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February 8, 2004

Firefox 0.8 - The Browser, Rebranded

As you've probably noticed, we've changed the name again. For more information regarding the change, see the press release and FAQ.

This entry isn't so much about the reasons for the name change as much as about the road that lead us to the new name. It was not an easy one. This was by far the most difficult problem we've yet tackled in the history of this project. It involved people across multiple timezones and even continents. The name we have chosen took nearly 2 months to lock down, and while that might seem like a short time in the world of trademark law, it was the primary reason for the six week delay in shipping our 0.8 release.

The process began in late November. Mozilla's Chief Architect Brendan Eich had made a commitment to resolve the dispute over Firebird's code name (which was being widely adopted as the browser's actual name) by the 0.8 milestone. Over the span of about 2 weeks a small group at The Mozilla Foundation including Catherine Corre, Bart Decrem, Brendan Eich, Chris Hofmann and myself pored over lists of over two hundred names, many gleaned from the Phoenix to Firebird transition. We reached a point where we had a handful that were the best of that lot, but none of us was entirely satisfied. Searches of the United States Patent and Trademark Office website showed that all of the options we had picked up were potential minefields from a trademark point of view. We refocused our energy on names beginning with "Fire-" in an attempt to preserve the link with the past, and so that we could retain some of our evocative flame imagery.

Ultimately it was Jason Kersey of MozillaZine that came up with the winner. I don't think he was serious with his suggestion, but the naming group liked it well enough. A scan of the USPTO database was positive. We filed for a trademark registration in the United States in December 2003.

At the same time our lawyers scanned uses elsewhere in the world and spotted a potential red flag in Europe. Initially it seemed like there would be no problem and we prepared for a release on December 23. Unfortunately the situation in Europe turned out to be a very real problem and the release had to be delayed.

After the Christmas/New Year break, the situation played out over the following six weeks, with our lawyers in the United States and Europe as well as Bart Decrem at The Mozilla Foundation working to resolve the issues. At times it seemed like there was no light at the end of the tunnel. We contemplated releasing under an interim name. I was optimistic however and held the release, and eventually we turned the corner and the issues were resolved.

I wanted to explain this in some detail in the hopes that it might impress upon people how non-trivial the process of picking a name for a high profile project is. Many companies end up buying their names from others. Mozilla as a small non-profit organization can't afford such luxuries. We needed to be smart and cost effective. While I'm sure many people will consider this a misstep or otherwise take issue with the decisions we've made, we think we've done the best we could, and I challenge anyone to reach a better outcome on the same resources.

This release is nothing without Bart Decrem, whose tireless efforts, 2 AM phonecalls to Europe, creativity and optimism saw the name change through to the end. I extend my thanks to him from myself and the Firefox community.

Brand Identity

While the name was being finalized, a crack team of designers under the guidance of our new Visual Design Coordinator Steven Garrity (of silverorange) was hard at work developing our new icon. With this release we roll out our new logo. Special thanks go to Daniel Burka and Steven Desroches for the concept, and Jon Hicks for the implementation. We have many more changes coming down the pipe from our talented design crew and we look forward to sharing them with you in the coming months.

Update - Steve Garrity has made an excellent post about the design process, as has icon artist Jon Hicks. Bart Decrem is also posting.

Marketing - Take Back the Web

With this release of Firefox we're kicking off the first of many marketing initiatives. We've launched a new button campaign with a number of attractive badges for web pages. If you use Firefox and you have a website, show your support. This year we want to make the whole world listen. We will be expanding our marketing efforts further in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Firefox - The Browser, Reloaded.

Firefox 0.8 is our best preview yet. Combining easier downloading, a new aqua-rific theme for MacOS X users (thanks to Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander), an installer for Windows users and countless other improvements, Firefox 0.8 raises the bar once again.

In recent months there has been what seems a constant stream of new security flaws coming to light in the dominant Windows web browser. Couple this with bombardments of advertising, spyware and other web annoyances, the magical innocence of the internet that many of us remember has faded. There has never been a better time to kick IE off the desktop. Take back the web. Come download Firefox today!

- Ben Goodger; February 9, 2004.

Posted by ben at February 8, 2004 10:45 PM

Comments

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Not Found The requested URL /products/firefox/ was not found on this server.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.8/
The requested URL /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.8/ was not found on this server.

Still busy uploading?

Posted by: geertn at February 9, 2004 12:09 AM

but where is the .ZIP build?

Posted by: berkut at February 9, 2004 1:06 AM

I have been looking at the button page for firefox. The html sections to copy and paste have an alt attribute, but not a title attribute - an oversight, or deliberate?

I'm tempted to also mention the lack of closing the img tag... but then again I'm just an xhtml fan.

Posted by: Azrael at February 9, 2004 1:23 AM

So is FireFox going to be a codename like Firebird was supposed to be? If so advertising buttons for a codename would sound bad.

However, I do agree with the installer now ready it's a good time to start promoting the browser - however we have to still be careful to mention it's a preview release and mention the availability of the suite for the paranoid.

Plus before mass acceptance we should see if you can get permission for the installer to be able to download and automatically install a flash xpi, java, etc like Netscape offered.

Posted by: Dave at February 9, 2004 2:05 AM

Will we see a Thunderfox in the near future as well? I would love it if both products would use similar names.

Posted by: localhost at February 9, 2004 2:16 AM

I don't understand why "Mozilla Browser" isn't better than "Mozilla Firefox" - this new name is very hard to sell in non-us countrys.

Posted by: Marek at February 9, 2004 3:00 AM

Mozilla Firefox sounds just fine in my finnish ear. I don't think that it will be a problem at all. Very nice job altogether.

Posted by: perttu at February 9, 2004 3:12 AM

If they called Firebird "Mozilla Browser", then that causes confusion with the browser from the Mozilla App Suite - "browser from the Mozilla App Suite" isn't such an easy name.

There are some knock-on effects though - we now seem to have a fox in the aviary, which can't be right...

Posted by: michaell at February 9, 2004 3:14 AM

uh, i'm sure it's a wonderful release, but i was dismayed to see that now that there's a windows installer, there's no ZIP build. the moz suite always came with both, i for one DON'T WANT the installer (I know you put a lot of effort into it, it'll be great for my Parents) ... any plans on releasing a build that's just a zip for windows?

keep up the great work!!

Posted by: rob at February 9, 2004 4:45 AM

ben, my apologies ... saw your post re: zip build at mozillazine ...
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4278#23

many thanks,

Posted by: rob at February 9, 2004 4:52 AM

I'm a Firebird database user, and was dismayed to see that the profile of the database was slipping as the 'Mozilla Firebird' browser was getting its justifiable high profile. Mozilla.org has done the right thing, and I really appreciate the efforts that you have all made to do this.

I remember when a few years back people carped on about how much better IE was than Netscape. Well, thanks to the fantastic efforts of Mozilla, I think that your browser is infinitely better than IE, and is the one I have been using almost exclusively for the past 6 months. From what I can see in observing the web developer blogs, Firebird has been receiving massive recommendations as the standard to which web development should be aimed, and MS is being ridiculed and castigated for the state of IE.

For what it's worth - I actually think that Firefox is a much better name than Firebird. Far more distinctive and unusual; "Firebird" and the associated concepts is actually kinda cliched but "Firefox" will really stand out. Also, it has the suggestions of intelligence/cunning, rebelliousness and independence.

And finally, the new logo is just grrrreat... :-)

Posted by: Bernard at February 9, 2004 5:07 AM

Glad to see another nice improvement to the product page. I believe the screenshot is your doing, isn't it? Any excuse to push the G35 (not that I blame you).

Posted by: Patrick O'Leary at February 9, 2004 5:47 AM

Did you get furries to design that logo, or what?

Posted by: dzd at February 9, 2004 6:03 AM

Great job Firebird developer team and everyone at the Mozilla Foundation! Just test driving Firefox right now (Mozilla.org, MozillaZine, and MozDev all seemed to be Slashdotted to hell) and I am very very impressed.

Be prepared for a review upcoming on my blog sometime today.

Posted by: Chris G. at February 9, 2004 6:36 AM

i'm sure i'll get used to the name, but it's really going to confuse new people when they find the profile still under /phoenix/

anyway - i will start spreading the word later, when the servers have had a chance to calm down... :D

Posted by: Donald Noble at February 9, 2004 6:43 AM

love the name, love the new icon and love the browser more everyday.

thanks everyone for your hard work!

Posted by: em at February 9, 2004 7:07 AM

It's Okay, and the icon is really cute, hope this will be a permanent one.

Posted by: wfeng at February 9, 2004 7:15 AM

Just curious as to the real designer of the icon? Certainly looks like weboso's (http://weboso.deviantart.com) firebird icon with one slight variation ... hope he was the true inspiration for this.

btw - new name is cool imo.

late

Posted by: three_4me at February 9, 2004 7:46 AM

At first I was a bit in doubt about the new name, but now that I've wrapped my mind around the fact of the name change, I like it. It's a bit annoying the debian package is going to have to change names again, but...

I LOVE the new icon though. I was already using the firebird equivalent of it, but somehow the fox is much more easily recognized than the bird. It's even clearly a fox in the 16 pixel wide version, which is the first good small icon I've ever seen for a mozilla.org product.

As another reply to the person saying this would sound strange to people who don't speak english natively: it doesn't. My native tongue is dutch, and firefox sounds just fine, due to being easily recognizable as an english term. Well, if you were to try to pronounce it using the dutch rules for pronounciation, it would sound really weird (sort of like fearehfohks), but it's obvious that's not the intention.

Also, I've been running firefox for my morning browsing session, and despite some oddities after install which disappeared after rebooting it has performed flawlessly (oddities were firefox being unresponsive when launched from the quick launch area, and the options dialogue refusing to refresh when another icon was clicked). I really like the new download manager. So smooth.

Posted by: Joeri Sebrechts at February 9, 2004 7:56 AM

Hi Ben,
I'm the german traslator for Fire... fox. Do you know about the situation here? Do I have to fear a lawsuit a company could file against me? Do you have more information about the problems here in Europe?

Posted by: Abdulkadir Topal at February 9, 2004 10:05 AM

Quick question, and sorry for not reading all of the comments first... but my latest Mozilla Firebird... err Firefox build doesn't let me make this window larger to read all the comments!

Anyway back when the idea of replacing the App Suite with the the standalone Browser and Mail clients we where told that Thunderbird and Firebird where basically code names, once the two programs reached a mature state they would would be Mozilla Mail and Mozilla Browser... now I suppose that idea is DEAD. Why?

Posted by: Samual Icky at February 9, 2004 11:49 AM

I like new Firefox icon but hate Qute theme, which is very dull and washed and ugly

Posted by: Fox at February 9, 2004 2:20 PM

Congrats this browser rocks :)

But, about the delicate name's questions, what do you think about "FireGecko" and "ThunderGecko".

We've all still many lezard and gecko icons, we can easily burn or humidify them :p

Posted by: Thanaos at February 9, 2004 2:29 PM

FireDrake and "THE MIGHTY THUNDER LIZARDS!!!"

(they already exist by-the-way)

Posted by: Hemebond at February 9, 2004 2:35 PM

will you marry me, i love you!!! haha, just kidding...you are the man though

Posted by: rgw at February 9, 2004 3:36 PM

Great name, great browser.. Congratulations!

Posted by: Anders at February 9, 2004 5:09 PM

Have you also registered "Icefox" for the e-mail client?
The name "Icefox" IMHO would match both the existing blue Thunderbird icons as well as the browser's name.

If "firefox" is another term for the lesser panda, why does the logo (judging from the colouring) depict a real fox?
It's otherwise all very nice, especially how the logo's globe does not show any actual world region - unlike some contributed logos/icons around.

Posted by: jns at February 9, 2004 6:59 PM

Love the name and the icons.

Did lots of renaming on the forums and on my site. Still lots to go.. :)

Posted by: vfwlkr at February 9, 2004 8:47 PM

Un-freaking-believable. A 2 month delay to pick yet another meaningless name? Call it Mozilla Beta for crying out loud and get 0.8 into our hands in 2003!! There really is no excuse for the naming fiascos. Groups pick new names all the time. It's really not that hard. Especially when it's just a code name. Jeepers.

Posted by: pb at February 9, 2004 11:25 PM

I don't agree with changing name again. This is so stupid to do every few months. I began to be used to Firebird, so why the change?

Posted by: dusoft at February 10, 2004 12:26 AM

Did you even read my blog? Or the FAQ?

Posted by: Ben at February 10, 2004 12:32 AM

I wanted to say thank you for your help. That error is gone and I'm now rockin with Firefox. :)

Posted by: Carla at February 10, 2004 1:58 PM

Just wanted to say that this is a nice piece of work to you and your crew. ;)

Posted by: Matt at February 10, 2004 10:50 PM

just wondering if there is a list of publicly available alternate firefox name floating around on the net somehere?

Posted by: brian at February 16, 2004 6:10 AM

Locking every IE user out of the site and forcing to upgrade to Firefox (because funnily that's the only link mentioned) >.

I'd suggest making the warning on top of every page if detecting IE, but not discriminating users like that.

Posted by: Guido at February 17, 2004 8:36 AM

Locking every IE user out of the site and forcing to upgrade to Firefox (because funnily that's the only link mentioned) ** is exactly what people complained about when IE was a better browser **.

I'd suggest making the warning on top of every page if detecting IE, but not discriminating users like that.

Posted by: Guido at February 17, 2004 8:36 AM

Sorry to rain on your parade: I can't stand the name. It's redolent of posturing monkeys in flightsuits pretending that they are great warriors. But I *won't* let that get in the way of me using the browser, which I think is good: once the nag about installing in global or local profile becomes consistent and uses "Global" and "Local" names on the buttons, thats is. But it will be known as "Mozilla" or "Mozilla Browser" and "F***F**" will only be used to distinguish it from other Mozillas AFAIC.

I think something like "salamander" or even "firedrake" would have fitted in better with the vaguely lizard like motif of Mozilla, though. But I haven't done the pink or blue toothbrush or brandname research.

Posted by: se26 at February 17, 2004 9:02 PM

Have to agree with Guido above: excuding all IE users is childish. Not to mention arrogant.

And certainly with a comment like this in you javascript:

// IE users get nothing.

Why not do the same as you do for, of all things, Netscape 4? Give a warning at the top of the page and display the rest?

Posted by: Michel Vuijlsteke at March 1, 2004 5:37 AM

©1997-2006 Ben Goodger. All Rights Reserved.
Opinions expressed here are my own, and not those of any organization that I may be affiliated with.
Reload icon is © Stephen Horlander;
Firefox logo is by Jon Hicks, and is a trademark of The Mozilla Foundation.
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