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Mozilla To Show Sponsored Links To First-Time Firefox Users
Mozilla has announced a new initiative to show sponsored content within the Firefox browser. Currently, opening a new tab in Firefox will display a set of nine tiles showing your most commonly visited websites. When a user installs Firefox and opens it for the first time, they see these tiles, but eight of them are blank (one links to a Firefox tutorial). As the user browses the web, those tiles gradually fill in with visited sites. But Mozilla is going to fill out those blank eight tiles for new users. They say, "Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission. The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy." Existing users shouldn't see any difference, and the tiles will be replaced with commonly-visited sites like they do now.
Dear Slashdot User,
Speaking for myself as AC but reflecting on everything.
This comment is about Beta and the revolt. If you're not interested do move on, sorry for the brief interruption and Thanks.
I'll start by saying surely there's folk bothered by the anti-beta floods. I apologize if it's frustrated anyone who wants normal discussion flow. The fact is there's some of us who feel (super) passionate about this drastic redesign. Nerd or Don Juan, whatever [buzzword that describes you]...it would take a lobotomized sociopath to not even feebly feel something unsettling about the yanking of the historic roots of this site we call slashdot.org. Whether 1997 or 2006 or 2010 was your first time around these woods... there's much to admire and appreciate.
My bias is that I am 101% anti-beta on all points including ease of use, functionality & decimation of dense threaded discussion. It's ugly and hideous to me on so many levels. I could go on with a list UI details, I'll push that aside for now.
What I'm here to say is that as unprecedented as Slashdot's rise was - equally unprecedented is the scene unfolding in the altslashdot/slashcott movement. For or against, let's pause to admit this truth.
I feel what needs acknowledgement of the anti-beta movement is the validity of our own emotions here. I think the most passionate grew up with this site thru many phases of their lives. It's not just about the news business. I view Slashdot as an unprecedented cultural icon. A bizarre and intriguing global public forum - delivered to us reliably at every request direct to our private, personal computers.
-From trolls to flamewars to humor to all the memes, prose & poetry, robot crap-flooding to real intelligent valuable discussion and debate-
(If there was all of 1, it wouldn't work. It was that they all got to play)
Don't let what some call "immature" anti beta flooding fog your perception of the movement that is altslashdot. We are 150 strong in the channel and rising. We are busy resurrecting a dusty time machine that is the Slashcode from a long, ill-destined slumber. In all ~16 years of this site's unprecedented growth and dull drifting into "irrelevance" - can you say the community has ever been this ignited? This united?
I watch Facebook and Google+ destroy persona. I watch Google+ destroy old Google. I watch numerous sites redesign into turgid-with-whitespace messes. For some reason, the decimation of old Slashdot kicks me the in gut harder than the lamest trends of 3.0 and SOME lame things of 2.0.
I'm not saying I have all the answers. I have questions, too. Malda, how could you leave your dear creation in such apparently heavily corporate non-community minded hands? Why not some sort of not-for-profit to keep operational? Anything to at least let it operate with self-respect and not have to morph into something so ugly that is Beta. Oh well, I'm not a tycoon how would I know.
Maybe it's just the last straw for some of us. I believe altslashdot of many things goes beyond Slashdot itself and represents the intangible kicked-in-the-stomach feelings of many as the Internet changes over time - in this case not for the better.
To conclude, disgust with Beta can be expressed in many shades of grey, black or white. A heroic and perilous historical movement is taking place, ##altslashdot being the core of its engine. We battle for our beliefs like never before in the face of a twisted, ugly monster (that is not only Beta itself the end product, but all that is that conceived its bastardly existence).
We are trying to launch a Slashdot of old into the modern world. Our mission is community and absence of pure profit driven design. There's no free lunch but Lord let there be potlucks!
And I encourage you to join not to support nor pan per say... but to simply witness an awesome part of history unfold. A rebirth. A reclamation.
It's not so much whether we fail or succeed. It's about believing i
RIP you were fun while you lasted but now you have sponsored ad browsing based on like's/visits Do not want.
if you haven't already.
Pale Moon is like Firefox without Asa's retarded design choices.
Give it a try: http://www.palemoon.org/
I thought Mozilla hated third-party cookies and the advertisement crap on the web these days.
It looks like Chrome and IE may actually score a point.
Mozilla needs money! Why don't they just beg shamelessly like Wikimedia always does.
I'd donate, but I need money to buy food and toilet paper. I'm such a slave to my intestines, it's ridiculous.
Just today I said to myself, I said, self, how can I possibly get more of those advertisements I get bombarded with everywhere I go? It's as if Mozillia has been inside my head and giving me exactly what I have always wanted my browser to do - GIVE ME MORE ADS! (!!)
I hope all the advertisement is so non intrusive as Mozilla is trying to do, and for all the negative reactions to this, you should realize that that free beer was paid by someone.
Wow... in a Slashdot thread discussing Mozilla Firefox? Wow really? Do your higher ups know you're doing this? Doesn't make anyone reassured leaking info to you.
Maybe Debian's Iceweasel might be a good alternative. Or the firefox build for the Tor Browser Bundle.
Sorry, no ads on my computer, ever. Mozilla has been moving away from the open-source and privacy culture for a long time, when they removed the ability to (easily) disable javascript I realized that this would happen sooner or later.
If this reduces Mozilla's reliance on Google's money then that can only be a good thing. Especially since Mozilla's main sponsor is now also a competitor :/
At the end of the day, I still trust Mozilla far more than Google, Microsoft or Apple to respect my privacy.
can anybody still live there in real time? it's not on tv.... http://rt.com/usa/wvirginia-chemical-spill-again-water-617/
you know they are doing things that aren't beneficial for the user when they start making up pretty names... just call it what it is... SPAM
When browsing with many windows and tabs, the latest version of Firefox is far more unstable than a few versions back.
Is Mozilla Foundation becoming more sloppy? Is it bad management? Has the NSA forced Mozilla to add back doors?
Firefox crashes in the latest version, 27.0:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.co...
(Mozilla does not allow direct links from Slashdot.)
Its good that they can recoup some of the expense of creating a pretty good browser. Altrough i dont actully use firefox, i use chromium.
So the new version with this sponsorship should be cheaper then?
and btw what the quickest way of turning those tiles OFF?? (cover windows and Android please)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Today it is in an empty area, tomorrow it might pop up somewhere else. Will ad blocker work on these? At this rate we might end up with ads inside ads.
I read that Mozilla received $300M from Google, and that that money stops, so they're looking for other sources of income. But that makes me think: $300M? What on earth did they spend it on? Certainly not on a 2000 programmer years.
Although I don't so much mind this new addition if it brings in revenue to Mozilla, who are a nice company seemingly with the good of the web at heart, they have been playing one underhanded tactic recently with Firefox Mobile. On the mobile version, there is no way to remove the search providers pre-installed in the software (Bing, Amazon, Google, etc.). There used to be a way, but this feature was silently removed. I know I can just avoid using the search features (and untick the setting to automatically suggest search terms based on my input), but I should be able to uninstall search providers rather than give them free advertisement space on my browser.
Firefox has jumped the shark.
It'd be nice for people who value their privacy not to have their location/IP address sent to advertisers before they've had a chance to deny permission. Should privacy conscious people now disconnect their computers from the internet while installing Firefox? I wonder what the folks at TOR Project will make of this?
Considering that Mozilla promised to block third-party cookies by default in Firefox years ago, surely the sponsored links feature is going to take the backseat until they sort out the handling of third-party cookies first?
I loved Firefox when it was all about the user, but now FF is just turning into an advertising piece of junk.
I used FF on my Android phone, and in a recent update they removed the ability for me to uninstall (or even hide) pre-bundled search engines. If any of you use FF on Android, you know that these as a lot of lag during startup, and make your search screen more busy and less functional.
Every time I search I have to view ads for search engines (no I will never fuckin use yahoo or bing).
Now FF will blatantly show ads to new users. As much as I hate Google, Chrome now has adblock and at least they (how ironic) won't be shoving ads down my throat.
So Firefox is showing desperation for more revenue. Go figure. So you get Scroogled or you get Outfoxed. I could see this coming and its the open source evil which is where does funding come from? Well, nobody contributes enough so I guess ads are here to stay. I actually think this might help Mozilla and maybe even improve their products. I have not used Firefox since 3.6 simply because it has become the browser with bugs. Its most likely the reason Chrome is killing every other browser out there. Unless Google does something really dumb with Chrome. I don't see Firefox regaining much of its glory days anyway.
If it's just a link to a website the way tiles normally work? And if the links go to reputable websites? I don't have a problem with Firefox asking Amazon for some money to put them on the front page.
On the other hand, the tiles could be more like banner ads, flashy spammy things, controlled by a 3rd-party network where Mozilla doesn't have much control over what shows up there. That would suck.
If they do, will they explain the privacy implications to all their users? Will they explain how that aligns with the direction they took with respect to 'do not track' and 'third party cookies'? Will commercial contents be embedded in the download file? Will Firefox remain 100% FOSS if is comes with copyrighted content?
Made firefox just right.
I've installed (or helped others install) firefox on a few new machines lately, and noticed that they always fill new windows/tabs with that google search page. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's a bit redundant, what with the search widget at the upper right. So we've tried to get it to produce that "tiling" of favorite/frequently-visited sites like you see in Opera, Safari, and some other browsers. And we've failed.
I just tried in this firefox that I'm typing this to, installed about a week ago on a new Macbook Pro. I can't find it. The "General" settings page lists "Use Current Page", "Use Bookmark" and "Restore to Default" (which gives the google search page). The "Tabs" settings page doesn't deal with the topic. Under "Content" there's nothing about initial content for new windows/tabs.
So what are we missing? Where is this particular setting now hidden? I expect that it is there somewhere, but I can't guess what they call it or how it's classified in the Preferences/Settings tree of little windows.
You'd think they'd make this the default in a new install, but that doesn't seem to happen. One of the first things I did on this Macbook was fire up Safari and download Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and a few more browsers. Firefox's first window after the initial "greeting" window showed the google search page.
(Yeah, I did try googling it. That doesn't work too well if you don't know what it's now called, and every browser that has this feature seems to call it something different. This is, of course, a well-known problem with many topics. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This is about the most benign form of advertising I can imagine.
It's on a page users don't have to see more than once, if they don't want to.
Even if they don't change their startup page, the ads go away pretty quickly, and permanently.
Mozilla To Show Sponsored Links To Last-Time Firefox Users
FTFY.
Have gnu, will travel.
You could use any browser yet you picked Firefox, and Firefox is good with 1 GB of ram and if I had more I would use Chrome
Verizon is already slow do we need to rock the boat(servers)
Ads != Spam
Aaaaaand back to IE. Have fun with your bankruptcy, Mozilla.
Well, Mozilla probably won't give your IP address to anyone, but your browser will. It's in the header of every IP packet sent to anyone, because without it, they can't reply to your request. Note that the "tiles" usually contain a small image of each site's main page, and to display that, the browser must send a request to each site, and each request contains the site's IP address and your IP address. That's how the IP (Internet Protocol) works. So every time you open a blank window or tab, no matter what browser you use, that sort of display of your "favorite" sites informs every site on the page that they're on your favorites list.
(It's possible that some browsers may not refresh those little tiles for every new page. That would make sense, to save time and network bandwidth. But if you see any of the images change, that implies that they are being requested each time a tile is drawn.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I already thought the "show pages it thinks you might want to open in a new tab" feature was sort of annoying right when they first released it, ages ago. You can turn the feature off. My new tabs have always been one blank white tile; I can open my own urls, thank you very much. I really couldn't care less what they pre-fill that screen with for people who don't turn the feature off, as long as you can still turn the feature off.
Channel Bar.
Never forget
do one thing well. Full stop. As a chap who has worked in IT for almost 20 years, I find it disheartening to see the slide from a program doing one thing well to attempting to do multiple things well. This almost always fails. Opera tried first. A browser should present the WWW in a standards-respecting way. No more. We don't need integration with social media, ads, relevant anything. I want my browser to display websites, nothing more. I miss the days of simplicity and by not respecting the tenet of each program doing one thing well, we muddy the waters with all manner of complexity and security nightmares. As a Linux user and a long-time (read day one) Firefox user, I may just bail out and start using a simpler browser that does just one thing well. Midori is better in this regard, also Epiphany. I like minimalist simplicity in my programs and I like one program to do one thing well only.
Firefox generates those thumbnails when you visit the site, not when you open a new tab.
Prett sure it shows cached images. One or the news sites in mine shows headlines over a day old
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
How to gradually kill a product everyone has loved for decades in 101 easy steps:
1) Decide to inject advertising first somewhere where people won't mind
2) Get greedy and realise how much money it made and screw the user, lets put more adverts in other places.
3) Get a frontal lobotomy to reduce your feelings from users telling you YOU SUCK for annoying them because your profits and cash flow is more important!
*Hugs*
Thanks.
You're a piece of shit troll.
Firefox generates those thumbnails when you visit the site, not when you open a new tab.
Well, that's good news. I use FF, Opera, Safari, and a few others on my Macbook (but no Safari on my linux box ;-). Both Opera and Safari sometimes update the images when I haven't visited the site, and sometimes keep the same image for several days. I don't know what their trigger for refreshing them might be.
For Firefox, I can't tell, because I can't get it to show me the array of little pictures for my "home page". Anyone know where they hid the setting to enable it? It'll let me pick a page, or show me the "default" google home page, but I can't find any other options in the Preference windows.
It used to be that Safari updated the array of images every time you opened a new window. I guess some people complained about this flooding their slow home Net connection, so they got a bit more subtle about it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If you like FF so much prove it and go to the bottom of this page http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/c... and click donate and stop bitching about it when you could do something to contribute.. Maybe Mozilla would not have to be doing this if you did because what's 1, 5, 10, 20, or even 50 bucks? Most video games cost more than that and I use FF far more than most games I own. I know that sounds trollish but it's the truth and I'm not trying to troll $1 is not much but when everyone is doing it it is.
I never even liked the stupid tiles in the first place. What's the point in setting a "Home page" if you never see it (since opening a new tab happens a lot more than restarting the browser). The last thing I want is to open a new tab with other people there to see JustUsBoys, Gaytube, etc.
That new tab page is so annoying and unnecessary, now they are going to make it even more so..
Ubuntu ads: Revolt!
Firefox ads: Meh, they need the money. (?)
Mozilla has to make money somehow and be independent from google. But I don't want to see amazon or whatever when I first load firefox. If mozilla gets strapped for cash its very likely that they will move to a model where some of these tabs are always reserved for sponsorship. Slippery slope.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I want this new feature in firefox about as much as I wanted a new theme on slashdot.
Also, fuck beta.