Maybe if websites totally endorsed it?

Posted by Free short URL ... on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 04:57Improving Firefox Retention

To start, I love Firefox. It's all I use (except when testing, the other browsers of course) when surfing the web!

One thing I have done is unequivocally promote Firefox through my short URL service, whereby I have made the extension / plugin to make a URL from any web page available only in Firefox (mostly because I enjoy Firefox and endorse it fully, also because its a pain in the ass to make it for IE).

If you want to see what I am doing, take a look at http://shorten.ws/ both in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

My site is ranked top 16,000~ in Alexa, so hopefully this will get some installs for the Firefox community :)

 - Anthony

 



 


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Total Endorsment
Submitted by FuzzyFox on Sat, 12/15/2007 - 21:54.

There are sites that totally endorse Mozilla Firefox more or less

E.G:

  • www.ie7.com
  • www.phoenixfox.info
Fuzzy Fox

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Thanks for the heads up... I
Submitted by Free short URL ... on Sun, 12/16/2007 - 01:32.

Thanks for the heads up... I guess I haven't spotted these before. Especially the IE7.com, ha ha.

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Very nice site
Submitted by aggro on Wed, 12/12/2007 - 23:01.

Your site looks really nice. I think that you are currently "pushin" the Firefox there enough, so no need to overdo it.

But you might want to fix some syntax errors in your xhtml:
http://shorten.ws/t4j7

And in css:
http://shorten.ws/v0s6

But I liked your site so much I made a bookmark to it.

But I'm curious. Where do you get money for that and why are you doing it?

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Thank you
Submitted by Free short URL ... on Thu, 12/13/2007 - 13:26.

Thanks for your kind comments. It's probably not heaps compared to places like craiglist, usenet, isohunt, etc. but I think we have got about 30~ people to install Firefox since this little change to the site... 

It's great you bookmarked the service :) And I will look into those xhtml and css errors tomorrow morning, when I wake up. Thanks for pointing them out!

The site is monetized through what I consider as file sharing, direct file links, adult content, etc. Those pages have a landing page before the redirect, to show the user the URL they are about to go to and let them opt out. It's a way of protecting the users (don't want people afraid to click a shorten.ws short URL link) and to also show ads on these pages helps to pay the bills.

Pages that you linked to, for example, will always remain a straight redirect... and in-fact, most do... its just ones I deem necessary to warn about (and trust me... I have got an eye-full sometimes).

 

** edit **

Forgot to mention that the reason we run the service is because it's a field with quite a lot of competition and it's great to rank, for example, number 4 in Yahoo for the search terms... perhaps someday we might outrank ShortUrl.com and maybe even TinyUrl :P

Or perhaps even show up in Google at all... that would be nice. Still don't know how I can be #4 in Yahoo and nowhere to be seen in Google, haha!

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Problems Fixed!
Submitted by Free short URL ... on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 05:02.

I fixed up as many HTML / CSS issues I could - some need to stay for the extension detection for Firefox and some IE quirks so the site shows up properly in IE :)

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Still some errors you could fix
Submitted by aggro on Sun, 12/16/2007 - 14:03.

Quation mark is missing at the end of this img src value:
src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-52-Ylakpfr_iI.gif

And in your css:
.URLInput {
width: 230px;
height: 14px;
margin-top: 0px;
font-family: Arial;
font-size: 8pt;
border: none;
border: 0 none solid;
}

Border values are in order border-width, border-style, border-color, so you are no trying to set solid as a color for the border, which doesn't exist because of the "none" value. It makes no sense to me that you have
a) Defined border twice
b) Have both none and solid for the border value. As none means that there is no border and solid means that the border line is solid.

Makes more sense if this is one of those IE hacks you mentioned, but strange if IE can't even handle "border: none". Same problem is with .URLsSubmit.

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Great work
Submitted by Ken Saunders on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 06:01.

I'm glad that I took the time to view your site in both browsers. That's really great that you go an extra step to promote Firefox that way.
You could be real assertive and put a Get Firefox link in your "Short URL tool on your website" feature. ;)

Congrats on the success of the site. That's definitely a good Alexa Ranking to have.

P.S. Welcome to Spread Firefox.




"Because the Internet is for Everyone."

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Thank you
Submitted by Free short URL ... on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 23:13.

Thank you for the kind words.

I have considered what you said about putting it on the webmaster page... but I don't want to be to intrusive. Maybe I could work out a way to do it without it looking like I am "whoring" Firefox around, like a cheap mistress.

Feel free to use the service, too! We are soon to be overtaking TinyURL and ShortUrl.com on Yahoo search... will be exciting :) To bad we are still nowhere to be seen by Google...

 

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