Hacker News Reader

Nitpicking on you - it's Firefox (née Phoenix) for the public, not Firefox (née Firebird). :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox

Edit: Fixed typo as pointed below. :D Thanks for nitpicking the nitpicking. :)

Ah, right you are, Phoenix (because it was a browser rising from the ashes of Netscape), then Firebird for .5 seconds, and finally Firefox. (Surprised I forgot that, since I actually lived the history. :)

I think it worked out for the best -- Firefox is an excellent name and brand. It's hard now to imagine it being something else!

Really it was Mozilla that rose from Netscape's ashes. Firefox rewrote the UI, but Mozilla never died, it just changed to Seamonkey. It was the best browser for years before Phoenix came along -- for UI and resource problems that I never perceived myself.

Skitt's Law strikes again - it's "née" (or "né" in the masculine, though that's uncommon outside of the Francophone world).

I'd always seen that as "Muphry's Law" (yes, that's deliberate), not Skitt's Law. Wikipedia confirms they're the same thing. Thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com