Firefox Bar, a new way to spread our favorite browser
Posted August 27th, 2008 by damienallen
I have created the "Firefox Bar". Basically, it's a bar that fades into the top of your browser window if you are not running Firefox. It has a download link for Firefox (sFX in this case), a link to the FFBar site and a close link. I use a cookie to make sure it stays closed for the session. I am also in the process of creating a Wordpress plugin (beta right now). Javascript is done with jQuery (but I'm also a Moo fan). Questions or ideas?
To see it in action, or download:
Feedback PLEASE
what FF is or just use
what FF is or just use IE. However, I do find allot of dead installs - I call them dead because I don't know where they come from. I suspect It installs them of course. Generally when a user installs FF he makes it the default. In most of these cases IE remained the default so as to not cause any problem. I also find huge FF installs in linux based grid clusters. At a major bank recently I found the cluster manager (the employee) writing a script to install FF on all ~2K blades in the cluster via downloading. I asked why should blade do a seperate download. He replied because it helps get the FF numbers up and [he] wants to "help". Nice. I suspect there MAY be actually more regularly USED copies of Safari out there than Mozilla at this point. Anyway, I'm willing to be convinced... really - I just don't see it. _______________________
Nice Work
I haven't yet thoroughly gone through all of the content pertaining to your Firefox Bar but my first impressions of it are really good.
It's a decent solution when trying to decide where exactly to put a Firefox promo that would be effective yet integrate well with the pages which is something that I've been dealing with while rewriting my main web site. My new design doesn't really provide as much room to place Firefox ads as my current site design does and that's been a concern of mine because I'd rather not lose any referrals that sends visitors to mozilla.com even if they click on the referral link as soon as they land on my site. It's just the way that my priorities are set up.
I think that it is very cool of you and in the spirit of how Mozilla operates that you offer such a flexible set of guidelines for the terms of use of your Firefox Bar.
People will want to alter and customize it and you've left the door open for that.
The only issue that I see that could prevent people from using it is the inclusion of the link to your site on the bar itself. It's not that you don't deserve it but it is in the most prime real estate section on the page and on the site but again, you're flexibility on that makes the bar even more appealing.
I certainly wouldn't have any problem with providing a link to your site and I'd put it on a page with a decent Google PR, but the only links that get such good exposure over my own links are those for Firefox.
In any event, I plan on spending more time to look further into using your Firefox Bar.
Great work. Thanks for sharing it.
Ken - Page Zoom Buttons
Thanks for taking the time
Thanks for taking the time to check it out. I left the guidelines very open, because it really should be up to the site owner how they want to use the bar. If they know how to make it reach their users more effectively, they should be able to make those changes. As for the link, people can nofollow it, remove it or change it. I figured that the link would bring more visitors, resulting in more FFBar downloads and ultimately resulting in more Firefox.
Brilliant!
I think this is a great enhancement to the current banners and other banner ideas going around SFX.
Regarding the issue of linking back to your site, I'd say this is fine as long as the link is optional. The link can provide more viral spread.
One concern - it may be best to avoid using cookies as some viewers will have them disabled. When a few SFX members worked on banners for widgets we considered adding a "close" button that used a cookie, but ended up scrapping the idea due to this concern. However, the widget banners would have involved a different user workflow.