Firefox Add-ons in MaximumPC Magazine

Posted At : September 22, 2008 11:25 AM | Posted By : Rey Bango
Related Categories: Mozilla

Even though I'm a recent Mac convert, I still keep up with all of the trends in the PC world. One of the magazines that I pick up religiously is MaximumPC which always has great articles on the PC world. Another cool thing about the magazine is that they always include a CD full of sweet software.

When I got this month's issue, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the CD was chock full of Firefox add-ons! Check out the pics:

It included many of the add-ons currently on the AMO Recommended list such as PicLens (now called Cooliris) & FoxyProxy as well as some other cool add-ons such as Panic & GSpace.

In addition, they included a bunch of Firefox themes (e.g. Aero Fox & PimpZilla) for good measure.

I've been getting this magazine for quite some time and haven't seen them publish add-ons before so this is a pretty good indication of how important add-ons are to making the browser your own custom experience.

Now, MaximumPC is really a bit of a techie magazine but I do hope that this helps to introduce Mozilla add-ons to the more mainstream user. When I chat with non-techie folks about Firefox, the majority still don't know what add-ons are. This is something that I'm working to fix and so I'd like to hear your suggestions for spreading the word about add-ons to the mainstream crowd that has absolutely no interest in Firebug, TamperData or ColorZilla.

So I ask, how can I better reach the average Firefox user to educate them about Mozilla's add-on ecosystem?

Comments (1) |

Print |

Send |

del.icio.us |

Digg It! |

Linking Blogs | 2069 Views

Comments (Comment Moderation is enabled. Your comment will not appear until approved.)

[Add Comment]

Seems like this is sort of the direction that software is heading in general. There have always been plugins for IE as well of course, that's the way it plays Flash... but most of them don't have that kind of ubuquity and it's only been recently with FireFox in particular that we're starting to see extensions becoming commonplace.

I think part of the issue may be that in the past at least, security has been a concern for a lot of folks, because installing a plugin in IE meant allowing someone else's code to run in your private zone where it can do things like read and write files on your machine. So there was always some concern that you needed to be sure you trusted the plugin vendor because an unscrupulous programmer could easily use a browser plugin as a means of getting malicious code onto your machine.

So although I'm not sure how prevalent that fear is currently, one potential could be dispelling some of the myths about the dangers of extensions. You might write an article titled something like "How to stay safe while installing browser extensions" (not the best name maybe) and see if any magazines are interested in publishing it. :)

p.s. I think CoolIris is the name of the company -- they have a demo on their site where they mention both names as "PicLens by CoolIris". http://cooliris.com/demo

# Posted By ike | 9/22/08 1:41 PM

[Add Comment]