Firefox heats up with RadiantCore

BY: 

Dave Forde
July 13, 2006

Jay Goldman and his company Radiant Core have been doing some great work since early 2003 providing technology solutions for their clients. Jay is also an active organizer with the Toronto Bar Camp which has fast become a place for tech savvy entrepreneurs to get together on a monthly basis and share ideas and demo their respective solutions.

Radiant Core has been selected by Mozilla creators of the Firefox browser to “to design and implement the official theme for the Firefox 2 release”. I interviewed Jay early today about the announcement:

What is it that Radiant Core does? I think our tag line sums it up: We build web sites that build your business. In a more general sense, we help our clients to understand their needs and the needs of their customers, and then we turn those requirements into the appropriate products, be they corporate identities, sales materials, PowerPoint templates, icon sets, or giant web applications.

How did the relationship with Mozilla come into play? – We’ve long been fans and supporters of Mozilla, and friends with a number of their core team members. We’ve actually been doing miscellaneous jobs for them for some time – PowerPoint templates, t-shirt designs, etc. – so we were delighted when they asked us to submit a proposal for the theme.

OneStat.com released some data which released some data on browser usage in which they said, “The global usage share of Mozilla’s browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version.” Why do you feel that people are making the switch?I think there are a number of factors involved in everyone’s decision to switch browsers, but I would guess that the most substantial are the buzz and word of mouth around Firefox, and a growing frustration of the day-to-day reality of being an IE user in a hostile environment. Firefox has big appeal to the leading edge crowd who tend towards an anti-Microsoft bias to begin with and who are attracted by things like downloadable extensions and themes, tabbed browsing, RSS handling, etc. Once that crowd latches on to a new product, they slowly spread it to the late adopters who rely on them for advice. I think we’re starting to see a similar effect around Apple too – every industry event I go to these days seems to be a glowing field of Apple logos, behind which most people are running Firefox.

The most popular browsers in Canada are:

1. Microsoft IE 78.52 %
2. Mozilla Firefox 16.98 %
3. Apple Safari 2.05 %
4. Netscape 0.68 %
5. Opera 1.67 %

source: OneStat.com

Is there an business advantage to using Firefox? – I think there are a few reasons, the least of which is reduced support cost from your IT department who won’t have to keep applying security patches and service packs. I think a strong case could be made for a productivity increase over IE 6, centred around tabbed browsing, integrated RSS via LiveBookmarks, etc. There are also a number of extensions out there which can enhance your productivity by integrating things like the Google Search Bar. And, of course, there’s the employee satisfaction factor by adding extensions like the Joga.com Companion so your team members were able to keep up with the World Cup without taking extra long lunch breaks.

What’s next on the horizon for Radiant Core? – We’re not done with the Firefox theme yet so we’re heads down and focused on getting the implementation done. We’re in talks with a leading small cap stock information source to help them build a massive new portal on Foundation, our kick-ass Website Management Platform. We’ve really enjoyed the work we’ve been doing with Mozilla so we’re on the look out for more jobs like that.

source: Tara Hunt (Ms Rogue)

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Dave Forde


Dave “The Connector” Forde has been involved in the marketing, public relations and technology industry across Canada for over 20 years in various sales and marketing roles, he launched The Connected One network of business sites which connects buyers to the right sellers. Profectio and PR In Canada covers news about the marketing and public relations industry each day helping professionals advance their career and businesses. He also serves as an advisor to a number of businesses across the country. Find Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter.


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