Reasons to Switch to Mozilla FirebirdSaturday April 26th, 2003David Tenser writes: "Ben Goodger, the Mozilla developer who gave us the newly designed Options window in Mozilla Firebird, has written a very nice document on reasons to switch to Mozilla Firebird instead of using other browsers. The document covers all major features of the browser and is written for end-users as well as developers and web designers." mozilla.org also has a more general section on why you should be using Mozilla. Update! At the request of a senior Mozilla Firebird developer, this MozillaZine article was withdrawn for a short time while the linked document was updated to meet the Mozilla branding requirements. Very nice page, glad someone got around to doing it. one problem; The links to "keywords" ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/keywords/keywords.shtml ) and to "make your own keywords ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/keywords/makeyourown.shtml ) They both give a 'Server Error' Cheers Gooder on the hard work you've been putting into "Mozilla FireBird(tm)" (hehe) Jebdro wrote: > [...] Cheers Gooder on the hard work you've been putting into "Mozilla FireBird(tm)" (hehe) That page(TM) is "Last modified April(TM) 21, 2003". Give people(TM) time(TM) for updates(TM). ;-) Nice page on the new Phoenix->Firebird->Mozilla Browser, indeed. so will firebird basically take the place of mozilla for OS X? or is that still going to be camino's job? i'm sticking with camino, just trying to make sense of all of these name changes. Camino isn't going anywhere. Actually, that's wrong. Camino *is* going places. It's getting better and better http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/pinkerton/archives/003130.html Lots of people love Camino (myself included) and a standalone XUL browser on Mac isn't going to change that. Camino delivers the world-beating standards support and awesome correctness and speed of the Gecko rendering engine with a powerful and fast native interface. As long as users want it and developers hack on it, Camino will continue to deliver. The Mozilla Firebird browser on Mac will serve several purposes. The first, and I think most important, is that along with the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, it will provide Mac Mozilla SeaMonkey users (and there are quite a few of them) with an upgrade path that maintains much if not all of their current functionality. The Mozilla Firebird browser on Mac will also give Mac Mozilla users access to all those great XUL extensions http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions.html and XUL applications http://www.mozdev.org/projects/active.html XUL extensions and standalone XUL applications are highly desired and not just on Windows and Linux. MozillaZine's forums aren't accessible right now but when they return, do a quick search through the Firebird/Phoenix forums and you'll find there's a lot of interest in a XUL-capable browser for Mac OS X. Camino is a kickass web browser and has the full support of mozilla.org. XUL is a awesome cross-platform application and extension development platform and the Mozilla Firebird browser should deliver that platform for Windows, Linux, *and* Mac OS X. --Asa New Mozilla Firebird and its add-on applications (Thunderbird, Calendar, ...) attract a lot of attentions and generate a lot of interests. Bt surprisingly we have no links on the Mozilla's homepage to these things. I agree. Mozilla homepage needs a make over. The color scheme needs to be updated and the design needs to be more intuitive. The browser is getting more friendly for users, but mozilla.org is not. Furthermore, it is not standard compliant. LOL. We don't practice what we preach. I know only basic html, but I'm willing to spend my free time after AP testing to learn CSS and read DevEdge articles to create a pure CSS page. Nice writeup, but the download is still Phoenix! First, it should be udpated to follow the branding strategy, being as it's hosted on Mozilla.org and thus somewhat "official." I realize this was written beforehand so I'm not faulting him, just saying it needs to be updated. Second, are they really claiming Firebird as a trademark? It's just the project name, not the product name. If not, the excessive TMs should be dropped too. Third, the "More Space for Pages" stats would probably be more impressive (and more accurate for most people) if you were using 1024x768 as a metric instead of 1600x1200. The average person doesn't have a giant monitor set at that kind of resolution, and a good chunk of them actually use 800x600. Agreed, the excessive amount of TMs is driving me crazy. I'm almost considering switching back to a build with Phoenix as the app name. :( I know, he should have been saying Mozilla Browser. Wtf? #16 From Mozilla Navigator to the new Mozilla Browser?by JuanGonzalez Monday April 28th, 2003 8:16 PM NXprime wrote: > I know, he should have been saying Mozilla Browser. Wtf? I think you are right. For instance, the phrase "Firebird starts up and runs much faster than Mozilla because of its significantly optimized code." probably should say something like "Mozilla Browser starts up and runs much faster than Mozilla Navigator because of its significantly optimized code." according to, for example, the point 6 of the new branding http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/branding.html , with different names for projects (like SeaMonkey, Mozilla Firebird, Mozilla Thunderbird) and applications (like Mozilla Navigator in the current suite, or the new standalones Mozilla Browser, Mozilla Mail). Of course, unless that project codenames are the product names now. If this is the case, the next stable suite will be SeaMonkey 1.4. (Just joking). ;-) Apart from this half-fixed detail (no TMs in project names: fixed already), otherwise I think it's an attractive article indeed. Well, it looks like 1 and 2 have been fixed. I was wondering why this article was pulled. #3 is still an issue, but it's fairly minor. In response to a request from a senior Mozilla Firebird developer, this story has been withdrawn until the linked page is updated to follow the new branding guidelines http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/branding.html correctly. It will return. Alex Please ditch the "Firebird™". You have argued that a) "Firebird" isn't trademarkable, b) "Firebird is only part of "Mozilla Firebird", c) "Mozilla Firebird" isn't a trademark, only the internal code name for a project. Are you guys duplicitous, sloppy, or just stupid? Use the tm symbol is legal notice that you claim exclusive right to the mark "Firebird." You don't. So stop. Now. The linked document has been updated to meet the new branding guidelines http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/branding.html so this article has been restored. Alex This article has been pushed too early, and still fails to follow the branding rules. Until Mozilla actually starts shipping this build, as part of the Mozilla suite then there is no need to provide consumer advertising. This is a case of 'Mozilla Navigator is crap so use Mozilla Firebird instead'. I'm happy with Mozilla, but it will be great when the new version is finally available - the sales pitch to mozilla.org is over and phoenix has won, so just get on and get a 'user' package shipped. lsces wrote: > This article has been pushed too early, and still fails to follow the branding rules. [...] At least, the TM symbols are already removed from the project name. And it's a really nice brief article on the next Mozilla browser, apart from the doubtful browser name on the page. About the new branding guidelines http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/branding.html , there seems to be different possible interpretations. For example, in the Mozilla Firebird Project page http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/ , it is stated that: "Mozilla Firebird is just a project name, in the same way as the Mozilla Application Suite is codenamed SeaMonkey." So it seems that, after Phoenix 0.5, the next pre-1.5 version will be "Mozilla Browser 0.6" (and "Mozilla Mail 0.1" from the Mozilla Thunderbird Project), in the same way that there was for example a "Mozilla 0.9.1" before Mozilla 1.0, and not a "SeaMonkey 0.9.1". But some people think that the standalone versions can be considered not public (and "strictly for testing") until after Mozilla 1.4 (around end of May). In this case, we would have "Mozilla Firebird 0.6", and later "Mozilla Browser 1.5". This seems to be also the view of the otherwise truly interesting Ben's article. But I'm not sure this is an entirely correct reading of "project name as SeaMonkey". ;-) Well, in spite of this and of the (very good) nightlies that I'm testing, I sincerely hope I didn't misunderstand the new branding guidelines for projects and applications, and the first one is the right branding interpretation. But I can be wrong, of course. :-) Anyway, probably the exact steps for the transitional stage are not decided yet. Very few transition months in fact, so I don't know if all these details have any importance... i guess there needs to be a clarification, not of the clarification itself, but BY THOSE who made it. so that everybody can understand and that the updated version of the Why-page gets updated again. (though, if it's true that 1.5 is out in june, there's a lot of energy put into these things...) warenhaus wrote: > "i guess there needs to be a clarification, not of the clarification itself, but BY THOSE who made it. so that everybody can understand and that the updated version of the Why-page gets updated again. (though, if it's true that 1.5 is out in june, there's a lot of energy put into these things...)" It seems that there is already an agreement, from what some developers are saying, that after Mozilla 1.4 (around end of May), both project and application on the desktop will be "Mozilla Browser", in betas and so on. The official public version will be 1.5, of course. There are different branding interpretations for the month of May, because it is not clear if the point 6 ("Product Naming in resources, executables and on the desktop") of the new Mozilla Branding of April 25 http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/branding.html applies only after 1.4 or also until 1.4. That is to say, it is not clear yet if project name and application name are different or the same until 1.4. It's only one doubtful May, just for preparatory versions of Mozilla Firebird -> Mozilla Browser. Let's hope one month of project work is not much important. All the past absurd quarrels possibly haven't been a good point for the public image of both open source projects and for the open source movement as a whole. It's undersatandable anyhow, if you think that it seems clear now how developers know much about C++ but don't know much how to manage PR and diplomatics. ;-) Perhaps some more competitive than cooperative attitudes come from the corporate past of both OS projects, Netscape's Mozilla and Borland's Firebird, time ago. All of us should learn from the recent mistakes and improve for the future. OpenSource == FriendlyCooperation. (About cooperation, just remember for instance, maybe AIDS was already in the past if the different corporate laboratories were less secretive and more cooperative). Well... and about past corporate attitudes, not everything is like that, and I think the new Branding is very positive, a proof of goodwill. And TM symbols are gone in project names and also in the nightlies, anyway. By my count this document contains 43 instances of "Firebird" without the "Mozilla" modifier. Each is an infringement of the Firebird trademark owned by the Firebird database project. Yes, it is true that repeating the phrase "Mozilla Firebird" 50 times in a single document is repetitious and tedious, but that is what you signed up to do. Please remove this document until it conforms to your branding statement. |