Spread Firefox - Igniting the web

Spread Firefox V.2 -- It's ALIVE!

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:22:55 -0800

The new Spread Firefox is live and visiting http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. This site will remain here at http://archive-sfx.spreadfirefox.com as an archive of the first two years of Spread Firefox.

Over the coming days and weeks, this site will stop accepting new content and accounts and will become essentially read-only with all of the new Firefox spreading happening at the new site.

Spread Firefox V.2 Dropping Soon!!

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:53:05 -0800

We're almost ready to flip the switch, pull the lever, press the shiny big red button!

As you all have been reading here for some time, the new Spread Firefox is an action-oriented, project-based platform. We're transitioning away from a platform dominated by discussion to one that focuses on taking action to spread Firefox.

This means that blogging is going away, to be replaced by projects. Projects are like mini-sites within Spread Firefox that give you the tools to manage specific activities to spread Firefox. Anyone can create one of these projects which come with a discussion forum, a mailing list, a project calendar, a document and image repository, etc.

Those projects that get traction will be featured on the front page of Spread Firefox. Projects that look like they need help getting support can also be featured on the front page.

In addition to Spread Firefox member projects, the Mozilla Marketing team are increasingly running their projects and programs at Spread Firefox. You'll find Mozilla Events, Mozilla Materials and Logos, Stats and Metrics, and more, all running out of Spread Firefox.

You all are encouraged to sign up with projects or programs that interest you and to create projects yourself.

The transition to the new site is going to be happening in a matter of hours. Your bookmarks and the URL http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. You'll have to re-login but your accounts, including your affiliate points, your private messages, and profiles should all be intact. The old Spread Firefox will be archived at a new URL, probably http://archive.spreadfirefox.com and will, sometime over the next few months be transitioned to a read-only site. We'll post links to the old site as soon as the URLs are updated and we'll keep you updated on the changes to the archive so that you have time to transition any of your documents to the new site or to re-locate your personal blogs.

In addition to the transition to the new platform, we're also going to be introducing you all to a larger team of Spread Firefox leaders, from Mozilla, Glaxstar, and the broader community. I'm still going to be around, but my involvement with the site-wide project will wane and I'll shift my focus to specific projects.

You all are what makes Firefox such a success. You've brought us 130 million Firefox users and helped make Firefox a household name. With Firefox 3 ever-closer at hand, you all will be the ones to take us to 200 million users and beyond. Thanks to all of you for your amazing efforts over the last three years and I look forward to everything you all will accomplish in the next three years.

- Asa

Firefox 3 Beta 2 Released

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:51:03 -0800

[Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Beta 2 today, Dec 18 at approximately 7:40pm PST. See Mike Beltzner's comprehensive post from DevNews, crossposted below. Reminder that the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release is intended for testing purposes only and is not for casual users.]

Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for download. This is the tenth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 2 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 25 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

Operation Firefox: The results are in!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:44:38 -0800

After an overwhelming response and some tough decision-making, the winner of Operation Firefox has been announced! Winner Agent R.W. from Georgia Tech University and team plastered the giant Firefox logo on their school's football stadium for thousands to bask in.

The Firefox logo soared to new heights on runner up Agent Teren's plane.

The Firefox sticker also graced the set of the New York City Opera, as well as a concert bus at an Iowa State tailgate. You can check out all the amazing pictures here or check out the Operation Firefox blog for the full scoop. We want to thank all our special agents for their creativity and participation! Over and out!

Personas for Firefox, Now with Snowmen

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:27:28 -0800

Personas for Firefox has been updated and officially moved into Mozilla Labs as part of our exploration of dynamic personalization.

Be sure to grab the latest version it's a major rewrite of the code and includes dozens of new designs (including a bunch in time for the holidays!). It also now works with the beta releases of Firefox 3.

Special thanks to Rhian for coordinating the development of new designs, and to Myk for driving this round of development.

A new Web site and developer APIs will be released within the next couple of weeks.

'Tis the Season to Spread Firefox 2007

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:26:41 -0800

This is cross-post from http://newsfx.spreadfirefox.com/tistheseason2007, since we're still in the transition phase from the old to the new SpreadFirefox.com:

The holiday season is in full swing and many of us will be spending quality time with family and friends at home and/or sending out a lot of holiday cards... so this is the perfect time to get creative and spread Firefox with some holiday cheer! :-)

I can think of two simple ways anyone can help spread the word about Firefox this holiday season:

1. Bring "Firefox Home for the Holidays" by helping family and friends install Firefox on their computers and show them how to use some of the features. Show them you care by telling them why Firefox is the browser of choice this holiday season... and help them customize it with a few Add-ons.

2. Give "The Gift of Firefox" by sending family and friends Firefox holiday e-cards with your persnalized message and a link to download and install Firefox. You can even put Firefox on a USB key or get a CD and other great Firefox gear (check out the Mozilla Store at http://store.mozilla.org) and send a nice holiday package!

Those are just a couple of things that came to mind, but I look forward to hearing more great ideas from our community! We also need to get some new holiday images together for people to use, so if you know of any artists that want to help create some holiday art with Firefox flare... please get them involved!

I look forward to hearing everyone's stories throughout the 2007 holiday season... so please share with us how you plan to spread Firefox with some holiday cheer this year!

Happy Holidays!

- Jay & the SFX team

For the Record returns

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:44:31 -0800

When someone at Mozilla sneezes, there's someone somewhere writing about it. From Twitter to the New York Times and everything in between, Mozilla attracts an amazing volume of coverage.

This volume is both good and bad. We don't have the marketing and pr budgets of the software mega-companies so the press buzz we get organically is wonderful. The downside is that because of the sheer volume of coverage, it's difficult to follow it all and make sure that Mozilla is being represented fairly.

What Mozilla lacks in marketing and pr budget, however, it more than makes up in the enthusiastic and capable community of participants who have already brought Firefox to 130 million users and made Mozilla a household name.

For the Record (FTR) is a community-driven public relations and press response program that will harness the energy and knowledge of the Mozilla community to 1) catalog all of the online coverage of the Mozilla Project, 2) develop a sustainable team of spokespeople who feel empowered to respond to online coverage, and 3) build a collection of talking points and responses to frequently asked questions.

To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email address-book and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you've forwarded the story.

The For the Record team, Mozilla's marketing team, PR representatives, or various spokespeople will take it from there.

Want to join the For the Record team, and help us further develop the program and write a set of FAQs and other materials that will make it easier for in the Mozilla community to better tell the Mozilla story and respond effectively when needed? Well, that's easy too. Simply subscribe to the mailing list. Please note, unless you're really interested analyzing the flow of Mozilla news and helping to distill relevant content into documentation, this probably isn't the list for you. If, on the other hand, that sound like great fun, we'd love to have you involved.

Air Mozilla Live Returns this Wednesday at 2PM PST (UTC-8)

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:04:06 -0800

This special, extended, Air Mozilla Live broadcast will feature guests from the Creative Commons, as they get ready to celebrate their 5th anniversary; the Mozilla application team, sharing expertise in extension development; and the Mozilla Mobile Platform team, discussing Mozilla's mobile goals, target platforms, and next steps.

Join us, this Wednesday for our live community discussion and "call-in" show.

Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and guests Melissa Reeder, Mark Finkle, Dave Townsend, and Christian Sejersen.
When: Wednesday, November 28, from 14:00:00 - 15:30:00 PST (UTC -8.)
Where: View the webcast at air.mozilla.com and participate on IRC, IM, or email.

IRC: join the discussion on irc.mozilla.org #airmozilla
IM: instant message your questions to the AIM/YIM/GTalk screenname airmozilla.
email: send in your questions before and during the show to airmozilla@mozilla.com.

Air Mozilla is now streaming 24/7 with a new live show every month (or as close to that as makes sense.) If you've got ideas for shows, please email us and let us know. Even better, if you're a part of the Mozilla community and you'd like to be interviewed or present on our live broadcast, let us know.

What is Firefox

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:38:19 -0800

I just posted a firefox badge on a new site I'm creating, and I realized a huge failing of the badges available here. See, the intended audience isn't the most internet savvy group. They can get around on the internet, but they mostly use IE because its default web browser. They don't even know its possible to switch.

They're going to look at the badge, not know what the hell it is, and ignore it. I suspect that is going to be the majority of your internet users. Those that know what firefox is already have it. (most of us, anyways).

What your average user needs to know is completely missing.

What needs to be shown before the click is:

A) What is firefox?

B) Why should they get firefox?

C) What is the cost?

D) Will it blow up their computer?

I wrote a brief piece of text below the badge, which will hopefully help:

"Firefox is an alternative web browser that offers an enhanced web browsing experience as well as feature rich browsing tools. And it's free! It's easy to install, so switch today to see the Firefox difference."

If you want to see it in action, its on the lower right side of http://www.fusedjaw.com I personally think it would be more effective if it was part of a badge though (a less wordy version, of course).

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Ready for Testing

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:50:49 -0800

[Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Beta 1 today. Mike Beltzner has a comprehensive post on DevNews,
crossposted below. Reminder that the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release
is intended for testing purposes only and is not for casual users. –
Melissa Shapiro]

Firefox 3 Beta 1 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than
developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release.
It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download.
This is the ninth developer milestone focused on testing the core
functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform
scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed
at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

Improved security features such as: better presentation of website
identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages,
anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking
for insecure plugins.
Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier
add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading,
full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows
Vista and Mac OS X.
Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart search
bookmark folders, direct typing in location bar searches your history
and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web
applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download
actions for file types.
Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering
architecture, native web page form controls, colour profile management,
and offline application support.
Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user
profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over
300 memory leak fixes, and a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire
classes of leaks.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 1 builds for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux in over 20 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead
we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone
announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what
they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in
testing at this stage of development.

Spread Firefox V.2 Getting Closer

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:14:34 -0800

We're making good progress on the next iteration of Spread Firefox and we'd like to expand the number of people participating so today we're opening up the SFX2 beta to everyone here.

You can log in with your same SFX username and password.

The two links you'll want to check out first are Rhian's intro to the new project structure and the project I created for SFX2 beta feedback.

The major change you'll notice right off is that we've rearranged SFX from a site that revolved around blog posts and discussion, to a site that revolves around projects and the tools needed to run those projects.

This is the first pass and we've no doubt got a long ways to go before we have everything we want, but it's been far too long since we refreshed things here and so we'd rather err on the side of opening it up early than find ourselves in the new year without a new SFX.

So, please head over to the SFX2 beta site, poke around, and let us know what's working and what's not.

Extend Firefox 2 is here!

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:18:44 -0700

Will you be the brain behind the next great web innovation? Get ready to show the world what you’re made of… Extend Firefox 2 is here!

Extend Firefox 2 is a developer contest with prizes awarded for creating new Firefox Add-ons. All entries will be judged by a panel of experts, with three Grand Prizes and twelve Runner-up Prizes awarded for entries that demonstrate excellence in user experience, innovativeness, and use of open standards.

Our panel of judges includes:

Garrett Camp - Founder & Chief Product Officer of StumbleUpon
Brendan Eich – CTO of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript
Tariq Krim - Founder and CEO of Netvibes
Jesse James Garrett – President of Adaptive Path
Joshua Schachter - Founder of del.icio.us, Director of Engineering, Yahoo!

So what are you waiting for? Start creating! This contest runs through December 31, 2007. Get more info and stay on top of contest news at the Extend Firefox site.

Mozilla & Firefox messaging

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:19:49 -0700

As you know, the challenge of communicating the nature of Mozilla and the benefits of Firefox is not for the faint of heart. We've probably all had the experience of occasionally being met with vacant stares from friends, family, spouses, etc when trying to explain why we do what we do.

So, we've created two documents to help make talking about Mozilla and Firefox a little easier. They're still very much works in progress, but we wanted to go ahead and share them. The idea is that they're aimed at the broader consumer audience (rather than developers and other tech experts), as they're the people who probably need this info the most.

Here at Mozilla, we'll be using these docs as a checklist of sorts whenever we launch a new campaign. For example, when we developed our latest round of Firefox banner ads a few weeks ago, we made sure they were themed around concepts from this document (security and customization, to be specific).

Although we're by no means saying that you have to use these points when you spread Firefox (or Mozilla), we're hoping that they prove useful. Our basic idea is that, whether you're writing a blog post, speaking at a conference or just talking to a person on the street, these can be handy ways of explaining to people why they should make the switch to Firefox or what exactly Mozilla is all about.

It's also worth noting that this is very much a beta release...we'll certainly continue refining these documents as we go, and are counting on your input to help with that. One great way you all could help would be to test these points out on your non-technical friends and family members...what do they look for in a browser? Are they even aware that browser choices exist? And are these specific points compelling and useful in explaining the benefits of Firefox and Mozilla?

The actual documents:
* Firefox messaging
* Mozilla messaging

More background, details and context:
* Post on my blog about the Firefox messaging
* Melissa Shapiro's blog post about the Mozilla messaging

Thanks!
John

Firefox Online Advertising Mashup

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:08:24 -0700

We recently launched a couple of online banners with, what we feel, are strong differentiated messages from our competition -- "security" and "customization". We've been testing these banners out in the wild to see how users respond (in the form of click and ultimately Firefox downloads) for a few weeks now and plan to continue the test through the end of this month. You can read the full details of the campaign here.

I've posted the files that we used for this program at the url below. Please feel free to take these files and post them on your website or blog, or take it a step further and generate your own Firefox animated banner. We'll continue to post the source files as we try out different messages and mediums in the future. This idea (and we think it's a great one) came from a comment by Percy on this post about the program.

Download the flash files here:

This work by Mozilla is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Mission: Spread Firefox One Giant Sticker at a Time

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:01:59 -0700

We launched a new program/contest yesterday called Operation Firefox. To me it feels like a great fit for Spread Firefox, because it's all about being as creative as possible, and should be a lot of fun for anyone who wants to get involved. Andrew Stein's recent post on the Mozilla Blog has all the details:

Are you ready to infiltrate society and spread Firefox one sticker at a time? Operation Firefox is currently recruiting agents to place huge 3.5' Firefox stickers where the world will see them. In addition to worldwide notoriety, you might wind up with a new MacBook Pro or a Nintendo Wii.
Operation Firefox began last summer as a project initiated by the Mozilla Marketing interns. We had seen what the Mozilla community produced before, including the New York Times ad, the Firefox crop circle, and the Firefox Flicks context, and decided to step up to the challenge and create another opportunity for Mozilla fans to show off their creativity.
This newest campaign puts 3.5' Firefox stickers in the hands of our community and looks for creative new ways to share Firefox with the world. Ultimately our goal is to get 50 great photos of the Firefox logo in situations that promote some of the defining characteristics of the Web browser: performance, security, customization and community.
The contest is two-tiered: first, we're putting out a call for the 50 best 'placements' for these stickers (due November 9th). Then, the most creative agents will receive a fathead sticker to complete their mission: take a photograph and submit before December 3rd. All 50 photos will be displayed on the Operation Firefox website, but the four best ones will receive a new MacBook Pro or Nintendo Wii.
Do you think you have what it takes to be an Operation Firefox agent? To learn more about the contest and how to participate, visit www.operationfirefox.com.

We certainly hope that you guys will get involved and submit ideas for the contest, but even if not we'd really appreciate if you could Digg it and generally spread the word to people you think might be interested. Thanks!