Mozilla, Paulo Coelho and customer bases

viernes diciembre 16, 2005 | General | Permalink |

Mozilla It seems Mozilla and Firefox are the most used browsers hitting the place. This is a graph of the last 100 browsers used to see this blog: That's a total of 39+12+9+1+1 mozilla (or mozilla firefox) browsers hitting the place. A total of 62% of browsers. Wow. Paulo Coelho It happened by accident. While at the bookstore I happened to meet a portuguese version of Paulo Coelho's "O Diário de um Mago" ("Diary of a Wizard"). I think the english translation is entitled as "The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom" although I'm not sure. (It talks about a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the city were I was born). It's a great book. After that I've met "O Alquimista" and "Brida". All three in portuguese. Nice read indeed. I highly recommend them. These Paulo's books are easy to read (at least in portuguese ;-)) and they talk about the really important things in life. So what does mozilla have to do with Paulo Coelho? Well, nothing at all, of course. The fact is that I'd like to learn some portuguese (a very difficult language, from my point of view) and I was told about this virtual school of portuguese. The fact is that the site does not work with Mozilla nor firefox (the browsers I own). That is, put simply, just stupid. Making a web site that accepts only Internet Explorer and Microsoft users is not a good idea. If my site statistics are right you'll probably loose 64% of your potential readers. So, by making things Internet Explorer specific, you're loosing 64% of your potential clients. And, well, loosing 64% of your potential clients in your very first page in your web site is just stupid, isn't it? But, wait, there's even more. You can't visit "Santiago's Way" official site either! Xacobeo (which means "from Jacob" in english, you know, Santiago means "Saint Jacob", actually). Who selects who? And this is more food for thought. Trying to select your customer base by rejecting users that don't use your tools is not a good idea. Because it may become against you. After all, who selects who? Who rejects who? Is it web sites selecting and rejecting readers just for the browsers they use, or is it the other way round? The answer is obvious to me: I reject sites not accepting firefox. Full stop. So, since I cannot learn portuguese using Escola Virtual maybe I can learn it anywhere else. Any ideas, anyone? Thanks! Antonio Update: Escola Virtual is working now in Mozilla right now. Damn it! I've already written this blog entry!