14 DAY TRIAL // There are plenty of reasons why Firefox has become so popular ranging from the technical to the philosophical. One would be that, when Firefox came out, it was the only viable alternative to Internet Explorer but a less cynical view would be that its success had plenty to do with the community involvement in the development process but also in the way it's been promoted. In that spirit, the Mozilla team has asked 'the people' to pitch in their ideas for a brand new home tab in the upcoming Firefox 4. And now that the submissions period is over, the team is putting it to the vote, with the community choosing the ideas it likes the most.
"The People’s Choice Award goes to the concept(s) which the wider community finds most interesting, most useful and most innovative – or in a single word: Awesome," the announcement for the voting phase reads.
Back in December, Mozilla started taking submissions from anyone with a good idea (and some design skills). In total, 47 people submitted their entries, in video form, explaining their concepts and approach to designing the new home tab. All the entries are now on the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge page set up for the voting.
There was one issue though, obviously, when you do something like a 'popular choice' contest, you want as many people as possible to vote. But with 47 videos, on average, a couple of minutes long, who would have the patience or the time to sit through all of them? So, in order to get the most people involved but also have a relevant result, Mozilla opted to present voters with just five videos.
"Voting is easy – all you have to do is to register your email address (which will act as your log in) and vote on five randomly selected concepts from 1 (‘I don’t like the concept’) to 5 (‘It’s awesome!’). You don’t need to vote on all five concepts at once – you can come back, continue voting or make changes. Simply log in using your email address," the announcement explains.
Voters can watch all of them and rate them based on their preferences. This way, people can make an informed decision and it also discourages cheating or attempts to game the system. And if enough people vote, there will be plenty of data to get an accurate feel for what the users want the most.
So, head on to the voting page and vote on what you'd like to see in Firefox 4. And, even though you can only vote on five entries, you can view all 47 of them to see what others have come up with. The voting runs through March 1, after which we should get to see what the most popular concepts are. And, who knows, maybe you'll be one of the five lucky voters who'll win "a fat Mozilla swag-pack." A Firefox sticker to put on your laptop will do wonders for your geek cred.