to a good number of SMB users. IE can host & run .NET Windows forms controls (but its such a kludge that it's not really a viable solution in most situations), and lots of developers use IE's godawful, memory & bandwidth hogging XMLDataIslands. For reasons as stupid as that, many business users are locked into IE via in-house app dependencies. Perhaps a stupid simple basic RAD editor for XPI apps would be a start; a syntax-aware plugin for Eclipse with a built in test harness / sandboxed virtual gecko runtime would be even better.
Pi Ran Out
I say this. If they want to make Firefox more popular than IE, then they need to go back to the basics. Unbloat the client, make it run faster than it does, put all the bells and whistles back into plugins, and get rid of that God forsaken memory leak.
You know, like things were back in the days before 1.0, i.e. the version that made me switch from Opera.
And I just switched back to Opera. Really should find those old reg codes, even if they're no longer really necessary.
This sig no verb.
Firefoxy!
http://firefoxy.vegard2.no/ slightly NSFW (but that's the point!)
"less is more"
okay so granted you need to pack some extra stuff into
the browser to make it appell to your n00b user. they like bloat.
so go ahead and make a "fatfox browser", but please
don't sacrefic the good 'ol firefox for that. im mostly
using it because it's a "lean mean browsing machine" (well
to be honest the fox did gain some weight, guess it goes with
the version number).
ms did it wrong putting the browser to thight to the core os
and packing all kind of active s.h.1.t into it. a browser to browse
a media player to play media, a program to download torrents, etc.
i'm just not a all in one guy i guess.
When Firefox has its own email client from Mozilla as part of the download, I think you will see a new wave of people switching over.
I used Netscape forever it seemed, but with them dropping the email portion, it started to fade. That, and the fact that it is difficult to extract your old emails after a HD crash made me give up on it. I got tired of losing all my saved jokes and important emails from several years ago. I switched to gmail, and only use Outleak Express for those emails that I cannot use a free account with.
I don't trust MicroSoft when it comes to security. I'm hoping that Mozilla may offer us something more secure. Giving us an email client that comes with the Firefox download will hopefully be that answer. And it will certainly help their download numbers.
Please, please do not "evolve into more than just a browser"!
I am sure that any day it is going to make the big spring and take firefox by the horns...
The concept of a single target that Just Works on all known OSs
I think you vastly underestimate the number of known operating systems.
Random and weird software I've written.
Hi there,
To help get Firefox out there, why not approach OEMs to see if they'd be willing to bundle Firefox as part of their standard Notebook/Desktop Computer images, pitching improved security and features over IE as the selling point? This would only address the issue of distribution and exposure, and would need to be coupled with other strategies to created brand recognition, like the ad that was posted in the NY Times a while back (so that people know what the Mozilla Firefox icon on their desktop is all about).
This is essentially the same tactic that was used so effectively by Microsoft when they started bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
Cheers,
--Matt
Yeah, should have qualified that with "PC".
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"Firefox may need to evolve into more than just a browser. "
I agree. It should be a whole suite of tools, including a browser, mail client, HTML editor, IRC client.
How about presenting the user, who installs FF with a screen that has a list of all (mozilla supported?) extensions/plugins that can be installed once FF is done installing. The user marks the features (s)he wants and those extensions/plugins will be installed with the FF.
Once in a while prompt the user with a new, updated list.
You can't handle the truth.
Actually, Firefox only became popular after it was split from the full-on Mozilla browser. Now, that's only a correlation, not necessarily a causal relationship, but it's worth noting.
If you'd like a Mozilla email client, you've got two options today. The first is Thunderbird, a stand-alone email client intended to be a companion to Firefox. I use it myself, and aside from a few minor annoyances, it works quite well.
The second is to switch to SeaMonkey. It's based on the original Mozilla Suite, and includes both a web browser and an email client. But the underlying code is more up to date, and it uses the same modern codebase found in Firefox.
>I've said this in the Mozilla forums and I'll say it here: what the hell
>are you people doing with your systems that Firefox brings your system
>to a crawl?
Opening an average of six tabs. One is always on gmail; the others vary - blogs, news, etc. Usually *not* any Flash-heavy, music-heavy, video-heavy stuff. In fact the only Flash running would usually be something I didn't bother to / haven't yet Adblocked.
Yes, I have a few extensions - if I can't adblock, use gmail by default, have a nice googlebar lite toolbar (I personally hate the weird sidebar-plug-in-a-million-search-engines thing, sorry) then what's the point? OK, I'd probably still use Firefox on principle, but it wouldn't be nearly as essential and cool.
There's usually a few other programs open at the same time - Outlook Express (for the wife), Word, Windows Explorer.
Memory usage for Firefox will slowly grow until I need to restart Firefox and/or reboot.
the team is looking for ways to gain greater mainstream acceptance -- and adoption</snip>
How about asking Microsoft to bundle it as part of Windows...?
Call it FireFag for having a gay red dinosaur as an icon.
people use firefox cause it does things that other browsers dont. at least , that goes for the 95% of people who don't give a shit or even undrstand open source
tabs
cntrl+ increases teext
bookmark all tabs into folder
good privacy
that is why i use firefox;i dont care one penney literally about whether it is ie or os or whatever
so, people use tools because the tool does something; they use nontools because marketing brainwahsed them that it was better or whatever
so, ff can be a tool, whihc means it has to offer things ie does not, real useful things, or it has to become a nontool and it is hip or whatever
it is really simple - this stuff aint hard or rocket science; the trick is figuring out what people want if u want to stay a tool. from what i have seen of the extensions, the people programming ff don't have a clue.
i don't know what the next good tool is maybe integration with a slashcode type thing so yo can set up your own web stie ?
a filter that takes out farm links ? ie a phone book. we have all gotten frustrated with searching for say a hotel in boston or a resturant in dayton and finding that 90% of the returns are shit. some phone book like tools are available in yahoo and aol and google, but ther eis a lot of room for improvement.
that is two ideas. if the people running ff have any brains, they will find one or two such things that people really wnat an put them in of course, the ff might fail - that is the nature of capitilism (and why ms is a problem, because aas a monopoly it avoids the rigors of the market; that sums up 99% of what is bad about ms)
about:config is a monstrosity.
How about organizing the settings in a reasonable structure and adding a usable online help that describes them?
I've been using FF since the early days, and it's been gratifying to find so many extensions being built. I can forgive it the resource hogging (I experience that too), and I can forgive it some of the instability, so long as it doesn't hose my system. But if someone could figure out a better way to organize all the extensions and make them easier to sort through, that would be a plus. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'd just as soon not having to page through 5 screens of fairly verbose descriptions of what I don't want, before I find what I do want...
"Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or... [linking] to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected. The idea being, the browser becomes more valuable the more your friends use it..."
Sounds a lot like Firefox with the Hyperwords extension:
The extension provides 24 Search engines, including for people, blogs and news. 14 References, including Wikippedia, dictionary and academic. Go via Google Lucky, URL and Skype. Copy text plain or with URL. Print page or selection. 8 Places to shop. Email immediately or via Gmail o Yahoo! Mail. 6 different taggers, with search. Blog with Blogger and WordPress. Look up maps, local time, weather and package tracking. 6 Different types of server information. 7 Language translations.
At a single click. Now also with Toolbar. All new! Shiny
http://www.hyperwords.net/
And my favorite part of the story: instead of admitting their mistakes, Netscape decided to sue over un-competitive practices (I guess Microsoft should have made IE *worse* so that it was competitive with Netscape 4.x.) Thanks for wasting all that time and money on a pointless lawsuit.
But look at what happened on the Macintosh platform where there was no such un-competitive practice: IE still won out. At the time, it was a plain better browser.
Comment of the year
You're wrong, everyone knows IE got market share by having it bundled with Windows by default.
Personally, I'm about to abandon Firefox. The bug where copy/paste stops working, arrow keys stop working, and the ` key loads up the search bar really really really annoy me. It happens quite often too. I found the bug in the bugtracker and it's been open for quite some time with no solution from the developers.
Initially, Firefox was supposed to be Mozilla (or Netscape Navigator or whatever you wanna call it) with all the cruft stripped out, and with a nice extensions capability. That was good.
Why is it now huge, and they want to make it huger? That's bad.
Keep the browser light. Make it easy for people to assemble the browser, and add batches of extensions to add the features they want, and then move that personalized browser around. (I hate the half-hour I have to spend setting Firefox up to my liking on any new machine I'm going to use).
Why is somebody who thinks Small is the New Big advocating making the browser bigger?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
.. as a good marketing approach. Skip the 2.0 branch entirely. Don't release it to the public, don't even announce it. Work on 3.0, praise the new Gecko, get some (any) solution to the memory leaks. That's it.
I tried to donate money to the Mozilla Foundation through a program at work. The Mozilla Foundation were asked to fill in a form to release the money from the handling agency (United Way), who claimed it was needed for "Patriot Act compliance"). But United Way couldn't get any reponse from the Mozilla guys, and I even emailed donations@mozilla.org myself -twice- to no avail.
Not saying I would have enabled another run in the NYT with my measly contribution, but I thought every dollar would count. Apparently not so - my donations never reached them.
Alright, before I begin, I will openly admit to being a Karma whore here, leeching off of a strong thread, but this was the closest discussion I could find that fits with what I want to say. I think I have a valid feature here that I want to see, and since it's late in the day, I hope someone will notice and consider this. That being established...
As a network admin, I have and use IE 6 for ONE REASON: In a heartbeat, I can disable internet access by establishing a localhost proxy using Active Directory on the Win2K server, and *BAM*, the kid looses their internet. Along with heavy restrictions that make installing their own programs next to difficult (disabling the "Internet Options" dialog box for example), plus a general ignorance among the student population regarding what a proxy is, kids haven't circumvented this. And the only reason why this is so easy to do is because Internet Explorer policies are worked directly into AD, it's already built into Win2K / XP / Server, and it's painless to implement.
If I could do the same with Firefox, I would adapt it in a heartbeat. Now, before someone thinks to make mention of setting up a policy that sets the computer's network to use a localhost proxy, recall that Firefox, with the checkmark of a single option box, allows you to buypass Windows' proxy settings. And enabling / disabling a localhost proxy is just one of the many policies I can set with AD. Now, I don't know if it's actually feasible to create AD policies for any software not built into Windows. And for any smart-alec who says that I should just look up the registry setting responsible for saving the proxy settings, I can't disable the "Preferences..." function that allows them to go back into the settings dialog and change it manually. Plus, it's a lot more work for me to do all this registry manhandling when it is so easy to just make an immediate change to a policy in AD.
Or, AT LEAST create registry settings (and document them, and create reg keys that we can automatically download, save, and push with any policy we desire) that lock down almost every function of Firefox imaginable, making it an unchangable web browser...that would at least be a start.
And if that DOES exist, someone please point me in the right direction. I'd sure like to know how to set it up (considering that Microsoft won't be providing IE 7 for Win2K, and I'd love to stick with Win2K and Win2K Server as long as possible...best thing IMO to ever come from Redmond).
The thing is, only about 10% of the computer using population actually knows how to install programs. I mean it. I work in tech support, and from my own observation, 9/10 users out there don't know how to install anything, even if they did want to run it. 10% adoption might as well be 100% of the people bright enough to install an application.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the possibility of getting attractive people to hand out free CDs and associated czaczka in major town centres.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
From what I've heard, the reason the RAM/CPU bugs keep getting shot down as INVALID or WONTFIX is that they cannot be reproduced by the would-be bugfixers. I, for instance, routinely have Firefox running for weeks at a time, have 5-10 tabs as a matter of course and sometimes hit 40+ tabs when going click-crazy in Wikipedia. I've been using Firefox/Mozilla since Milestone 18 (Oct 2000) and I've never hit the RAM/CPU bug (yes, people have reported the bug on the original Mozilla Suite, not just Firefox). I've had the whole browser lock up solid, mostly due to plugins (i.e. Flash and Acrobat), but I've never hit a memory leak or CPU hog bug.
My gut says there's something more to it than just a Firefox issue. Maybe it's plugin-related. Maybe it's a video driver issue -- seems unlikely, since I've heard of it happening under Linux, but given the spaghetti nature of the XFree86 code it's possible. Maybe it's something I'm missing. But it's not present in a default install of Firefox on most people's computers, including the developers, so nobody can fix it since nobody knows what's causing it.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
You said, "I've had the whole browser lock up solid...".
I've had that happen, too. I've never seen it happen in Opera. Why is it that the Opera people can make a completely stable browser, but the Mozilla Foundation cannot?
Sometimes when the browser "locks up", it is due to the CPU hogging bug.
It is not acceptable for Firefox developers to try to excuse Firefox by saying that the problem is probably due to an extension, as you are doing. They've been doing that for years, and it's lame.
You said, "My gut says..."
Maybe so. But would you fly on an airplane maintained by "gut says" mechanics? "Gut says" is not debugging, it is just armchair philosophy.
Do you realize that, in at least 4 years, no one on the Mozilla Foundation team has investigated the CPU hogging bug? No one. I posted a bug report in which I had carefully tested and found the bug in both Windows and Linux, on two different motherboards. But it is obvious that not one developer has even bothered to read the bug reports thoroughly.
The problem is more severe if the computer is running Thunderbird email software at the same time. (!!!! There's a clue!) The problem is more severe if there is more than one instance or window of Firefox.
There would be a lot more bug reports about the CPU hogging bug. But the Mozilla Foundation developers are openly hostile to bug reports and bug reporters, so most people just use something else.
Poor quality of management is one of the things that is delaying the acceptance of Firefox.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.