Firefox Changing Logo to be More Fiery, Less Hairy

Firefox getting more fiery, less hairy.

A major new version of Firefox is nearly here, complete with a ton of new features such as private browsing and geolocation (check details on the latest beta here) – but one thing that Mozilla is working on is giving the browser a new, tweaked logo.

“Something else that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is how effectively visual information in an exterior chassis can communicate the power of the complex system that it contains,” wrote Alex Faaborg, principal designer on Firefox. “In the case of sports cars, you can look at a still image of a car you have never seen before, and immediately assume from the air vents and arcs in the exterior body that it is in fact a really high performance vehicle. In reality it might be a concept car that doesn’t even contain an engine, and people have to push it around.”

Faaborg continued, “So to answer the question of why I think refreshing the Firefox application icon for 3.5 is worthwhile, it’s because I think we should be viewing the icon as an exterior chassis for an underlying engine that has recently undergone some really significant changes.”

Mozilla Links has one of the draft new logos up and compared with previous iterations.

The latest revisions of the upcoming logo shaves the fox a little bit more and adds a bit more definition to the flames.

The differences do appear to be subtle enough that at first glance, people will still see the same old Firefox logo, but on closer inspection they will see the fresh new foxiness. So, will anyone be revising this now-classic image?