Firefox vs FireFox

This post is being written to set the record straight and as an (unofficial) addendum to the official Firefox Logo Guide written by Mozilla’s John Slater.

Let it first be known that I am not (and don’t claim to be) an English professor or speeeling bee champion. In fact, if it wasn’t for the built in spell checking feature in Mozilla’s applications (and other non-Mozilla products), you’d think that I was a four year old randomly pressing keys on his dad’s keyboard. However what do I know and that I’m absolutely positive about is the proper presentation of the word Firefox.

To see Firefox spelled as FireFox has always really annoyed me and my attempts to correct people one at a time hasn’t had any impact at all. I’ve seen (and continue to today) popular and reputable news and media outlets run stories with FireFox in the headlines and story’s bodies. This really boggles my mind because most writers and reporters have on-staff fact checkers and proofreaders and if not, their names are going on the articles so you’d think that accuracy would be a top priority but it isn’t.
I’ve also seen many, perhaps 50 or more Firefox add-on developers use FireFox in their add-on’s titles and descriptions. That one really blows my mind even more than it boggles it.
I just don’t understand any of it especially considering that you will never see FireFox on an official Mozilla site (unless used in a similiar context as this post).

“Ken, so what’s the big deal?”
Well, simply put it is the wrong way to present the word Firefox as it pertains to the free and open source software developed, maintained, and distributed by the Mozilla Foundation.
We do not spell and present IE as InterNet Explorer, or Microsoft as MicroSoft, Thunderbird as ThunderBird, Facebook as FaceBook, Whois as WhoIs and so on.
The word Firefox and that spelling of it is a registered trademark of the Mozilla Foundation. I have no idea who owns the rights to FireFox, but it isn’t Mozilla (that I know of). I can’t even force Google to show results for that.
And for users of Firefox in particular, doesn’t the red underline under FireFox tell you anything at all? If you right click on that word, are the suggestions just lies and an attempt to confuse you?

Please, do me, Mozilla, and the World a favor and spell Firefox as it is supposed to be and when you see it presented in any other way, take a second to leave a comment or send an email to the person who is advocating the incorrect use of the word Firefox. Any presentation of the word Firefox other than Firefox is an improper representation of Mozilla Firefox no matter what content is attached to it.

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Logo vs Logo

This next section address another misused (and equally annoying) representation of a Mozilla trademark.
All too often around the Internet people are using the old, outdated Mozilla Firefox logo that was introduced in Firefox 0.8. Again, news and media outlets are notorious for this. As you can see below there are quite obvious differences between the two logos but to enforce my point, I am providing a detailed list of the differences that I have found and my visual acuity is actually immeasurable. If I can see the differences (highly zoomed of course), then I see no reason why others can’t.

Logo Differences:

• Different color values throughout
• Land masses – different shapes
• Outer drop shadows – different values
• Fox right drop shadows – different values
• Different head shapes (new head shorter, flatter)
• Different ears

Current (new) Logo:

• Added top gloss
• Added top dark blue stroke
• Added hair tufts to top of Fox’s head
• Added more (and detailed) hair tufts to back of Fox’s head
• Less detail to hair tufts/fur on Fox’s body
• More emphasis and highlights on flames
• Deeper shadow to flames (left)
• Fox face – shorter, different shape, more details, longer snout, different nose
• Other differences?

So in all fairness, if people around the Internet are going to use the old Firefox logo when referring to and writing about current versions of Firefox, shouldn’t the same apply to others?

Again, please spread this, post it, share it so that Firefox gets represented accurately and properly.

Thanks for reading.
Ken

• Firefox Logo Differences ODT
• Firefox Logo Differences PDF
• Firefox Logo Differences PNG (.ZIP) (600px x 1000px)
• Firefox vs FireFox PNG (652px x 502px)
• Mozilla Firefox About Windows PNG (548px x 298px)
• Download all of the above (.ZIP)

Official Mozilla Firefox Logo Guide
Includes downloadable, hi-res, large, Mozilla Firefox graphics.

The contents of this post are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license with the exception (of course) of the Mozilla Firefox logos and wordmark. Those are trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation.
You are free and encouraged to use and post the materials here to help spread the word and educate others on the correct usage of two of Mozilla’s trademarks which are not currently being respected.

I don’t have to list the reasons why Firefox 3 is the World’s best Web browser, you already know them but I will tell you about a very cool feature that you just may not know about. It’s APNG support. The APNG (animated PNG) specification was created by Stuart Parmenter and Vladimir Vukicevic of the Mozilla Corporation in 2004 and support for it was added to Firefox 3 trunk builds in 2007.
There’s more info about APNGs, PNGs and why they are better than GIFs below.

I’ve taken advantage of the capabilities of this wicked cool format (New England expression) and created some holiday graphics especially for Firefox 3 users to use, enjoy, and share in the form of animated snow globes featuring the Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla logos.
The animation effects will only be visible in Firefox 3.0+ (and a few other non-Mozilla based applications).
In other applications that do not support the APNG format, the graphics will appear as static PNGs with true alpha transparency so they’ll blend in nicely with whatever colored background that you use on your web pages but I made these as a special treat specifically for Firefox 3 users.

There are three different snow globes available in two different styles. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla with or without text reading “Happy Holidays”. Each are provided for downloading as a ZIP, TGZ, or Tar + Bzip2 package that contains the following sizes and formats.

• 200×250 APNG – Logo and Happy Holidays text
• 200×200 APNG – Logo
• 125×160 APNG – Logo and Happy Holidays text
• 125×125 APNG – Logo
• 200×200 PNG – Logo
• All use a transparent background

Get the Mozilla Snow Globes

But wait, there’s more!
Also available on the same page as the snow globes are Mozilla Christmas tree ornaments based on 7 Mozilla logos for use on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Web pages, and 4 different Firefox / Thunderbird wallpapers in sizes from 1024x768px up to 1920x1200px.

Mozilla Christmas Tree Ornaments

Holiday Wallpapers



Mozilla Themed Holiday Graphics

This was all a tremendous amount of work so please Share This or Digg it

PNGs vs GIF
I’m someone who has a great interest in computer generated graphical arts and when I first learned about APNGs, my excitement was equal to that of when I first discovered tabbed browsing.
For the average Joe or Jane who may not be familiar with graphics formats, typical animated graphics that you see on the web are in animated GIF format (with more leaning towards Flash animation nowadays). Animated or not, I’ve always been a much bigger fan of PNG over GIF (and JPEG, only good for photos) for the following reasons.

(On most images) PNGs can achieve greater compression than GIFs resulting in smaller file sizes which saves disk space and makes uploading, downloading, and displaying PNGs faster.
PNG gives a much wider range of transparency options than GIF including alpha channel transparency.
PNG gives a much wider range of color depths than GIF (truecolor up to 48-bit compared to 8-bit 256-color), allowing for greater color precision, smoother fades, etc.

To put it plainly, PNGs and now APNGs provide the best looking high quality graphics that can be used on any colored background due to their true alpha transparency capabilities a feature not available in animated GIFs.

• Animat Firefox add-on Used to create the snow globe APNGs
• APNG Edit Firefox add-on The first APNG Firefox add-on
• APNG Assembler Online APNG generator
• The APNG Project
• APNG Specification Mozilla Wiki
• APNG on Wikipedia
• PNG on Wikipedia

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Thanks, and happy holidays!
Ken

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