The marketing geniuses in the open source browser outfit reached the conclusion that they could turn the entire outfit around by replacing the logo of the browser with an ugly kid’s cartoon which is a cross between Iron Man and a Transformer.
Hundreds of Mozilla employees met a different version of the Firefox mascot this June as they packed into a Hilton conference room in San Francisco for an all-hands meeting.
Gone was the blazing-orange red panda snuggling a blue globe, the image that’s represented Mozilla’s browser since 2003. Instead, Firefox Senior Vice President Mark Mayo opened the event with a drawing of a fox in menacing mech armour, named Mark 57.
The big idea is that : Firefox 57, has had a huge overhaul due November 14, is ready for battle. The red panda might have been cute but apparently it forced Mozilla into a position in the browser wars where even Safari was better.
However as anyone, other than Apple will tell you, the logo means sod all if your browser is still pants.
Mozzilla claims that the improvements within a project called Quantum are responsible for much of the difference.
Stylo, accelerates formatting operations. Quantum Flow squashes dozens of small slowdown bugs. Quantum Compositor speeds website display. And Firefox 57 also will lay the groundwork for WebRender, which uses a computing device’s graphics chip to draw webpages on the screen faster.
Mozilla claims this makes for a different engine at the core of Firefox. The top priority is speed. We all get subconscious pleasure with a browser that’s fast and smooth at loading websites, clicking buttons and opening and closing tabs. If your browser stutters while scrolling or makes you wait a long time for a page to appear, you’re more likely to dump it. Speed improvements in recent months already have had an effect, Mozilla says, stopping a steady stream of defections from Firefox to other browsers.
At the moment we have no idea how much faster Firefox 57 will be, but in one broad browser test called Speedometer, Firefox performance jumped significantly. Still, blaming the panda is pretty unfair.
