Firebird dies, Firefox rises from the ashes

[Iain]

The Mozilla based browser Firebird has been upgraded to version 0.8. At the same time the browser has been renamed to become Firefox. Whilst this may conjure up images of a rubbish 80's film featuring Clint Eastwood, it appears there is a good reason for the change as follows -

The standalone Mozilla Firebird browser has been renamed to Firefox and received an upgrade to version 0.8. This latest release features a new download manager, bookmarks enhancements, better support for extensions and several thousand other improvements. Windows users can benefit from a new installer, while Mac OS X users will enjoy the new Aqua-style theme, Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander's Pinstripe.

Firefox is the browser's third name. The last name, Firebird, drew strong objections from the Firebird database community when it was announced in April. The database community's supporters and commercial backers waged a high-profile campaign against mozilla.org and affiliated parties until mozilla.org announced that Firebird would only be used as a codename. The new Firefox moniker is intended to be used as a permanent product name and a strong brand identity will be built around it. The new name was chosen after extensive international trademark searches and consultations with lawyers. The process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office began in December last year.

Even with the new name it's still one of the best browsers around and is a small 6.3 Mb download. For those of you still using Internet Explorer, give Firefox a try. You might like it, just don't watch the movie.

[Skii]

Ahem.. Rubbish 80's film ... ?

phillistine

[Kezzer]

Sounds even more hardcore now

[nichomach]

Ahem.. Rubbish 80's film ... ?

phillistine

Remember...think in Russian...YOU MUST THINK IN RUSSIAN!

[Ethos]

FireOX anyone?

[Nick]

Fire rear-ward missile...... Fire rear-ward missile, goddammit!

/stops... thinks

огонь задний ракета

/wooooosh......... BOOOOOM!!!!!!

[Skii]

'The American is a dead man, First Secretary'

[5lab]

what..the..f**K?

[joshwa]

what was wrong with posting in the software forum?
(firebird is top notch like - wait another 6 months and someone will pop up saying "eh up, that's our name" )


Josh

[Iain]

what was wrong with posting in the software forum?

I had hoped to educate the masses that don't visit the software forum about the great application that is Firefox. Unfortunately it looks like there's a reason why they don't visit the Software forum

[Stoo]

ooooooh.. /me goes to upgrade

edit: well, I would have done if the site wasn't down lol

[directhex]

took me a while, but i found a torrent

breaks skin compatability (again), but i got a 0.8-compatible version of my favourite, so that's okay

new: download manager, much like NetPositive's under BeOS (and whichever browsers since have ripped it off)

ooh, and a new icon!

can't see much else different, tbh

[Allen]

can't see much else different, tbh

Well, there's several thousands of improvements, so keep looking!

I might check it out later, though I'm perfectly happy with IE (even though I don't agree with Micro$ofts world domination plans...).

[Stoo]

css handling is better for one (a couple of websites I visit were always doing odd things, but were fine in IE oe opera, but 0.8 fixes them ), and general browsing seems a little bit faster too

[Allen]

Anyone have a working linky for the d/l then so I can try this?

[directhex]

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.mo...-0.5-win32.zip for Thunderbird 0.5 (mail client)

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.mo...xSetup-0.8.exe for FireFox 0.8 (web browser)