How FireFox got it's name

Here is Friday why is. Today as I haven't got much time I thought I would find out how firefox got it's name. The actual reason isn't that interesting although it has had a lot of other names and it's history is quite interesting.

Taken from the Mozilla FAQ website

September 2002 the browser was called Phoenix.

April 14 2003 they changed the name to FireBird
they at some time changed it to Mozilla FireBird then February 9 2004 they changed the name to FireFox.

The reason for the numerous name changes was that the company kept choosing names that other people were already using, mostly open sourced projects. I quite like the fact they keep choosing animals, it seems like a popular pastime amongst developers to name their software after an animals.

if you wonder what a firefox is on the mozilla FAQ http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/firefox-name-faq.html they have the answer

A "Firefox" is another name for the red panda. It's basically the little red animal thing at the top of the page.

once again someone complained saying that they already had that name, so they finally plumped for FireFox because no one had that name as a trademark, well not in America. Of course someone had in England but they gave up the rights to Mozilla and Firefox was the name that has stuck.

according to Wikipedia there is also a phrase coined at FireFox in their early releases to describe cookies

"Cookies are delicious delicacies"

if you are interesting in finding more information about Firefox then I would recommend you go over to wikipedia because they had the most interesting information and not to much

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