A suggestion for readers of this blog

I'm sure there are plenty of MoFo supporters out there who are working in the LED display sector who could hook you guys up with a nice cheap LED display! Combine it with this feed and you could have one of those awesome novelty touches which liven up the office...

Are the Firefox 1.0.3 bits, particularly for Linux, being made available through UMO? I just manually ran Software Update through the prefs dialog and wasn't notified of any Firefox updates, only the "Firefox could not find any updates" message (plus the regular set of "could not find updates" messages for extensions).

I've never been notified of a real update on any version, although I've seen false positives (a known bug which I don't have the number for at the moment).

It could be just me, but I don't think most users would be interested in a download-counter extension. OTOH, I could see why the staff might think it's interesting, and for all I know maybe some other people might like it, too.

That said, the version on that site bothers me because of the font choice, Georgia (I think), which makes the numbers bump up and down all over the place when they're changed. *Any* other font that doesn't do that would be fine. However, I know it's more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it makes my eyes hurt to look at it do that.

one of the world's most influential people suggesting that someone writes a browser extension that self-promotes... wtf.

For those of you who don't think there's a general market for something like a download counter extension, just remember that we've got nearly 100,000 people signed up with spreadfirefox.com to help promote the product. There are tens of thousands of others signed up at mozillazine and other sites (including all the blogs how promote Firefox) that might be interested in this.

I started one but had some troubles making a reliable XmlHTTPRequest connection to the feed. I think the parseXML portion wasn't doing well. Otherwise, it's on it's way. I thought it'd be a cool extension since sometimes I just sit and reload the RSS feed for fun. Anyone care to pitch in with me on this? I can share what I have so far if someone wants to provide an assist.

~ Kevin

Anyone else been having any problems with the new UMO ? The firefox plugin finder for one seems completely non functioning today, and I know its not a problem with 1.03 because it worked last night on 1.03. And installing extensions from UMO seems to be freezing and/or not completing, but right clicking the links and saving to disk works ok.

I think that the Time 100 selection represents the Mozilla project as a whole, which is helping to usher in important reflections on how and why people organize themselves to achieve a shared good, as well as creating great and much-needed software. I'm the spokesperson for that effort. And I'm involved in an area that is even newer than open source engineering -- the coordination of large open source projects. (I hesitate to use the term "management" though perhaps that is the right term.) I'm pleased --its rewarding to have my efforts recognized -- but I don't view this as I have achieved. I view it as something the Mozilla project has achieved for which I am the public face.

As to the counter, the version that I find compelling is the one at: http://www.infocraft.com/projects/ffcounter/

More than compelling, I find it mesmerizing. I know that X million people have downloaded firefox. But watching the counter change in real time gives me a very gut level feel of what it takes to get to those numbers. As the counter changes I think "There's another person coming to get Firefox. And another. And another." It makes the idea very concrete for me.

So maybe it's self promotion, as someone suggested. But to me it feels like a concrete, visible way of grasping the phenomena that is Mozilla Firefox.

As UMO and it`s Plugins section are mentioned: Are there any plans to put more Plug-Ins there? The most important are there, but the avage user might look for Macromedia`s Flash/Shockwave and Sun`s Java via UMO (most times not utelizing the webpage, but the build-in function BTW).
Though the other Plug-Ins out there might not be demanded nearly as often, I think it would really give it more value. It would finally become a real succsesor to the Netscape equivalent used back in the days.

First on counter: user Ziggy on sfx wanted to make such extension from the early sfx days, but he was just turned away with explanation that admins have bigger plans for sfx...

Now, more important thing. Mozilla update has trouble with showing top rated extensions. First, it rounds all rates on whole number, and then arranges all those extensions that got the same number by alphabet order. Also, it takes into account even the extensions that were rated just once, which is silly. Hope that it will be improved.

People interested in the number of Firefox-updates can:
- visit SpreadFirefox.com (and get other news as well)
- subscribe to the RSS-feed (can this be used as a Live Bookmark ? Otherwise people can use Sage)
- use one of the other means to get up-to-date with the download-counter (I already even saw it embedded within a Flash-presentation)

Some questions about such an extension:
- how often should the extension refresh the download-count ? (like GMail-Notifier: when a new browser-window is opened ?)
- would this not make unnecessary requests to the feed when such an extension is rolled out on a greater scale ?
- wouldn't it make it pretty easy to DDOS SpreadFirefox with such an extension or is the downloadcounter-script protected against too many requests at a time ?

I think it's important that any download counter extension has an optional cannon sound effect.

Asa

The RSS feeds on Mozilla Update have the article URL bugged.

Have a look at
http://addons.update.mozilla.org//moreinfo.php?id=497&vid=1690
you will see the the // after addons.update.mozilla.org is not good and the URL does not work.

This has bother me for sometime. Can something be done?

Ivan, SFX admins most certainly had better things to do than build infrastructure for a Firefox extension for counting downloads. The good news is that now that infrastructure is available -- as a lucky side effect of something we built to make the SFX site and our affiliate program more attractive. He wasn't "turned away", we simply didn't have time to focus on his project. We still don't and you'll notice that SFX admins aren't building this extension, we're asking for interested parties to do that.

- A

i can see why the idea of a counter extension might appeal to people, but it's as questionable as the whole spreadfirefox scheme in my book. instead of having people sit in front of the computer and watch that ridiculous counter and have them "ride on the cool wave" ("if you don't you're missing out, pals."), have them go out and play. and don't tell me your endeavers don't influence people. that's what marketing is all about. sorry, but this is getting out of control.

Why are you guys questioning the need for an extension? It's an extension, and thus optional... and there have been far less useful requests than this one, many of which have been produced.

Asa,

even it the early days of sfx there was counter. I don't know whether it was possible to access data upon which it was built from the web, but even if it wasn't, it wasn't impossible to make it work - the one who updates the number (and I think it was you) should only enter this number once more and save it in desired location to make it accessible. I don't think it was too much of additional work.

Ivan, you're simply completely wrong.

In those days, the data wasn't available at spreadfirefox at all and there didn't exist a simple mechanism for me to include that information (without asking for the SFX developers to add the feature). There was an _image_ that I made in photoshop as often as I had time and posted to spreadfirefox. I didn't enter any number anywhere and so there was nothing anywhere at the site for any extension to pull unless you're suggesting that the extension author also write a OCR program to translate the image into text before he plugged it into his extension. Now there is a number available and it's being used to populate our counter and for syndication. There is zero extra work for the SFX team to make any necessary download count information public for use in such an extension as I've asked for here.

- A

Got a odometer extension by the name of TickerFox up and running at www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions. Thanks to Paul for help and Infocraft for the code.

Now we can all stop hitting the reload button over and over on the RSS feed.

~ Kevin

OK, I might be completly wrong, but couldn't you (after taking certain to draw image in Photosop) just create a new txt, xml, or html file with that number and put it somewhere on the server (doesn't have to be sfx server if it is impossible)?

Kevin, could you post this extension to the official updates.mozilla.org website where it can be more easily seen and downloaded by a wider audience?

Thanks
Chris

Well, I wrote this up last night, and it seems to be working.. at least for me :p

It's a greasemonkey script that adds an animated counter to every page.

http://ed.agadak.net/greasemonkey/ffCounter/ffCounter.php

would be great if we could get a Thunderbird download counter as well.

Hasn't any of you seen this yet? :)

http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/tickerfox/

Since one of the complaints made by critics of FF is that practically none of the extensions are signed, would it be possible for UMO to attatch an signature to extensions and themes that have gone that through some testing that shows that they are safe? It wouldn't need to be a gaurantee against spyware or anything, but just something to let people that it won't break their browser or make their computer explode.