Mozilla Firebird gets .8 Release, and New Name 902
Yage writes "Firebird, the lightweight version of Mozilla gets release 0.8 and changes its name again (remember Phoenix?) to avoid confusion with another OSS project. The new name is Firefox. There's a press release out about the name change and new version. And, as usual, download it from
mozilla.org." Worth noting that ThunderBird .5 has been released as well. Update: 02/09 14:55 GMT by H : Thanks to Steve Garrity for pointing out the name change FAQ.
Totally brutal... (Score:5, Interesting)
How creative (Score:5, Interesting)
The good things about the name:
I've said this in the past, and I will say it again. If you are naming your open source software, make it something unique. Why would you want to compete for search terms with all these other people, products, corporations, and organizations. If your product has merit, then people will recognize the name that you give it and you will get brand loyalty. There is no need show your similarity to other products or your system requirements in your name.
missed the Bird (Score:2, Interesting)
I almost switched to Firebird 0.6 but proxy incompatibilities just made me revert to Phoenix.
It is actually damn fast and compatible with 100% of the sites I visit, hence my question
What do I miss ?
I saw, I downloaded, I'm using it now (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, somebody tell me at what point the name's going to change again and I can run Firefly 0.9 as my browser of choice? That would be sweet, the icon could be a tiny image of the Serenity...for the current icon, has anyone else wondered if that fox is having a little too much fun with the globe?
But I digress. I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release, whatever the name ends up being. I'd be interested in knowing what the official marketshare (as far as these things can be determined) is for Fire-[$animal_name]/Mozilla browsers. I know that I've had more stability/popup-blocking goodness out of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox than I usually get out of IE, and far fewer crashes (Firebird crashed on me once on my XP Pro box. Once in how many months? Let's not even think about IE's crash frequency...)
Stupid quote of the day: "That browser sucks...it doesn't even support VBScript!"
needs to integrate better (Score:5, Interesting)
So I close Firebird, go into my Mozilla profile, copy the "bookmarks.html" file from it to the FireFox profile(still in a folder called "Phoenix"), and bam, there's all my bookmarks. Why the damn browser can't do that for me is beyond comprehension.
Same with all my preferences. No option to inherit these things from Mozilla.
Overall it is quite a nice browser, and I'd recommend it to people whose computers are too slow/low on memory for the real thing. I still prefer Mozilla, mainly because I think the Modern theme looks better than FireFox's default, because I can't see an easy way to keep FireFox in memory like I do with Mozilla, and because FireFox lacks the wonderful Mozilla ability to simply type text into the URL bar, hit the up key and then enter, and run a Google search. I find the separate Google search field an annoying complication of Mozilla's search ability.
What a shame (Score:1, Interesting)
Lightweight? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody know of an even _lighter_ browser, preferably gecko-based, that will work on Solaris? Binaries would be nice
Baz
Re:Lightweight? (Score:2, Interesting)
The only ones I can think of are Konqueror and Galeon (Linux) and K-Melon (Windows), I do not know if they will work on Solaris however.
Can't you build a 1ghz system for $100 and not worry about it?
Chris
Firefox is a registered trademark in Germany (Score:2, Interesting)
According to the entry, the trademark covers among others the following areas:
-licensing and lending of computer software
-creation and development of computer software
-support, installation and updating of computer programs and computer software
Re:Asking for trouble (Score:4, Interesting)
- The browser, reloaded
- Take back the web
- Web browsing redefined
With web sites free to pick & choose! Now I love the browser but settling on one slogan might be a good idea no? I suggest "Take back the web", or something i haven't thought of yetRe:How creative (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Fun with Foxes (Score:1, Interesting)
It really is a beautiful little logo.
Re:More Information (Score:5, Interesting)
Won't this confuse people?
Yes, but if the WWF can pull it off, so can we. Besides, in six months you'll forget there ever was any other name.
This is amusing.
Do they mean the WWF (conservation group) that originally had the name, and so took the WWF (the wrestling group) to court to force them to change their name? Or do they mean the WWF that either settled or lost the case, and agreed to change their name to WWE?
In either case, it involves lawsuits!
Yeay! (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, Thunderbird answered so many of my mail problems - anyone else that's tried to find a client that works under Windows and Linux AND allows seperate POP3 accounts to be managed properly will appreciate what a boon Thunderbird is. The mailbox files can be copied straight from a Windows system into a Linux system, and with a bit of fiddling it's up and working in no time. This makes it very easy to move people from Windows to Linux and vice-verse.
Way to go mozilla.org.
Re:How creative (Score:5, Interesting)
5. It doesn't use a famous trademark (at least they didn't name it Nike)
Just picking nits here, but I would remind everyone that Nike didn't come up with that name on their own, Athena's been using it for just a little while longer [theoi.com].
I doubt that even if they *HAD* called it "Nike", Nike would have been able to do anything about it unless the Mozilla Nike project was also about manufacturing and selling tennis shoes. After all, Nike, Inc. aren't the only ones to use the name of the popular Greek goddess for their company or organizations -- the US government even used it for a ground-to air missle program [acme.com].
This whole discussion is giving me a hankerin' to go try and DL some old FireFox roms for my atari emulator.
Re:FireFox? (Score:1, Interesting)
Not to mention that East Asian people have a hard time pronouncing r's.
I don't see why mozilla.org doesn't just use the name "Mozilla Lite". It seems more appropriate and more catchy.
Re:needs to integrate better (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say seamless migration from the previous version is a pretty important feature, wouldn't you?
BTW, I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but Firefox seems to be pretty unreliable for me - it's freezing during certain parts of the page-load process, the download manager thinks it's open when it isn't, the new XPI interface gives no progress indication at any stage (which is quite a retrograde step) and generally the whole thing seems to be less persuasively stable than 0.7. Mind you, that was only in 10 minutes' usage, so perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance, but now I'm back on 0.7 because I have work to do.
-- Yoz
Nice improvements (Score:2, Interesting)
The one biggest improvement I've seen is the UI, which I must say is probably the best I've seen out of any browser I've used (IE, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Safari, among many others). It's clean, and simple, yet still aesthetically pleasing. I found it a bit disapointing that the windows version still used the same theme since I was hoping that I could maybe take the Mac theme and use it there too. If you use Fire{bird | fox} on Mac OSX, then this certainly a must have upgrade.
What about SVG? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dammit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop playing name games. That's the sort of thing that can really hurt adoption.
You're right, that valuable brand recognition is damaged by name changes.
But there were enough problems with the Firebird moniker to justify the name change. And, arguably, with bare single digit percentage market penetration, it's still early in the game; name changes aren't as such a big deal to the party faithful.
A really important step to promote the growth of firefox might be overlooked: their little button logos available for you to put on your web site. [mozilla.org]
As a responsible web site maintainer, these buttons can go alongside some previously collected good button merit badges such as
- W3C complaince [w3.org] with standards HTML 4, CSS, XHTML 1, MathML, SVG, etc. [w3.org]
- works best with any browser [anybrowser.org]
including text only.Re:mozilla upgrade path is getting ridiculous (Score:2, Interesting)
Firefox found my existing Firebird 0.7 and imported all favs. address history, etc seemingly perfectly.
Did you install your firebird into a different directory from the default
If this is the case then the creators of the firefox installer should include and option to ask you where you unzipped firebird to.
ps Anyone remember the crappy Clint Eastwood film *FireFox*? That's the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw the name!!
Re:My Idea for a new Name: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dang it (Score:3, Interesting)
jf
Re:NOT mozilla-lite (Score:2, Interesting)
Internet explorer, windows, word..... all of those are horribly generic names that have enjoyed great marketability... why is it that OSS projects almost always have to choose nerdy,dorky names??
Serenity & random thoughts (Score:1, Interesting)
Name suggestion: contact Joss Whedon & Mutent Enemy and see if the 1.0 version can be called "Serenity." At the very least, some clever chap please make the Firefly Theme!
Obviously, not all my extensions made the successful transfer. One essential extension is the one (sorry no credit) which allows me to switch between tabs using my mouse wheel.
Great idea to include the link/ad buttons. I already have the Firefox ad on my blog, and the logos are fantastic.
Question: after Firefox replaces Mozilla, are we still going to have a Composer? I use that to create & upload (my amateur, pathetic) web pages. I could always keep my regular Mozilla for that purpose, but it's too great a piece of software for the foundation to abandon.
Re:Dammit. (Score:4, Interesting)
> Stop playing name games. That's the sort of thing that can really hurt adoption.
In their defense, it's still in beta. I don't think they intend it for widespread adoption yet except among developers and enthusiasts. Besides, I think they were stuck between a rock and a hard place with their lack of research over their last name.
I still think 'Firefox' stinks. Doesn't roll off the tongue like Mozilla, Firebird, or Phoenix, but I'm sure choosing a name that isn't already taken isn't easy.
Re:NOT mozilla-lite (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Official market share" (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal site:Different numbers. This site has all kinds of weird stuff on it, some Linux-specific.
My SELinux site:Pretty obvious. Yes, part of it is a debian mirror for the SELinux packages, that's how apt-get gets in there.
All these numbers are from February, i.e. as fresh as they can be.
What do they show? At least as far as I am concerned, the "95% of the people use IE" is a myth, a lie, a marketing gimmick, whatever you want to call it.
Mozilla.org is down as I write this (Score:3, Interesting)
BitTorrent is a good thing.
Re:Mirror (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is because of an API change (Score:2, Interesting)
Bleh. Stupid default. (Score:2, Interesting)
Other than that, shiny, but wow... what a stupid default.
Re:You think you've got problems (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh really.
Why You Should Switch to FireFox [mozilla.org]
"Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS" [microsoft.com]
Secunia Internet Explorer System Compromise Vulnerabilities. [216.239.57.104] Solution: "Use another product"
The Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities [sans.org] IE: Number four.
"we are not aware of any vendor-supplied patches for this issue" [securityfocus.com]
Patch for 'critical' IE vulnerability doesn't work [zdnet.com.au]
IE full of holes, unsafe: Security experts [zdnet.com.au]
AMS Vice President and CTO: Mozilla Firebird is a Tier 1, Best of Breed Open Source Application [cio.com]
I don't care if it's a beta. Firebird/FireFox/Whatever is simply a better product than IE in every conceivable way - with the pertinent exception of branding, but including stability and security. So what exactly makes its use at a corporate level a "bad idea?"
Re:Dang it (Score:3, Interesting)
All of the computer systems that I set up for my friends and family generally have the following two desktop icons in addition to the standard Windows cruft:
* Email
* Web Browser
That's it. Sometimes the icons change and that throws them off for a bit, but this, in general, Just Works. Every once in awhile, I've had the temptation to change "Web Browser" to "The Internet" for the less gifted users but I could never quite bring myself to go quite that low.
However, I would also assert that you shouldn't really be using the alpha-quality Firefox on family or production systems when there's a perfectly good and stable (even in respect to naming) Mozilla 1.x available.
Re:marketing school (Score:3, Interesting)
You're one of those people that still maintains that "ain't" is not a proper word, aren't you?
Lite [reference.com] is as proper a word as any other. Heck, two hundred years ago we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Now, I'll grant that L-I-T-E isn't a preferred or formal spelling of "light", but it's an accepted one. (You could even go so far as to say that "lite" is really a suffix, and needs to be appended to an existing word for its spelling to be acceptable. I.e., "This isn't really a full burrito; it's more of a burrito-lite.")
Re:My review of Mozilla Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
5. Some plug-ins/extensions need to be added to the Mozilla Firefox setup file
Bundled extensions is planned for the next release (0.9), as demonstrated in the firefox roadmap [mozilla.org].
7. Download manager clutter
In options, go to "Privacy", then "Download manager history". You can set it to erase download entries on completion, which is the setting I prefer.
8. Exporting bookmarks problems
Actually, replacing & with & is the correct behaviour, since html 4 does not allow & in url's. Firefox stores its bookmarks as html, so I expect that this doesn't happen on export, but on import. If you link to a url containing an ampersand, you need to escape it, always. Yes, it's sort of annoying, but I expect there are good technical reasons (which I'm too lazy to look up). Besides, every browser out there opens url's with & in them correctly. What exactly is the problem?
9. Default sorting of bookmarks.
Strange, it sorts them the way you want it in my install. Don't understand why you're seeing this.
10. Auto-update
It's called smartupdate, and it's planned for firefox 0.9. See the roadmap [mozilla.org] again.
11. Uninstall plug-ins/extensions
Firefox 0.9. Yeah, I know, they're keeping all the cool stuff for the next version. But believe me, they know.
12. Autoscroll problem.
This is only a problem for you, due to your dependancy on autoscroll. I use a scrollwheel, and disable autoscroll. This is actually a fixed bug. In previous versions middleclicking a link would sometimes activate autoscroll instead of opening the link. Firefox doesn't do that anymore. I believe the current behaviour is the correct behaviour, since it doesn't neuter the middle mouse button's ability to open new webpages.
2. Major issue with the Flash Click to view extension
This is annoying indeed, but it is predictable. Any other implementation would either require micromanagement or trigger flash displaying when you don't want it. And besides, anyone using flash for website navigation is a callous retard and deserves to have their site break in real browsers. (To anyone doubting this: think about what happens when a blind person tries to visit a website that depends on flash for navigation.)
The flash blocking code has been updated by the way, but it hasn't trickled back to the extension. See jesse rudderman's xbl flash binding [squarefree.com] page.
Re:My review of Mozilla Firefox (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really. I could make it so shift+clicking a placeholder acts like clicking all of the placeholders on the page.