Browser Themes Gain Developer and Media Attention by Kevin Dwinnell

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Brand Thunder Rolls Out Personas Interactive Extension For Firefox (techcrunch.com)
• Personas Interactive is an Improved Version of Firefox’s Theme Switcher [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

Posted in Commentary | Tags: add-ons, brand thunder, browser theme, Mozilla Foundation, Patrick Murphy, persona interactive, Personas | 2 Comments »

Firefox 3.5 Compatibility – The Dog Ate Our Homework by Kevin Dwinnell

Congratulations to the Mozilla community on the launch of Firefox 3.5 today. It’s an outstanding product that can be found at www.getfirefox.com. If you’re using one of Brand Thunder’s newer browser Booms!, you’re most likely enjoying a seamless transition. If you’re using one of our older browser customizations or an older Boom!, you’re likely enjoying Firefox 3.5 but without the Brand Thunder customizations you want.

To those of you experiencing problems, we’re sorry and the rest of this post may seem like a series of excuses. We are working diligently to get the updates live and this is our foremost priority at this time. Once an update clears our quality assurance tests, it will push live. I’d anticipate a stream of updates occurring over the near term.

Now to move on to the excuses, most companies run very lean and we’re no exception. Many times, it feels like there’s a wave of impending doom curling but never breaking. In this instance, the wave came down on us. We had an influx of high-profile clients with fixed deadlines and a moving 3.5 delivery date. And whether there were late term changes in the 3.5 betas, or just bugs found late in our review process, we had troubleshooting to perform at a time we should have been in build.

The result is a delay in timing our updates with the release of 3.5. We regret this inconvenience.

Feel free to try our first NFL Boom! (Colts) or our latest NHL Boom! (Wild) and I’ll place a list here of all the functioning Booms! as I get them.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: brand thunder, Browsers, Firefox 3.5, Mozilla Foundation | 1 Comment »