The latest Mozilla Firefox browser is just round the corner and I’ve installed the 0.9 beta. The installer is beautiful. It gives me all of the options I want. I’ve recently been thinking more and more about installers and am convinced that they are just as vital a piece of your software as anything else. Witness the wonder that WordPress’s 5 minute Installer instills. It actually does only take that long, and for a web application, that’s a beatiful thing.

The graphics of the Firefox 0.9 installer incorporate the new branding and I’m confident that this branding will increase market share. Why? Because it is attractive. Millions of women surf the net every day and I tell you that as superficial as it sounds, the blue ‘e’ is not sexy enough to hold people while a cute fox is sure to get some attention! Furthermore the installer lets you pick a custom set of options for installable components, whether or not to place shortcuts in various parts of your Windows interface (Programs Menu, Desktop and Quick Launch). This is a great step forward for Firefox!