Jan 18
If you installed an extension that you didn’t get from Google’s Chrome Web Store, it’s getting turned off when Google releases Chrome 25. Unlike most software that prompts you for an update, Google updates silently – so one day your browser will stop working the way you expect it.
Here’s what you need to know to protect your browser experience and the extensions you’ve come to depend on – after the Chrome 25 install.
Caution Ahead!
The only warning you’ll get is this small window (shown in Image 1 below) popping up after Chrome updates itself.
Don’t miss this warning or you’ll miss the easiest chance to make your browser right.
When you the window appears, click the Extension Settings button to open a tab with all your extensions. If you miss this opportunity, we’ll give you a Plan B farther down in this post.
Image 1
Posted in News | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, Chrome, Chrome 25, Chrome Web Store, Google, Google Chrome | No Comments »
Jan 17
Google Chrome is updating its product again, silently. but it’s making a lot of noise in the browser community.
Here are the steps you need to take to protect your favorite browser theme. And if you want a reminder about this when Chrome 25 launches, tell us how to reach you on this page: http://brandthunder.com/chrome25/
Step 1
When you see this screen shown in Image 1 suddenly appear in your browser one day, take action! Click the Extension Settings immediately.
Step 2
On the Extension Settings tab, look for the name of your browser theme. You need to check the Enable box to continue to enjoy the full theme experience.
Image 2: Enable Your Theme (apologies to Mets & Sox fans for the sample image)
Posted in News | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, Chrome Web Store, Google, Google Chrome, Web browser | 2 Comments »
Aug 10
DLL Icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Add-ons and extensions often get accused of slowing down browser performance. The short answer is true, but that discounts a lot of scenarios and value. In many cases, you’ll have a better experience when you have the right extensions installed – and that can speed your personal performance if not the bench speed of the browser.
The browser itself can bring its own nuance to the performance equation. The discussion below relates to developing add-ons for Internet Explorer (IE) and unique properties of that environment. The way IE is built can impact add-on performance. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Read the rest of this page »
Posted in Commentary | Tags: .NET Framework, add-ons, addons, AppDomain, Internet Explorer, jit compiler, Microsoft, Windows | No Comments »
Jul 31
The debate continues over whether it’s better to have a closed system for distributing apps or a more open one. You see it a lot in comparing Apple’s App Store to Google’s Android Marketplace. Apple reviews and approves every app before launch. You’re ensured a certain level of product quality, integrity and safety because of that pre-approval. Android – buyer beware. It’s easy for anyone to upload an app, and while it’s a waste of time when you download a poorly designed and functioning app, it’s harmful when that app carries malicious code with it.
The battle is also fought in the browser space. Firefox has a “sandbox” that all extensions must enter to be reviewed by one of the Mozilla community volunteers before it’s ultimately released into the public. The Google Chrome Web Store is like the Android Marketplace in that anything and everything loaded is immediately available for public consumption.
Posted in Commentary | Tags: add-ons, App Store, Apple, brand thunder, Chrome Web Store, extensions, firefox, Google, IPhone, Mozilla, safety | No Comments »
Feb 01
Firefox 10 has hit the shelves, or at least the virtual shelves of the Internet and your browser. The release came out yesterday and Firefox 10 can be downloaded right from Mozilla: Firefox 10 download. Firefox continues to iterate new versions of the browser about every six weeks to stay current with the rapid releases from one of their top rising competitors, Google Chrome.
The latest Firefox 10 release fixed about a half dozen flaws that were critical and several that were high priority. One of the most important updates was the browser’s ability to automatically mark nearly all add-ons as compatible with each upgrade. With the rapid updates to the browser, users complained of add-ons that were incompatible with new versions. Firefox 10 now offers “Automatic add-on compatibility” for all add-ons including 3rd party developers. This includes Firefox 10 themes created by Brand Thunder. Check out some of the best Firefox 10 themes for your browser:
Read the rest of this page »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: add-ons, firefox, Firefox 10, Firefox Themes, Mozilla | No Comments »
Nov 23
At this time of giving thanks, Brand Thunder has much to celebrate.
And reflecting over the past year shows the huge strides we’ve made from both a business and technology standpoint. Thanks to an outstanding team.
- First dynamically updating browser theme with The Daily Beast news browser theme. The featured exclusive story photo automatically appeared within the browser theme when the web site updated the content and prompting users to return 10 times more frequently than their average user.
- First browser theme to include an automatic theme switch after a time-based event. Daytona International Speedway browser theme included a change of theme after one of its four prominent races, a countdown ticker to the next race start and alerts to ticket availability for its races.
- Most dynamic theme available in the market. Weather browser theme powered by WeatherBug changes to reflect the users current weather conditions. The users location is set either through the browser’s geo-location feature or user data. The theme also features up to a three-day forecast in the browser.
- First Internet Explorer themes to premiere on Microsoft’s IE Add-ons Gallery. Subsequently, Microsoft secured approval to feature a dozen of Brand Thunder’s themes in IE8 Optimized Browsers showcasing the theme capabilities that had previously not existed for IE.
- Personas Interactive Firefox extension launched as a new Firefox theme platform that the industry experts at TechCrunch declared “Personas Interactive… Leapfrogged Mozilla.“
- Brand Thunder’s progress and promise in the technology space qualified it for $1 million from the Ohio Innovation Loan Fund, a program to help groundbreaking small companies grow and create jobs that remain in Ohio.
We’ve still got a lot to do, but reflecting on the accomplishments manages to show the progress that gets made over time even if it’s sometimes missed in the moment.
Posted in Commentary | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, browser theme, Buffalo Bills, CBSSports.com College Network, Daytona International Speedway, Internet Explorer, Personas Interactive, techcolumbus, TechCrunch, WeatherBug | No Comments »
Oct 07
We’ve generated a lot of buzz from the college and university browser themes launched in conjunction with CBSSports.com College Network. We’ve also heard our share of comments from fans of schools that were not part of this program. While this program reached almost 60 schools, that leaves a lot of schools across the country with fans that are feeling left out. So, here’s my stop-gap plan for satisfying the need until we have the opportunity to deliver an official browser theme from the college or university of their choice.
Get the Canvas Browser Theme
The Canvas browser theme is our Firefox extension that allows you to add any picture or web image instantly to your browser theme. It was an instant hit because people could finally put images into their browser theme that they chose. You see a lot of great imagery of family, friends, good times and great photos. You can easily add any photo from your computer to the theme. Because of the short height and long width of the browser, you need to experiment with finding the right image or interesting cropping that makes a truly unique and sensational browser theme.
Create Your Theme from Your School’s Website
One of the features in Canvas is the ability to add any image on the web to the browser theme. It’s as simple as hovering your cursor over an image, right click and choose “Add Image to Canvas.” The image will immediately appear in your browser theme. So someone like Brent, who requested a University of Central Florida could go to the site and add any image to have an instant UCF Knights theme. (Note: I’m not condoning anything improper. Make sure you abide by any restrictions over copyrighted works.) David, who was looking for an Ohio Bobcats browser theme, will need to work a little harder. Much of OU’s imagery is in Flash which cannot be added to the browser theme.
Make It Look Good
Once you have the image in Canvas, play around with the Manage screen (see the toolbar button of the same name). Click Manage, then click the image name to the left for the image you just added. That will offer you a number of positioning and color options. By default, the image will tile (repeat across the theme). You may want to turn that off and select a complementary background color. You may also want to position the image to the left, right or in the middle. All of that can be done from the Manage screen.
The Canvas Browser Theme is a great extension for creating your own personal browser theme. And you can choose at any time whether you want it to feature your favorite team, or favorite photo.
Posted in Commentary | Tags: add-ons, browser theme, Ohio Bobcats, UCF Knights, University of Central Florida, Web browser | No Comments »
Oct 01
It’s been a good week or so for discussing the merits and capabilities of the browser theme.
From the development side, the Mozilla community is exploring adding new standard functionality in the browser that Brand Thunder showcased in its Personas Interactive extension. Mozilla is considering giving users the ability to expand the space available to the browser theme. Especially for large screen monitors, this capability can offer a more compelling visual. You can vote for the feature of a Persona height adjustment at the Mozilla Add-ons blog.
While this feature is a little nice to have, I think if Personas really wants to make a step forward there are other enhancements found in Personas Interactive that would be a more meaningful step for designers and the end user. Supporting full CSS3 backgrounds and allowing sites to host their own gallery of Personas are a couple of them. Then again, why wait? You can try the functionality out today. The documentation of how to do it is all found at http://brandthunder.com/personas.
If you’re more interested in the business applications of the browser and browser themes in particular, check out a couple recent articles covering Brand Thunder and its work in the interactive browser theme space. Marketing by Deepak offered an in-depth look at business applications and the affinity marketing power of an interactive browser theme. The Metropreneur took its own look at the value of interactive browser themes while also delving into the task of building Brand Thunder the company.
It’s great to see this continued interest around the company and the category we continue to build.
Posted in Commentary | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, browser theme, Mozilla Foundation, Patrick Murphy, persona interactive, Personas | 2 Comments »
Sep 10
Old Spice got everybody thinking about “the man your man could smell like.” Well, you can use body wash on a pig, but… Don’t worry, though, we have browser themes that can help. Two of our recent launches can really develop the man.
STACK: For The Athlete By The Athlete
This is the kind of performance enhancing you want. STACK focuses on information and workouts that help you perform better. This is state-of-the-art sports performance information and it’s delivered to you right in your browser theme. Plus, the information is straight from the world’s elite athletes. In total, more than 400 experts contribute content for safe and effective advice to boost performance. If you’re looking to improve your game, your workout routines or to be at your physical best – you owe it to your body to check out this browser theme: http://pages.brandthunder.com/stackpersona@brandthunder.com/download
AskMen.com
Perhaps you already have the body of Adonis. Don’t worry, there’s always room for improvement and our AskMen.com browser theme can further refine your manliness. AskMen.com offers daily features on fashion, fitness, dating, money, sports and entertainment. Not only will you be better at meeting and scoring with the ladies, you’ll look good in the process and still have an envious financial portfolio. What’s not to like about that? You can start your path down this more entertaining life with this browser theme: http://pages.brandthunder.com/askmen/download
Get started today with the browser themes that will make you even more like the man you could smell like.
Posted in Commentary, News | Tags: add-ons, AskMen.com, athletes, browser, browser theme, Fashion, men's lifestyle, stack, Web browser, workouts | No Comments »
Jul 19
So you may wonder why we called it Personas Interactive.
If you were go to the Brand Thunder Gallery, you would see what we specialize in – creating customized browser experiences for different sports teams, websites, musicians and more.
These browser experiences have evolved over the years in their design, their technology and even their name. But regardless of the technology change, these browser experiences always required the installation of a Firefox add-on and the restart of the browser for every one that you wanted to install.
One of the reasons we created Personas Interactive was to address this issue. With the advent of Personas in Firefox 3.6, we saw the opportunity to take our browser experience to the next level. So one of the core features of Personas Interactive is Interactive Themes.
Interactives Themes take the Enhanced Personas we talked about last time and add interactivity like clickable logos, sidebars, toolbars, feedreaders and more. So instead of just providing people with a picture of your website or brand, you can provide a way for them to connect with you in the browser.
Before we continue, I have to make a disclaimer. Up to this point, we’ve talked about things that anyone can do (set up their own Personas gallery, create Enhanced Personas) but at this point in time, an Interactive Theme can only be created by Brand Thunder. We’re working on expanding the technology so it is available to anyone. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have an Interactive Theme, though. Brand Thunder would love to work with your band, sports team, website or company to create an Interactive Theme. Just send an email to info@brandthunder.com.
So let’s look at a diagram that shows the differences between Personas, Enhanced Personas and Interactive Themes.
|
Persona |
Enhanced Persona |
Interactive Theme |
| Background Image |
X |
X |
X |
| Change Text Color |
X |
X |
X |
| Multiple Background Images |
|
X |
X |
| Position Background Images |
|
X |
X |
| Resize Background Images |
|
X |
X |
| Repeat Background Images |
|
X |
X |
| Clickable Logos |
|
|
X |
| Sidebar |
|
|
X |
| Toolbar |
|
|
X |
| Integrated Search |
|
|
X |
| Feed Reader |
|
|
X |
| Sponsorships |
|
|
X |
| Advertising |
|
|
X |
So what does this mean in practice?
If you were to go to the Personas Interactive page with Personas Interactive installed, you would see some of our Interactive Themes in action.
Are you a fan of the Goblins Web Comic? There’s an Interactive theme that keeps your favorite web comic close at hand. If you need your daily fix of The Daily Beast, you can install an Interactive Theme that gives you links and news from The Daily Beast as well as the top story of the day updated in your browser. Is your team the Indianapolis Colts? You can connect with them right in your browser. Or maybe you like movies? The Movie Premiere Interactive Theme is updated with a new movie poster every 15 minutes. Can’t get enough of CollegeHumor? Install the Interactive Theme and your favorite links will be one click away.
And we’ve got over a hundred more Interactive Themes coming in the next few months. Besides porting our existing themes over to Personas Interactive, we’re working with great brands like the CBS Sports College Network to bring your favorite college sports teams to the browser.
So what should you do? Install Personas Interactive. Setup your own Personas gallery. Create an Enhanced Persona. And stay tuned, because we’ve got some great stuff coming your way.
Posted in Commentary, News | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, Daily Beast, Interactive Theme, Mozilla Firefox, persona interactive, Personas, Website | No Comments »
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