Dynamic Firefox banners and buttons

[ottodv]

I have developed 2 dynamic banners and a generation tool which make it possible to show a Get Firefox button/banner to non-Firefox users and a Fire up the Fox! button/banner to Firefox users.

Here is the tool to generate the dynamic banners:
Dynamic Firefox Banner Generation Tool.

Advantages of Dynamic Banners

Many people host a Get Firefox button on their site, however a large proportion of people now already use Firefox and they have no need to download it again. In a way such a banner is wasted on them. This is where the idea to provide an alternative banner for Firefox users comes from. The alternative in this project is to send them to Fire up the Fox!. Which is a site where people are given some pointers as to how to get more out of Firefox, it provides a selection of extensions, themes, search plugins, tips to get help, info on how to get involved with Firefox. Getting existing Firefox users to use such features or use them more is a good way to help keep them as Firefox users. So it's basically a project to increase Firefox retention.

You can use your own Spread Firefox affiliate code for Fire up the Fox as well, a few links on that site could give you points (i.e. people joining Spread Firefox and people downloading Thunderbird).

Technical Details

The generation script can generate both (X)HTML/JavaScript and PHP code, which provides us with two different methods to make a banner/button dynamic.

With the PHP code, there is never an issue as to when to show which button. With the HTML/JavaScript version however, there is the issue of users who have turned JavaScript off (noscript users). I posted an analysis of noscript users the other day. The Fire up the Fox! page carries a notice if someone does not use Firefox and so the generation tool provides the option to choose how to handle noscript users.

The HTML/JavaScript version looks a bit more complicated then needed, a simplification would be to leave out the noscript part and show one of the two banners by default. However when turning a banner off with JavaScript, this causes a sometimes visible change effect which I found rather unpleasant. Hence the choice to simply decide which one to turn on and provide a noscript alternative for when JavaScript is off.

We encourage you to experiment with these banners and gives us your feedback or comments.