In my recent post, Web 2.0 marketing opportunities, I offered to be your tour guide for some of the major features offered by this marvelous technology. I listed six features represented by the acronym SLATES: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. Last week’s post dealt with Signals (RSS – really simple syndication). In this week’s post we’ll deal with extensions.
What’s an extension?..
In the context of Web 2.0 features, extensions refers to software application extentions. Wikipedia describes them as “a file containing programming that serves to extend the capabilities of or data available to a more basic program. It is a kind of list of commands which are directly included in the program. This term often (mistakenly) coincides with the plug-in. When installing software, you may be instructed to take one or more steps related to installing extensions (or these steps may automatically be done for you). Extensions differ slightly from plug-ins. Plug-ins usually have a narrow set of capability.”
What do Extensions do?..
Extensions add new functionality to existing applications such as Internet browsers, for example. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. Extensions are different from plug-ins, which help the browser display specific content like playing multimedia files. Extensions are also different from search plug-ins, which plug additional search engines in the search bar.
What’s in it for me?..
Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. the second most used browser in the world, has a developer community which creates extensions as solutions for common problems and to take advantage of new features as they are developed. Extensions also serve to allow users to customize applications to fit their personal needs, while keeping keeping these files compact and easy to download.
Nice to know there are all these nice techie folks are out there working on our behalf to make Web 2.0 easier for us. That way we can focus on taking advantage of any new marketing opportunities as they come on-line.
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