Monday, July 05, 2004

Phoenix/Mozilla Firebird/Firefox seen through 9 releases

How has the look of the browser-once-known-as-Phoenix changed over the releases? here is a quick tour of the visual appearance of the browser. The main result: almost two years now of evolution, but some theme changes aside, 0.9 still feels like 0.2 did. The best browser!



First release (20020923), Phoenix 0.1 still has the Orbit 3+1 look, sports the red rising phoenix and has large buttons by default.




Phoenix 0.2, released 8 days later (wow, talk about a release cycle). The reload and stop buttons are now on the left, and are small by default. There is now a search bar, and the drop down of the URL navigation field is not themed.



Phoenix 0.3, released 2 weeks later (20021014), has few things changed. There is a "Go" menu, and the status bar lost a thin vertical line.



Phoenix 0.4, also released 2 weeks later. Except for the new "Home" button on by default, nothing has changed.


Phoenix 0.5, released 20021207. Changes in the statusbar: it is now deeper and sports diagonal "grippies" in the lower right-hand corner. The Toolbar folder also includes "Phoenix help" by David Tenser. The "About" box has a white background for the version information.



Mozilla Firebird 0.6, released 20030516, more than 6 months later. It has taken a lot of time to go from 0.5 to 0.6: new theme Qute, new name, still the same About box.



Mozilla Firebird 0.7, released 20031007. Lots of improvements to the theme. Firebird now has an icon (based on the red phoenix); a throbber is on by default; the default search engine is now Google; there is a style sheet picker in the lower left hand corner; the start page is now the one for Firefox (and not Mozilla). the About box has been styled with the red phoenix.



FirebirdFirefox 0.8, released 20040210. New visual identity! New logo used on the official builds, new name, but few theme upgrades. The About box is completely redone with the new visual identity.



Firefox 0.9, 20040614. Four months after 0.8, and a new name and a new default theme, Winstripe.
< sarcasm on > I guess the team has learnt how to change names and themes faster < sarcasm off >
This "witty" comment no longer applies...


Update: Of course, how could I forget Firefox 0.9.1... well, I did, and on purpose, even though many things have changed for the better, because I limited myself to full releases.

8 Comments:

At 3:09 PM, Anonymous said...

Don't forget Firefox 0.9.1 ;-)

 
At 11:16 PM, Anonymous said...

One could point out to you that Firebird 0.8 never existed.

 
At 12:11 AM, Anonymous said...

um. 0.8 had the new name, 0.9 only has the new theme...

 
At 9:15 AM, Seb said...

Thanks for the comment, I corrected the name change in 0.8.

 
At 8:03 PM, Anonymous said...

This is cool! Please keep this page up -- as Firefox is really starting to rock the world now, it's a great history resource :)

 
At 3:48 AM, Anonymous said...

Nice little history. I discovered Firefox a little late in the game (sometime in February, right around the release of 0.8). I wish I had found it sooner, it really makes surfing easier and tools like the Web Developer extension make learning CSS and web design for my site.

 
At 1:20 PM, nightfox said...

haha, i used to install Phoenix back then when i rent at cybercafes.. coolness

 
At 1:53 AM, Anonymous said...

Wow, Nice. I didn't discover Firefox
until 0.9. So a little late.

 

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