Dynamic banners generation tool
I have completed 2 working prototype dynamic banners and a generation tool that could be used for the SFx dynamic banner project. As Jeremy already published his banner generation tool, we now have 3 different approaches to the issue, which we can use as a basis for further discussion.
The dynamic banners I made show a Get Firefox button/banner to non-Firefox users and a Fire up the Fox! button/banner for Firefox users.
Here is the tool to generate the dynamic banners: Generation Tool
Sample buttons/banners as generated with the tool can be seen here: Samples (Temporary document).
Details
The generation script can generate both (X)HTML/JavaScript and PHP code, which gives us two different ways to make a banner/button dynamic.
With the PHP code, there is no issue as to when to show which button. With the HTML/JavaScript version however, there is the issue of users who have turned JavaScript off (noscript users). I posted an analysis of noscript users the other day. The conclusion could be to show the Get Firefox button to noscript users, however in the case of Fire up the Fox! the page carries a notice if someone does not use Firefox and so I provide the option to choose how to handle noscript users. (For our SFx dynamic button, I reckon, we should choose one or the other and not complicate things for the user.)
The HTML/JavaScript version looks a bit more complicated then needed, a simplification would be to leave out the noscript part and show one of the two banners by default. However when turning a banner off with JavaScript, this causes a sometimes visible change effect which I found rather unpleasant. Hence the choice to simply decide which one to turn on and provide a noscript alternative for when JavaScript is off.
We encourage you to experiment with these banners and gives us your feedback or comments.
- Otto
Great job!
Thanks to Otto, we now have several possible implementations of dynamic banners. We would therefore appreciate tests and critiques of each of our dynamic banner systems (the other prototype is available at http://www.jeremyglassenberg.com/MozillaBannerGenerator.html).
Otto not only provided a PHP banner and Javascript banners, but his Javascript banners work in a significantly different manner than in my prototype. Primarily, the Javascript banners created from my generator involve a remote call to an external script, whereas Otto's banners are standalone.
Each version has its advantages and disadvantages, so we look forward to everyone's feedback!
-Jeremy
Good Job
Good job, Jeremy and Otto.
On the old site, some people requested BB code for banners. Can you guys make it?
-LouCypher
BB code
Definitely a good idea to add BB code, so I did for the normal banner generation.
But yes, for dynamic banners it's not really possible.
- Otto
BBcode is possible
Thanks for bringing up this idea. We are currently focused on dynamic banners, and from what I know, they cannot be implemented for BBcode. However, our generators can be easily modified to create BBcode versions for any of the banners our current banner generators.
BBcode certainly looks like an excellent addition. We are thinking of ways to make banners more appealing to different channels such as widgets, and generating BBcode to accommodate message boards is a great way of appealing to a new area.
More comments
First, I want to thank stormbringer who is now using my dynamic banner on his blog (top right), which makes him the first person to use it as far as I know.
Dynamic banners need a lot more code than static banners, so as Jeremy pointed out off-loading some of that code to a central server as in his example, may be a good idea as it would result in smaller code to copy and paste. OTOH the code my examples generate is still comparable to something like the Google AdSense code, and people use that all the time. Also providing the full code allows people to change and tweak it, which you can see as either a good or a bad thing as it provides more freedom, but also introduces more risk of mistakes.
Another alternative which I looked into is to have a script on a server redirect requests for a banner and the clicks on the banner to the appropriate destination based on the user-agent. But in practice it didn't really simplify things very much, unless you restrict the available options.
Traditionally I have always divided users into 3 groups for the purpose of marketing Firefox (see the countdown clock example another post). These groups are IE users, Fx users and others. Since people of using other browsers, like Opera or Safari have most likely made an active browser choice, I think it makes more sense to market other Mozilla products to them (e.g. Thunderbird). However this is not integrated into the prototype I have made available here.
- Otto - SOS
Waiting for the end
I'm one of those people that doesn't really understand the details of the discussion, but tries to learn. Mainly, I wait for a result, plug it in, test it, report to the author for further testing... But you guys do the heavy lifting (grin).
That's what we make it for...
That's exactly what we make it for, so that people can just copy and paste it without having to go into complicated details and put together code themselves. Thanks for giving it a try.
- Otto
Sounds like a plan :)
Thanks for the help, stormbringer. We look forward to any feedback you have from using these banners.
Nice
Very impressive and interesting work Otto.
I'll give the Generation Tool a try.
Update:
The generation tool worked great as did the code that it produced.
Ken