Just went to Baskin-Robbins with Mark to get some free ice cream to celebrate Yahoo’s 10th birthday.
Sweet (literally).
So thanks to Yahoo for letting us all get a taste of the Birthday cake!
Oh yea… Happy Birthday!
Just went to Baskin-Robbins with Mark to get some free ice cream to celebrate Yahoo’s 10th birthday.
Sweet (literally).
So thanks to Yahoo for letting us all get a taste of the Birthday cake!
Oh yea… Happy Birthday!
I’ve mentioned this before. Firefox again is on the homepage. Now celebrating the 25 Million Milestone.
That’s some good press. Yahoo gets a lot of hits. And that title just yells out “Lots of people are checking out Firefox… have you?”
Don’t just take back the web. Take it back with a loud voice! Congrats Everyone!
btw: If your not spreading the word. Help Out now. Get those links in your blog, on your AIM profile, in your forum signature, etc. etc. Be creative!
There’s been a ton of speculation regarding “gbrowser”, google’s alleged browser, Netscape’s Firefox based browser, now even thoughts Yahoo might be interested. Though I wonder if that really is beneficial to anyone involved?
I’m going to make the bold statement that custom browsers are bad, making extensions are good.
There are several reasons why custom browsers are bad:
The Correct Approach
I personally believe the correct approach in this arena is extensions. A great example is the brand new Yahoo Toolbar, or SpeakEasy. Why are these the right way?
What do they lose?
Really nothing. You can do pretty much everything via extensions. You can create a skin, add features, overlay menus, add toolbars etc. etc. There’s quite a few possibilities.
Conclusion
Releasing your own browser, unless you really make radical changes (Camino, Galeon, K-Melon) is somewhat of an ineffective use of resources. You can accomplish the same thing, while providing better service to customers by trying to use an extension framework. Extensions by nature have less development requirements, easier to update, allow the user to have the latest browser, and give the user choice.
I personally think Yahoo and Speakeasy have done an excellent job. They accomplished their goal and really addressed the point I’m trying to make in this post. I just hope some other companies will seriously consider what they are doing, before they try and get their users to install hacked up copies of Firefox.
Extensions and Themes are the best way to customize a browser. If at all possible, try to keep within those frameworks. You’ll thank yourself later when you realize that you need little/no changes to work perfectly with Firefox 1.5 or later.
Yahoo released their Firefox Toolbar!
As Blake also noted, I found this interesting:
The support and community that continues to grow around Firefox is amazing and we’re proud to be part of it. In fact, the Yahoo! Toolbar Beta is just one of many Firefox goodies you can expect to see from us this year, so stay tuned.
Yahoo Browser anyone? Yahoofox? Firehoo? Let the conspiracy theories begin!
Even better than the other day. This is a very high profile position to be. And at 11:30 AM EST. The beginning of the workday for the west coast, and right before lunch on the east coast… right when many people browse the web for news.
Well, if this doesn’t show the power of Firefox, nothing ever will. That’s right. Hours after the president announces he won the election, a nice “switch” style article right on the Yahoo homepage. It links to the syndicated feed of this PC World Article (link to PC World Article, because Yahoo links tend to break).
The article spends a bit of time on Firefox, which is great. What’s really great is this positioning. A day of elevated news coverage, and a browser article made the elite Yahoo Homepage News feed. That’s a big gain for Firefox.
On an odd note, the only direct link to something mentioned in the article is a link to IE Developers blog. Not a link to Mozilla.org or spreadfirefox.com, or getfirefox.com.
So the good press is coming along!
IMHO this is the biggest press event so far. It’s really the biggest article oriented at mainstream internet users. It’s not on Wired, Slashdot, CNet. It’s right on the Yahoo home page. So non-geeks can read.
This is big… and it’s only getting bigger.
It appears initially after the announcement that Yahoo! would start testing a new layout, they only offered it to IE users. Now it appears it’s enabled for Mozilla/Netscape users.
Should note it’s more standards compliant.
Yea, take a look at that source.
Interesting eh?
Well, actually it’s well past time. Instant Messaging has all the earmarks to be the communications of the future, and it royally stinks.
Problems today:
I think it’s time for the IETF to write up an official recommendation for Instant Messaging.
Here’s my wish list:
With this, there’s a lot of flexibility. Using XML as a message format, rather than HTML, allows for a stylesheet to render it pretty. A person with a vision impairment could have a product read the XML directly. You could honor a stylesheet provided by the person you are talking too, download them online, or create your own. Big text? Small text? Color contrast? All in your control. And with SVG emoticons, they can resize appropriately without losing quality. Phones can resize as necessary thanks to custom stylesheets.
It’s a real shame it hasn’t happened yet. There’s no great IM clients. The protocols all have their limitations (AOL stinks behind firewalls, Yahoo’s got minimal users, MSN is spam ridden). All the current systems stink. Their clients are even worse. AOL’s adware, MSN’s buggy client (and terrible Mac client), Yahoo’s terribly slow development.
Look at all the IRC clients available. So many, each with their own features, toys, ehancements. All working together.
Yes, I do hate IM’s as of today. But imagine what could be done? It could be as universal as email. Secure, fast, flexible framework. But instead, we’ve got garbage to date.
The time for standards in IM is now. It’s only going to get more proprietary from here on out. And lock users into their networks.
Oh… spam prevention built into the protocol would be nice. Lets avoid another Email like spam attack.
Just my $0.02