Internet Fax Glossary: History of Mozilla Firefox

The Mozilla Firefox project was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004.
Early beginnings: a pared-down browser
Hyatt and Ross' mozilla/browser (later Phoenix, Firebird and finally Firefox) browser was created to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing into one software suite.
Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser, using the XUL user interface markup language. The use of XUL makes it possible to extend the browser's capabilities through the use of extensions and themes. The development and installation processes of these add-ons raised security concerns, and with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened a Mozilla Update website containing "approved" themes and extensions. The use of XUL sets Firefox apart from other browsers, including other projects based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms (Galeon and Epiphany use GTK+; K-Meleon uses MFC; and Camino uses Cocoa). Many of these projects were started before Firefox, and probably served as inspiration.
The first sign of a Firefox-like project was a small application sample (presumably to demonstrate how to embed Gecko in another application) shipped with early milestone builds of Mozilla. Featuring only "back", "forward", and "stop" buttons and a URL field (no cache, no stored history, etc.), it was minimalistic and thus a lot lighter than Mozilla itself. Eventually, it was no longer shipped with Mozilla's binary builds.
Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox, the Foundation continued to maintain the suite until April 12, 2006 because it had many corporate users, as well as being bundled with other software. The Mozilla community (as opposed to the Foundation) continues to release new versions of the suite using the product name SeaMonkey to avoid any possible confusion with the original Mozilla Suite.
On February 5, 2004 the business and IT consulting company AMS categorized Mozilla Firefox (then Firebird) as a "Tier 1" (meaning "Best of Breed") open source product (Keating, 2004). This meant that AMS considered Firebird (as it was called at the time) to be virtually risk-free and technically strong.
Naming
The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called m/b (or mozilla/browser). When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name Phoenix.
The Phoenix name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed (after a short stint as Phoenix Browser) due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, was met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation issued an official statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird (as opposed to just Firebird). Continuing pressure from the Firebird community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 the project was renamed Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short).
The name, "Firefox", was chosen for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. To ensure that no further name changes would be necessary, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December 2003. This trademark process led to a delay of several months in the release of Firefox 0.8 when the foundation discovered that in the UK Firefox had already been registered as a trademark for browsers by The Charlton Company. The situation was resolved when the foundation was given a license to use Charlton's European trademark.
The repeated renaming of the program prompted the development of the tongue-in-cheek extension "Firesomething", which allowed users to randomize the name on startup, giving it such satirical soubriquets as "Firegiraffe" or "Moonbadger".
Branding and visual identity
One of the most visible enhancements is the new visual identity of Firefox and Thunderbird. It has often been argued that free software is typically designed only by programmers — rather than graphic designers or usability gurus — and that it frequently suffers from poor icon and GUI design and lacks a strong visual identity. The early Firebird and Phoenix releases of Firefox were considered to have had reasonable visual designs, but were not up to the same standard as many professionally released software packages.
In October 2003, professional interface designer, Steven Garrity, wrote an article covering everything he considered to be wrong with Mozilla's visual identity. The page received a great deal of attention (it was slashdotted). The majority of the criticisms levelled at the article were along the lines of "where's the patch?", an open source way of saying "if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself."
Shortly afterwards, Garrity was invited by the Mozilla Foundation to head up the new visual identity team. The release of Firefox 0.8 in February 2004 saw the introduction of the new branding efforts, including new icons designed by Jon Hicks, who had previously worked on Camino. The logo was revised and updated later, fixing some flaws found when the logo was enlarged.
The animal shown in the logo is a stylized fox, although "firefox" is considered to be a common name for the Red Panda. The panda, according to Hicks, "didn't really conjure up the right imagery", besides not being widely known. The logo was chosen for the purpose of making an impression, while not shouting out with overdone artwork. The logo had to stand out in the user's mind, be easy for others to remember and stand out while not causing too much distraction when among other icons. It was expected to be the final logo for the product.
The Firefox icon is a trademark used to designate the official Mozilla build of the Firefox software, and builds of official distribution partners. Although the core software is open source, the artwork (along with the quality feedback agent and parts of the installer) is not freely licensed without official permission from the developers. For this reason, Debian and other software distributors who distribute patched or modified versions of Firefox do not use the icon.

Features of Mozilla Firefox.