MozCorp Announces Firefox 1.5 Extension Competition 260
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."
Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
Why only U.S., Canadian and European contestants?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:if that is necessary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't Africans or Asians or Australians (or whateverians) allowed to enter ? What's wrong with the other north Americans (Mexicans) ?
Is this a language issue ? Part of the "fight against terror" (sic) or what ?
extentions are great..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dumb Move. (Score:3, Insightful)
Dumb, dumb, dumb. Especially when it comes to extensions - my rough recollection is that most of the best extensions seem to be by Europeans.
They're probably going to claim that they had no choice because it's tricky/expensive to ship electronics outside the States but, c'mon, how hard would it have been to arrange an alternative prize, at least to avoid rubbing the world's nose in it at a time when America isn't exactly the most popular kid in the class. If Mozcorp has a PR, he/she should probably reconsider his/her position.
Re:if that is necessary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the furore about banning the sale of PS2s to Iraq because the chips could be used in missile guidance systems?
Re:Why only U.S., Canadian and European contestant (Score:3, Insightful)
So, they probably verified it was OK in the US, the EU, and non-Quebec Canada, but either couldn't or didn't verify it was legal elsewhere and thus don't allow entrants from nonvalidated places.
(Sorry if that makes no sense, I'm just ending a nightshift here)
Then why is Quebec excluded? (Score:3, Insightful)
So MozCorp is worried that those crafty Quebecois will use the first prize to build weapons of mass destruction?
Maybe they should fix broken extensions first? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
RTFRN! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the whole reason they have pre-release software; so extension writers have a chance to update their code before final release.
If you want everything to work right away, don't use beta software!
Re:Experienced vs Novices (Score:3, Insightful)