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It's is also noteworthy that John Hicks of http://hicksdesign.co.uk/ the guy that created the Firefox logo is now lead UI designer in Opera

Nothing wrong with Iceweasel, but heaven forbid users have to learn what a web browser is in general rather than remembering a list of brand names.

Brand recognition counts for a LOT. The average user (who, I hasten to remind you, is whom Ubuntu is ostensibly for) wants something they've heard of. Not "IceWeasel".

Don't {K,}Ubuntu menus use the function by default. It's one of my annoyances in KDE-4.1 that they've not got around to allowing options for the new menu (which sucks enough already) and so things are listed as "Web Browser" and then when I mouseover I get "Firefox Web Browser" in grey underneath.

So the difference would be just that when I click "Browser" to open the browser I'll get a different title bar and logo.

Even the logo could possibly be used in some jurisdictions, did Moz get an exclusive license [ http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-firefox ]?

Those charts look pretty hot to me. Did you look at the chart in the page? http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/l ibrary/os-perlgdchart/pie_step1_step2.gif
). Anti-aliased lines and text :]

Let's compare this to what I'd get if I asked most professionals for a chart. (These were the first ones from google). The lack of anti-aliasing hurts one's eye, these all look like they're from 1995.
http://support.alphasoftware.com/images/XD_Interac tive_Pie_Chart.gif
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa192481. odc_vststockallocation2003_fig03(en-us,office.11). gif
(the second one is 3d)

And in response to your comment
> When will open source advocates learn to delegate the graphic design aspect of their work to professionals? if only the programming types in charge of these projects would admit they're better at making code than graphics.
You seem to have missed the point. The article is about free software that can be used by professional and non-professional alike to create some hot graphics. Perhaps you're referring to the ugliness of the original tux logo? It's not 1995, and developers aren't resigned to producing their own graphics. If you look all free software houses pushing their brand use professional designers. Think of the firefox logo (2004)
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-fire fox
or of ubuntu and gnome's curves, and check out the tango project http://tango.freedesktop.org/
Desktop linux has never looked so sexy.

Why so sour, AC?

Yeah, Safari has similar functionality. Also, if you like Firefox's DOM Element Inspector, you really owe it to yourself to check out the element inspector available in the latest nightly builds of WebKit. This thing is fucking amazing, and speaking for myself, I find it far more elegant, intuitive, and useful than aforementioned DOM Element Inspector.

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?

As it so happens, the widgets are native. Mozilla exposes the underlying implementation. Which is why buttons look like Windows, Mac, or GTK+ buttons. The caveat to this is that you can create XUL buttons/components that are entirely virtual. These components are generally used to produce skins like that used in Firefox. But most XUL applications actually rely on the native components instead. Which is why the Amazon browser I linked to looks like a native Windows app.

Actually, from what I know, that is *not* true. Firefox has been criticized in the past for 'not looking quite right' on most platforms. Someone made a hack awhile ago to make the buttons look more accurate in OS X (*)...and there was much grief had over the appearance of the menus on the "Classic" view of XP. Firefox had designed their menu theme/XUL for the eye candy "Luna" view/theme of XP, and the menu items had the wrong pixel height for Classic. Personally, I can't stand that hideous theme, and so I use Classic on my XP box at work. To make it right, I used the extension cited on this MozillaZine KB article (though I barely noticed the difference). Camino uses Cocoa for its widgets, and so is 'native,' while Firefox on OS X will be transitioning to this at some point in the future. (3.0?)

I found the OS X story: http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/native-lookin g-firefox-os-x-widgets

CakePHP, for example.

Why is this getting press? Maybe cause they say 'platform', 'enterprise', and 'scalability' too many times in a single paragraph.

Oh, and Jon Hicks called. He wants his logo back.

http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/time-to-redes ign-the-logo-methinks ;)

Firefox's name and icon are both so meaningless and divorced from the program's function as to be useless. (The guy who drew Firefox's icon, by the way, has since switched to Safari, a program with a much better name and icon--perhaps also reflecting its overall philosophy.)

No, this is not intentional. The theme and icon of the program are clearly to fit together with these popular programs. As a designer I must honestly say that I was impressed by mister Hicks' designs. But not as much so to shamelessly mimic his style. Nice icon though!

Actually it looks more like the sort of logo you'd find on an IM or P2P app (they all seem to be using that style of logo). It just looks amateurish.

Actually, it looks very slick and professionally designed. A geek in their bedroom with a ray-tracing package and a copy of GIMP could have produced something similar that would nevertheless have lacked the important 'professional' touch.

Perhaps what you were thinking was that it doesn't project *quite* the right image for FreeBSD?

To me, it's really bit too polished (a la IM/P2P app logo), and lacking a defined personality. It definitely looks better against a white background (more Apple-ish than ray-tracy in that context) though.

Then again, Linux was taken seriously in spite of the goofy penguin.

In spite of the fact that the canonical image of Tux is a professional-looking *picture*, it comes across as incredibly amateurish when used as a logo. Personally, I can't stand the damn thing; perhaps it reminds me of Orville the Duck, though.

Best open-source artwork by far are the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. Beautifully designed pieces that are neither overly glossy nor bland.

Sure, here you go... This page describes a few of the different plugins available for Safari.

Be warned that some of them, like Saft, are shareware. Personally, I figured I already paid for Tiger, so $10 on top of that wasn't a big deal--especially not to support a guy who writes a great plugin like Saft. But yeah, YMMV.

Wrong on both counts. According to the Mozilla store the firefox is a red panda (Ailurus fulgens), not a fox and not a canine of any kind.

However, according to the logo creator the actual inspiration of the logo was not a red panda at all, but a ordinary fox (the designer writes, "A firefox is actually a cute red panda, but it didn't really conjure up the right imagery.")

If you're not still not convinced, have a look at some images of red pandas and foxes and then compare them to the Firefox logo. No way in a bunch of politically correct Sundays is that thing going to become a red panda! :)

Whew! Thanks!

From SilverOrange (who are also responsible for the excellent Mozilla site design), I learned the actual guy responsible for the Firefox/Thunderbird icons is freelance graphic designer Jon Hicks, found here.

Works for my Fleet (now Bank of America) bank web site.

Most web sites if they are coded properly see the browser as "Gecko" which is the rendering engine that Netscape 6+, Mozilla, and Mozilla Firefox use. In fact, sites search for Gecko if needed so much that Safari identifies itself with not only "Safari" but "like Gecko"

I have heard wonders about the G4/G5 optimized builds for Firefox.

You can get Safari-style tabs in Mac Firefox.

• CSS Wiki! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Fix crappy MSIE support! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• tips, tricks and good practice techniques! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Box model Illustrated! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Tutorials, Demos, and Hacks! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices Crib Sheet! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Holly Hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• 3 pixel hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Firefox webdev plugin! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Mozilla CSS editor! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Debugging Advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Page Building Process! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• selectutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Lists

• listamatic 2 (nested lists)! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listamatic! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Piped List! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Floats

• floatutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• float-theory! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Filtering

• Explorer! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• safari filtering! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• filters! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Type Issues

Clearly you aren't a web developer.

Most of the web developers I know (and I know a lot) started out using tools like Dreamweaver and GoLive etc, which now output decent XHTML, but now they are starting to move toward XHTML and CSS in their designs (which are some of the best on the net, might I add), and they're switching to using text editors exclusively for writing the code, plus your standard graphics programs for the images. I do the same.

The great thing about XHTML is that is separates the content from the design, which in turn makes your code beautiful and easy to write and maintain. I was looking at an XHTML page I had written the other day, and I thought, gee, I could just put this up as plain text and people would still understand it. It was free of all that contextual crap (tables, font tags, one-pixel spacer images) that heavily-designed HTML pages of two years ago were full of. So no, a text editor is not just for writing static text. I use mine for every aspect of the design process, though, admittedly ConTEXT is not notepad, it's pretty close. And I would contest that the sites I develop aren't crappy looking.

You may be able to design sites with a tailored WYSIWYG HTML editor, but you usally have little control over how everything fits together, and it results in messy code that is hard to understand. If that works for you, then fine, great. All I can say is that you better "know some of this stuff" and how to do it without your XHTML editor -- learn it in notepad -- and then, once you see what was output by your editor, and if you have any respect for the XHTML standard and the ideals that the W3C had in mind when they thought of it, I have a feeling you won't go back.

Just wanted to say that I absolutely agree with you on this one. A good desiner's eye would make any site more usable. Fonts, colors, font spacing, paragraph spacing, paragraph width, etc etc all affect how usable the page is -- a nice looking page just makes the whole experience more pleasing. Heck, it's why people put art in their homes. It's why we have "interior decorators" and "landscape artists" -- yes, our home would be more functional if instead we spent all that money on useful things like changing around the lightswitches or buying new appliances, but in the end, the beauty of the home plays as large (if not larger) a role as the usability in the overall experience. I for one would absolutely hate to live in a house without plants, without good-looking furniture, without some art on the walls (even just my own photography) -- it would be bland and boring, regardless of how usable it is. The best homes I've seen balance utility and design incredibly -- the best web designers do the same thing to the same effect. Jacob Nielsen has only half the picture.

John Hicks is the guy who designed the toupet, and think it's quite good. thunderbird icon design

There's a great post by Jon Hick's about the design process for the new icon/logo.

Jon has been helping us with the visual identity work on Firefox and Thunderbird and doing some really great work.

Keep in mind, the artwork will continue to improve. Two issues we are particularly focused on improving are the small versions of the icons, and the visual consistency between the Firefox and the Thunderbird icons.

This is the new Firefox logo covered by the trademark. I think it looks fine.

though, if you read the article, you'd know that the design is exactly the same, except the old HTML 3.2 was replaced with standards-compliant CSS.

Then again, this is slashdot, and we don't read articles.