Infiltrating one computer at a time...

Discuss how to use and promote Web standards with the Mozilla Gecko engine.
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nagha
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Joined: December 25th, 2002, 6:18 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Infiltrating one computer at a time...

Post by nagha »

i work at the largest public hospital in Los Angeles county. if you've ever seen General Hospital, the big white building is where i work. recently, the County upgraded all the old dumb terminals to shiny Dells with flat screens (!!!) and blocked out internet access. fortunately, most employees have their own access codes.

so, i have slowly been installing Mozilla (1.3) on every computer i come across... and I rename it to Mozilla 1.3 (No Popups) and i place the icon right under IE. i started this a few weeks ago and i'm slowly seeing some progress. and i started telling people that you can live free of pop-ups... they like it... (i just wish it launched as fast as IE)

guerilla marketing... it's working.

na
mikecop
Posts: 268
Joined: January 12th, 2003, 12:47 pm

what about changing the icon...?

Post by mikecop »

nagha wrote:I rename it to Mozilla 1.3 (No Popups) and i place the icon right under IE. i started this a few weeks ago and i'm slowly seeing some progress. and i started telling people that you can live free of pop-ups... they like it... (i just wish it launched as fast as IE)

guerilla marketing... it's working.

na

Most people don't know what "Mozilla 1.3 (No Popups)" is, and they would not dare to click on something they don't know. They are afraid that they might mess up the computer up or even make the computer explode.

Actually most ordinary people don't care what browser they use, most people don't even know what a "browser" is or what "internet explorer" is. They think "internet explorer" is the generic term for surfing the net, synonymous with "internet". You click on it and you are surfing the net.

Now you have to go and explain eveyone what mozilla is, why use it, bla bla bla. Not getting anywhere fast. And honestly, people don't care.

What about actually changing the Mozilla icon to an IE icon, and change the text below to "Internet Explorer" or "Internet". Then delete the IE short cut. Because this is all they know.

Now you have one IE icon, you don't have to say a word, they would just click on it as usual.

But if you do this, it is better to install the xulplanet preference bar, so that people can enable and disable POP-up easily. Because some sites do need the pop-ups.

You might also want to disable the splash screen.

Just try to make the whole thing smooth and undetectable. :twisted:

I don't think there is any harm on this, the UA string is still remain as Mozilla/Gecko. And may be after a month or so, they would come up to you and say.. "something looks funny with the internet thing lately, I don't know what , but i like it." And they might start recognizing the "M" on the top right corner in time.
dtobias
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Post by dtobias »

I don't myself care for dumbing things down to pander to the ignorance of current-day users, or using lies or deception on people. That's the same mindset that leads to alternative browsers using user agent strings that mimic IE, and in the long run that attitude is bad for the prospects of alternative browsers if their very existence is hidden. Mozilla should openly call itself what it is.
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schapel
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Re: what about changing the icon...?

Post by schapel »

mikecop wrote:I don't think there is any harm on this, the UA string is still remain as Mozilla/Gecko. And may be after a month or so, they would come up to you and say.. "something looks funny with the internet thing lately, I don't know what , but i like it." And they might start recognizing the "M" on the top right corner in time.


Don't you think the IT department might justifiably be quite upset at someone going around substituting Mozilla in IE's place? Maybe there are pragmatic reasons why IE is used as the default browser!
MozSaysAloha
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Re: what about changing the icon...?

Post by MozSaysAloha »

mikecop wrote:Actually most ordinary people don't care what browser they use, most people don't even know what a "browser" is or what "internet explorer" is. They think "internet explorer" is the generic term for surfing the net, synonymous with "internet". You click on it and you are surfing the net.


This reminds me of the people who thought NCSA Mosaic and/or Netscape was the internet in the 90's.
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seb
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Post by seb »

Actually, we had this week in France the « Fête de l'Internet » ("Internet Festival", or something like that), to promote the Internet. It's obvious that the Internet is, for the people behind this festival, only the web.
Sadly, it's a pretty common idea now.
moronicbajebus
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Re: what about changing the icon...?

Post by moronicbajebus »

MozSaysAloha wrote:
mikecop wrote:Actually most ordinary people don't care what browser they use, most people don't even know what a "browser" is or what "internet explorer" is. They think "internet explorer" is the generic term for surfing the net, synonymous with "internet". You click on it and you are surfing the net.


This reminds me of the people who thought NCSA Mosaic and/or Netscape was the internet in the 90's.


It reminds me of people that have AOL and give you their email address as "johnb2093". No matter how much you tried to convince them that it really is "johnb2093@aol.com" they firmly believe it is "johnb2093".
bijugc
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Re: Infiltrating one computer at a time...

Post by bijugc »

nagha wrote:i work at the .........
.......
(i just wish it launched as fast as IE)
.......
na


great effort man!!!!

If u r looking for speed get "Phoenix" it beats IE in speed
(I am using it for browsing, and Mozilla for mails)

another is "Beonex", It has spellcheck too
(I have not tried it till now)

see all at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/distros.html
8) Biju
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