Firefox and Miro
While pondering the overall user experience of the internet, I find myself often thinking about how in this new era of podcasting, the experience frankly isn’t all about email clients and Web browsers any more. If you look at content and delivery, Firefox and Miro are for the most part opposites:
The main point of interaction between the two applications is when Firefox needs to hand a podcast off to an application like Miro. While redesigning content handling for Firefox 3, at one point we were planning on inspecting RSS feeds to see the types of enclosures, and re-filtering the list of possible applications for feeds that contained podcasts and video podcasts (this was back in the day when Miro was named Democracy):
As part of detecting feeds that predominately contained podcasts and video podcasts, we were considering including a link to getmiro.com in the respective application drop downs in the applications prefpane:
The rational behind this decision was that Windows does not currently ship with an application to download podcasts and video podcasts, and if the user only has Firefox and a fresh install of Windows, this feature would otherwise be useless. We couldn’t rely on the default content handler specified by the OS.
Even though analyzing RSS feeds got cut for Firefox 3, what do people think of potentially still including a bookmark in new profiles to getmiro.com?
[Update: initial reaction to the bookmark idea seems to be unanimously negative, and in general is being viewed as selling out (assuming that it is technically possible for one non-profit to sell out to another non-profit, I'm not entirely sure how that works :). Anyway, I'm backpedaling to the idea of creating a featured Firefox extension for podcasting, which includes the original functionality, but launches when we have time to actually implement it].
Pros
- Miro compliments the functionality of Firefox well. Firefox is all about consuming images and text, and Miro is all about consuming audio and video. With both applications, users will be able to easily consume every type of media delivered to them over the internet.
- Miro provides a great user experience, so introducing Firefox users to Miro will improve their overall user experience with the internet, even though this now includes interactions outside of Firefox.
- The Participatory Culture Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation have very similar goals and values (in particular manifesto points 2, 5 and 6).
Cons
- Adding a bookmark to new profiles increases the complexity of our default UI (even if the new bookmark is only in the bookmarks menu, and not on the bookmarks toolbar).
- Adding a bookmark takes us in the direction of the Netscape Whorebar (although this time around it is 501c3-free-and-open-Web whoring, which is perhaps a little more wholesome.)
Overall I recognize that pre-populated bookmarks constitute incredibly valuable real estate, but I think including this particular bookmark will improve Firerfox users’ experience with the internet, and it is something we should seriously consider.
[Update: I still think that Miro will improve users' experience with the internet, but a recommended extension for podcasting will probably work better than a bookmark until we can get native support for detecting podcasts built in to Firefox].
What do people think? Feel free to comment below, or in bug 399126.
I feel like its a move in the direction of the AOL or an OEM version of Windows. What I really want when I install is a nice clean template, not something scattered with ads for video players or email clients. Vendors trying to push other products on me just screams a little to much of adware. Then again, I’m paranoid about adware. Maybe people who don’t already know what podcasts are would love it.