K-Squared Ramblings

Switching & Tropical Depression

• Hmm. The old switch2firefox.com [archive.org] campaign from 2004 now redirects to Spread Firefox. #
• A tropical depression is “not to be confused with the condition mid-latitude people get during a long, cold and grey winter wishing they could be closer to the equator.” #

Reclaiming BlogExplosion

I haven’t written much about BlogExplosion in a long time.  I participated a lot for a few months, then kind of left it alone for a while, until I came back to it last year when I launched Speed Force.

Sadly, in the last few months its owners seem to have abandoned the site to let it run on autopilot. Most of it is automated, but there are features that require administration: approving new blogs and banners, moderating the forums, etc. The few volunteers with the ability to approve submissions are swamped, the main page promotes features that no longer exist, and the forums are overrun with spam.

In the past two months the community has attempted to take back the forums by out-posting the spammers, and it seems to be helping, but it’s not enough. The next step is a letter-writing campaign to convince BlogExplosion’s owners to at least delegate some authority to community volunteers who are willing to put in the effort to take care of the site.

Rather than send the form letter, I decided to write my own, and sent the following this morning:

Read the rest of this entry »

The New Browser Switch Campaigns

Rather than looking at campaigns for specific browsers, I’m looking at a class of campaigns that are either promoting a group of browsers, or advocating against the current dominant player: Internet Explorer.

Browse Happy — the classic.

• Goal: Move users away from Internet Explorer.
• Target Audience: IE users.
• Promotes: Firefox.  Also Safari, Opera, and… um… Mozilla.  Hmm, someone needs to update that.
• Pitch: IE is dangerous.
• Method: Banners

Alternative Browser Alliance

• Goal: Keep multiple standards-compliant browsers viable.
• Target Audience: All users
• Promotes: Opera, Firefox, Safari.  Also Flock, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, Camino,etc.
• Pitch: Competition is good for everyone.  See what’s out there.
• Method: Banners

End 6!

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: Firefox, Opera, Safari, Flock, IE7
• Pitch: IE6 is outdated, buggy, and unsafe.  Use something modern instead.
• Method: Overlay for IE6 visitors

Save the Developers

• Goal: Move people off of IE6
• Target Audience: IE6 users
• Promotes: IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera
• Pitch: Coding for IE6 is a pain.  Stop putting us through that.
• Method: Animated drop-down at top of page for IE6 visitors

(Yeah, I’m catching up on old draft posts.)

Suggestions Wanted: Alternative Browser Alliance Relaunch

You may have seen my website, the Alternative Browser Alliance. I put it together in 2005, when flame wars between Opera users and Firefox users were at their height, to show that we shared a common goal: opening the web. The most popular page on the site is a list of web browsers, which is linked as a resource from a number of sites and also gets a steady stream of traffic from people searching for alternative browsers.

Of course, things have changed a lot since 2005, so I’m planning an overhaul of the whole site. Read the rest of this entry »

The Alternative Browser Alliance

I’m launching a new browser switch site, with a bit of a twist. It’s promoting all alternative browsers, kind of like Browse Happy, but a bit more inclusive and aimed at a slightly different audience.

The idea is that a diverse browser “market”—one with three or four major browser suppliers all competing with each other—is the best way to maintain innovation and security. Anyone following the classic browser wars, the lull in IE development, and the sudden appearance of IE7 can see the difference competition makes for innovation. As for security… If someone can hit 90% of the world’s computers by hitting IE on Windows, we’re in trouble. But if they have to hit 30% each on IE, Firefox, and Opera, and even those are split among Windows, Mac and Linux, it’s a lot more effort for the bad guys.

I got the idea back in May, during some rather heated Firefox/Opera flame wars. It seemed to me that fans of the two browsers had more in common than they thought, if they’d just stop fighting each other. I worked on it during June, and launched a test version last month, asking for feedback from friends and from the Spread Firefox and My Opera communities. It’s still not where I’d like it to be (Comic-Con, then procrastination), but after the net went crazy over Paul Thurott’s “Boycott IE” article I realized I’d better launch what I had and refine it later.

So, without further ado, I’m officially launching the Alternative Browser Alliance.

Browser Switch Campaigns Compared

Firefox – Switch [archive.org] is the first of these sites I noticed. Based on Apple’s “Switch” campaign, it’s aimed at raising awareness of Firefox and convincing people to switch from IE. It has stories of people who have switched, a top 10 list of reasons to switch, and answers to questions about just how you go about this switching thing, anyway.

Stop IE [archive.org] is, as its name implies, a negative campaign. It focuses on the security risks inherent in using Internet Explorer and provides a list of alternatives, though Firefox is the only one it deals with in any depth.

Browse Happy is my favorite of the bunch, because it’s an inclusive campaign. It’s run by the Web Standards Project, so the goal isn’t to promote Firefox or eliminate Internet Explorer, it’s to promote choice and get people away from today’s Internet Explorer. The WaSP’s ultimate goal is to encourage people to build a vendor-neutral web in which you can use whatever browser you want—including IE—and get the same high-quality experience. That’s a goal I can agree with, and that’s why Browse Happy is the one I promote. The meat of the site is stories of people who have switched away from IE, with profiles of four browsers: Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.

Update (June 2007): Stop IE is long dead. I’ve updated the links to point to the Internet Archive of the site.