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From this blog I think the original sketch up for the logo looks more like a panda while the final rendition was for some reason made to look more like a fox. But maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me. I honestly never knew a fire fox was a panda and not a fox (or just a made up name). And I had also completely forgotten about Phoenix and Firebird.

+1 insightful to Reuters.

It's almost as good as the Fedex Arrow.

I wonder if they bothered to ask Jon Hicks, the graphic designer who drew the Firefox logo, for the original vector outlines.

Since drawing that logo, incidentally, Jon has dumped Firefox in favor of Safari, which integrates much better with its host OS, has superior support for standards, and is in general much more asthetically aware (as is its core development team). What does Jon know that thousands of rabid Firefox fans don't?

I don't think I've ever seen an article summary with so many links!

Who says it's just non-techies? My name is Juan Nuno. I am a technical user, and I suffer from Upgraditis.

I just switched over to Gentoo, just to try it out, because I was frustrated with the rate packages are backported to Ubuntu. (Yes, I know about Ubuntu Backports. I got the line in my sources.list.) I'm completely new at it, went ahead and applied the GCC 3.4.5 update, only to have my GNOME compile break.

And I ain't the only one. Steven Garrity has it too.

Can it be a deep-seated psychological need for what's new? Who knows? I guess the trick is to find the right balance. Don't blindly upgrade willy-nilly, do a bit of research. And at the same time if nobody upgraded their browsers, we'd still be using Netscape 4.

As the blog entry below explains (with screenshot), the way the GNOME clock expands to show a simple calendar, with your appointments from Evolution marked on, is GENIUS.

http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2004/july/s impledesktop

Actually, a reader pointed out only this morning that the MSNBC This Week in Pictures feature now does work in Firefox.

Is this the same issue that causes it to choke on pages with many images?
Otherwise, I love Firefox for my browsing experience.

BTW, if Opera was able to get $12 million from Microsoft why can't the Mozilla folks send in some complaints to get MSNBC's This Week in Pictures to work with Firefox.

I can speak to the accuracy of hybrid fuel economy numbers, but I did do a bit of research and ended up buying a small gas-only car instead. I found the fuel economy of the hybrids wasn't so much better that it warranted the significant price increase.

I wrote more about the issue on my weblog: Why I didn't buy a hybrid car.

I whipped up a quick A9 Search Plugin for Firefox.

I must be missing some subtle humour here - that is never a panda.

Simon

I've read your stuff, know of the visual identity team, and thank you for your work (UI is important to me), but are you sure you have the right authority to say these things?

I was under the assumption (from the 03/24/04 minutes) that the --enable-official-branding flag could only be set if you had foundation approval. It seems silly to have the flag that anyone can (and should) use on their builds instead of having it just built in automatically.

Obviously nobodys going to get into a fuss about personal builds. We're talking builds that get distributed in Mozilla's name. Debian can't just use the flag and compile, because they have to be approved to use that artwork.

dammit. should've previewed.
http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2004/januar y/idontneedmore

and shutdown under "start" menu is logic? please... even xp is still rough around the edges. it's matter of taste. i use fluxbox. kde and gnome are too much bloated. like windows :-)

Try copying and pasting between those windows, Mr. Slippery.

I've been copying and pasting between windows using the X Window System since about 1989.

All those millions of user research and feedback Apple and Microsoft have done is all bollocks. The human brain doesn't appreciate visual cues.

Sure it does. That doesn't mean realistic cues are better. Take for example this U.S. Navy study which found that non-pictoral symbols resulted in better performance when using tactical displays.

I don't know how much of Apple and MS's work is real HCI research ("this is useful and will improve performance"), and how much is marketing research ("this is shiny and will improve sales"), the equivalent of racing stripes, fake spoilers, and chome trim on automobiles. I suspect the latter weighs heavily.

Now if that's your idea of pretty (I think Aqua gaudy myself), fine, everyone should be able to have the desktop they want. But don't pretend that not fitting your aethestic preferences is a flaw or weakness in the leading open desktops.

Forgive me for wanting a hard drive icon to look like a hard drive, because you think some random designers said so.

I'm not sure how to parse this...random designers want me to forgive you? Random designers want (or don't want) an icon to look like a piece of hardware that the average user (who never opens the case) wouldn't recognize?

Look at the OS X and Win XP hard drive icons and tell me that a naiive user would say "obviously that's a hard drive".

Why I didn't buy a hybrid car (self-link):


mpg city/hwy
Echo Hatchback 42/54
Civic Hybrid 47/48
Prius Hybrid 45/52
Honda Insight 61/68


Mind you, the Echo Hatchback is only available in Canada right now.

Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Google as God, realise that Google goodthinkful ingsoc therefore = BB.


"Big Brother records all. BB remembers all, even after it's gone"


Ingsoc unistand!
Ingsoc unifall!
Conform is doubleplusgood!

A co-worker of mine has been claiming that google is god for two years now.

As i have posted in a comment elsewhere, I think nowadays it's only a matter of having the right tools.

When the next release Mozilla 1.# came with semantic agents and Composer has semantic publishing tags, a few bloggers will start the snowball by semantically decorating their posts. The rest of readers will notice these additional feature and will want to copy it.

Or so I hope it'll happen... 8)

Windows 2000's interface is *very* similar to Windows 98's, so I am not sure how you say "Win2000 with million of Control panels sucks". Actually I find Windows 2000's UI (some nice touches like a persistent `Open With...' menu weren't there in Windows 98) quite productive -- especially once I have disabled Web View and installed cygwin.

But yes: XP ... the fastest way to improve XP's interface is to move back to the Windows2000-style UI (which is there for backward compatibility). Incidentally, XP does not only have sucky UI -- even the graphics are no great shakes -- check out this critique.

See a discussion of the idea of open source music (disclosure: it's a link to my own site). The sampling of music has been happening in the world of rap for years - seems like a natural move.

Imagine a website where you could:

• find out the current ski conditions
• find any business in your province
• see all properties up for sale on a map
• contact anyone in your government
• download the provincial budget (and the previous three years of budgets)
• find anything and everything you could possibly want to know about the election including live results
• easily find every single accommodation, campground, festival or event, restaurant, or tour in the province
• find useful and up-to-date weather info including a chart of the temperature over the last 24-hours
• watch the Province House live
• view every single Provincial Statute
• see where everything in your province is on a map

Then imagine that it's all easy to find and navigate, quick to load, and resists the temptation of self-indulgent multimedia.

If you are lucky enough to live on Prince Edward Island then you already have a website like this: www.gov.pe.ca with "website architecture and construction by Reinvented Inc. for the Government of Prince Edward Island, Canada". It is insanely great.

(this post an excerpt from actsofvolition.com )