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Mozilla Urges 'Remain Calm: the Fox is Still in the Firefox Logo' (mozilla.org) 84

Posted by EditorDavid from the after-the-fox dept.
Last week Firefox's official blog responded to some viral misinformation about the Firefox logo. "People were up in arms because they thought we had scrubbed fox imagery from our browser. Rest easy knowing nothing could be further from the truth..." Sure, it's stressful to have hundreds of thousands of people shouting things like "justice for the fox" in all-caps in your mentions for three days straight, but ultimately that means people are thinking about the brand in a way they might not have for years. ..

The logo causing all the stir is one we created a while ago with input from our users. Back in 2019, we updated the Firefox browser logo and added the parent brand logo as a new logo for our broader product portfolio that extends beyond the browser... which represents the family of Firefox products we make outside of just the Firefox browser, like Firefox Monitor. It's not an icon you're going to see on a dock, phone's home screen or desktop, though.

We didn't get rid of the fox then and have no plans to do so now, or ever. Plenty of folks jumped in to try and clear things up in the original thread, but once the "they killed the fox" meme caught momentum and became the "Firefox minimalist logo" meme, there was no stopping it. It spread to Instagram and then to Reddit. The memes became so pervasive that there were memes being made about how there were too many Firefox logo memes... Well, fear not, because no matter what you think you heard on the internet, the fox isn't leaving any time soon.

For our Firefox Nightly users out there, we're bringing back a very special version of an older logo, as a treat. Stay tuned.
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Mozilla Urges 'Remain Calm: the Fox is Still in the Firefox Logo' More

Mozilla Urges 'Remain Calm: the Fox is Still in the Firefox Logo'

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  • It's now (Score:4, Funny)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @10:35PM (#61131878)
    A transgendered, lesbian, vegan Jewish fox, of color.

  • I always liked Iceweasel.

  • Couldn't give a rat's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skegg ( 666571 ) on Saturday March 06, 2021 @11:29PM (#61131920)

    Dear Mozilla,

    I couldn't give a rat's about your choice of logo. You could use a stylised turnip as your logo and I'd still use Firefox. Please keep your focus on what's important: providing us a robust and resilient gateway to the web, a worthy alternative to Chrome.

    • agreed especially since the engine is now the only alternative to chromium on linux and windows

    • You know what's funny? They apparently re-designed the logo AGAIN (since the "flat" redesign - the fox's arm is now missing), and I guess I didn't even notice. They must have an artist on the payroll who just isn't fulfilled if they don't redesign the logo every couple of years. Yet how many programmers did they have to lay off?

      This sort of pointless re-shuffling of the deck chairs is what gave the rumor credence in the first place, and why so many people worry that Mozilla has lost its way. Well, not t

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
        I imagine that logo changes, especially when you already have a known brand, only happens when some upper management person "discovers" graphic design software, possibly via their children messing around at home, and this turns into talk at work, and work talk turns into someones new initiative, and that turns into hiring a consultant with the pile of money set aside to hire consultants with.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        to be honest, I never noticed the arm until today

      • It's Firefox, if something doesn't get changed every so often they will get rid of it like so many stable features that people liked in their browser. So they have to keep changing the logo or else they will have to get rid of it and you can't have an app without a logo!

    • If you don't give a rat's then don't bother commenting. The world is full of senseless outrage from people who do care, and misinformation from those perpetuating or benefitting from the outrage. If you're not part of that, we congratulate you, pat yourself on the back and hold your head up high as one of the bastions of sanity. In the meantime we have a PR department as all companies do. They exist to talk about logos. Feel free to ignore them, but please not they will continue to do PR because god knows y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      What is actually wrong with Firefox, as it stands today?

      For me the only issue is that there is an outstanding bug in Firefox mobile that makes it unusable for me.

      There are maybe a couple of enhancements I'd like to see, such as making tabs work better on mobile (Chrome's UI is actually not bad). But that bug is the only thing stopping me adopting it right now. It's fast, reliable, good selection of add-ons and features. Pocket is annoying but easy to turn off.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Swistak ( 899225 )

        What is actually wrong with Firefox, as it stands today?

        Whole bunch of things. What made me put gigantic "Do not use Firefox" banner when we detect it in our software is 6 year old regression / parity bug that prevents FF from reliably printing PDFs from javascript. Literally every browser (including old FF versions), can do it, firefox can't. Sure it might be fixed in FF 78 when it comes out, but it's to little to late.
        This is just off top of my head most recent issue. Other being for example lack of "rich paste" that chrome has.
        The other thing is it just

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by meiao ( 846890 )
      wow, so the only 2 users of Firefox agree on this.
  • Oh for heaven's sake. Lots of people have nothing better to think about than supposed changes to a logo. "Get a life" might be too much of a struggle for them. How about "Find out what a life looks like" as an aim?

  • I was tempted to add a silly comment about the adoration of a browser icon. But I'd never do that for my Slashdot friends and associates. You have enough garbage to parse and process without my additional comments. Blessings to you all and lets hope for a cleaner, less nonsensical Slashdot some time in the future.

  • I'm not sure why people would be up in arms about losing the current logo. I'm all for having some kind of fox logo, because they're cool animals. But I've never really liked the logo they chose.

    I can't decide if it looks more like a fox that's being crushed by a falling medicine ball, or a fox that's dry humping a beach ball. On top of that, it uses garish colors which clash with themselves.

    Maybe they should just break away from the silly edict that every web browser has to have a circular logo that repres

    • "a fox that's being crushed by a falling medicine ball" ...
      I'll never be able to unsee it now. My mind already has a sound effect with it too. It goes like, "Thomp."

    • Maybe they should just break away from the silly edict that every web browser has to have a circular logo that represents "the world".

      Maybe they should break away from the silly delusion that they produce quality software and solely concentrate on icons now. They tried to follow Google's rapid-release development cycle back in 2011, in a project that was neither culturally nor technically suited for it and they have never recovered. The rapid releases broke plugins, themes, and core features on back-to-back-to-back releases. When their changes broke plugins faster than plugin developers could keep up, their answer was to write automated tools to disable them. They repeatedly ignored clear community consensus ramming UI changes nobody wanted down people's throats while ripping out core features people did use.

      Icon tales told by idiots signifying nothing is all they have now.

      • That's the sad truth...

        Mozilla is trying to do what Google does better than Google is doing it. That's doomed to fail, google has unlimited money and man power.

        But instead of recognizing that you can't out Google Google and focus of regaining the user share they can (power users and privacy conscious users mostly) they pointlessly continue to alienate them through the actions you mentioned.

        I heard someone say that Mozilla's actions (especially ui designs) are guided by the telemetry they receive. So Mozilla

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The main thing that has hurt Mozilla is lack of a decent mobile browser. A lot of browsing is mobile now (tablet or phone) and that pushes people towards Chrome or Safari.

          Firefox for Android is getting good now, hopefully this year I will be able to switch to it full time. It has a killer feature: It supports add-ons. Oh sure, some other Android browsers do, but most of the add-ons don't work because their UIs are designed for desktop. Mozilla is actually building a mobile add-on UI and getting app develope

      • Re:Their core philosophy could use an update (Score:5, Informative)

        by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @06:39AM (#61132428) Journal

        The rapid releases broke plugins, themes, and core features on back-to-back-to-back releases. When their changes broke plugins faster than plugin developers could keep up, their answer was to write automated tools to disable them.

        Firefox broke plugins because of security concerns. Are you against security? The new framework was rewritten from scratch to rum extensions in a sandbox, which couldn't be done while maintaining full backwards compatibility. They gave warnings several years in advance so that any active developer could port their extensions to the new model.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Mozilla's system is called WebExtensions, and is broadly compatible with the Chrome one. Their goal is to standardize it so that add-ons can be cross browser, and indeed porting extensions from Chrome to Firefox and vice-versa is usually only a case of changing a few lines of code or adding a little compatibility shim to map chrome.* APIs onto browser.* ones (names are the same, just the root is different).

          It's worth supporting their effort if you want an open web with a plurality of browsers.

      • Just gotta say that I love my Firefox.

        The killer feature for me is the Bookmarks Sidebar. With wide screens and vertically long web pages, it's often convenient to just leave the sidebar open to quickly jump between sites.

        The only addon that mimics this in Chrome sends my bookmarks to a site (!!!) to render them as something that looks like a frame or some nonsense.

    • It is a fox that swishes around the Earth so fast, it has a trail of fire behind it. Like Superman in that one scene.

      Just about the coolest logo one could possibly have, while also cute and pretty. I dare anyone to find a better logo for anything.

      Why would your mind have these associations, my friend. :)

  • If Mozilla really cares about keeping a fox in the Firefox logo, there's a place for it right in the middle of this one...

    https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcQsdeWtHhx98CjXzSZwP1InG8pWNSc6aCZ01mA5FJ8FROGn8Lk%26s&sp=1615094935T3cd872d34bf064b3e927e9f1076bc062b99369da4d1286dcdb0bcf1070171400

  • I put $5 in that Mozilla, in a bout to generate news, any news at all, initially spread fake news themselves so that they could put out a press statement saying they indeed "listen to their users" and other PR friendly bullshit in a bid to generate good will.

    This isn't the 90s: PR bullshit is bullshit. Hopefully Mozilla's PR team is fired and publicly blacklisted so they don't go and ruin some other project as well with some trite fabricated feel good bullshit.

  • ...one more logo resembling Hitler's silhouette [slashdot.org]. It should be changed as soon as possible!
  • They can rationalize all they want but the fact remains, they dumped the fox features from the logo. That's it. By denying they jus making the matter worse. Instead they shared what actually they care about nowdays - corporate branding. Yup, that's another company crossing the threshold of evil.
    • The people that made the mistake of rewriting Netscape eventually went on to write Firefox.

      Maybe being infatuated with branding is a good place for upper management to be, instead of a place where they might get the idea to once again throw away a perfectly good code-base.

      • 1. Your statement is equivalent to: "Be happy I only make you swallow my cum once a week and don't rape your ass every day." .. In reality, there is no amount of wrong that is OK.

        2. Netscape Navigator was not a good code base. I was a horrible mess of spaghetti code that barely worked right as it was. Adding all the thousands of pointless kitchen sinks to it that Google forced them to add "to keep up and not die", it already took more work to deal with that mess than to actually add things.
        Their error was,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by emm-tee ( 23371 )

      You're looking at the wrong logo. The "Firefox browser" logo is clearly a fox. The "Firefox organisation" logo is more abstract, and doesn't look like a fox.

      If you Google search for "firefox" it shows you the "Firefox organisation" logo but says "Firefox web browser" underneath.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jjaa ( 2041170 )
        Nah... did I mention the browser somewhere? I seen that line of defense, but nope, not good for me. For them? Of course it's theirs to play with, but why take just the name but not the image? Firefox Org with a fox in the logo would work great just the same :) And while we're at it... it's still "Mozilla Firefox" right? Or "Firefox Firefox" or just "Firefox Browser" (or "Mozzila Firefox Browser"...) damn... i don't know... but i loved Mozzila and the rex in the logo too... what a shame.

  • Don't care about the logo (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just make a browser that doesn't suck. You can start on that any time now.

    • Just make a browser that doesn't suck. You can start on that any time now.

      Yes. As a Firefox user for many years, it's becoming clear that I'm going to have to settle on an alternative on the dekstop pretty soon here. I also don't give a shit if the logo is cool or not.

  • Obsessive-compulsive minimalism/simplicity, to a point way over the line of harmfulness, where all power ends up on the sacrificial table.

    You are not alone though. That's somehow the philosophy of an entire subculture of people nowadays. They, were raised in safe spaces, surrounded by fearmongering media and insurances that ruined all the fun.
    And never shown their own strength and that they *can* handle it and feel good about that while doing it.
    So the only option that they think is left to them, is to run

    • Obsessive-compulsive minimalism/simplicity, to a point way over the line of harmfulness

      Are you talking about Firefox? If so, that is not the problem.

  • The fox was an also ran, that won by default because "Firebird" had trademark problems.

    Instead, they need to use the camel, "a horse designed by a committee," which perfectly exemplifies the Mozilla UI philosophy: hard to get accustomed to, and spits at you if it doesn't like you.

  • Loved that logo, the ship and all, the browser sucked... but the logo, miss it.

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