
They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo - MzHN
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-history-of-the-mozilla-logo/
======
probably_wrong
For those like me who get redirected based on the referrer, here's a web
archive mirror: [http://archive.is/UMMCx](http://archive.is/UMMCx)

Alternatively, you can copy-paste the address and open in a different window.

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onli
Great story. Sadly, by the time I got to know Firefox (and thus Mozilla) the
dino logo just looked strange, and seeing the pictures like that it becomes
clear why: You really need to make that your design to make it work. It
shouldn't be the one small glimpse of the past.

See [https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-
part/](https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/) for some
additional context. There is one small nod to the old design, but nothing
picking it up. Or look like [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/) looks now. That's the note on the dino:

> _The classic Mozilla dino head logo served as a symbol of the organization
> since our earliest days, but is now reserved for select uses and executions
> only. While you may still see it pop up on certain sites and campaigns,
> please use the Mozilla wordmark on all properties and materials instead._

A bit sad. A complete sovjet union dino mozilla with the current web design
refinement would be awesome (^for some definition of awesome).

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anexprogrammer
It's easy to forget how unremarkable the dino seemed at the time. Dino was
very much a part of the image, and the site. For a lot of the early dino's and
more backstory, see the artist's (Dave Titus) site[1]. He was still there when
Netscape was mature[2]. Even the "Soviet" version seemed fitting at the time.

Going on the current progress of Mozilla's rebranding exercise[3] a reimagined
Dino doesn't seem likely, and the Dino variation isn't great either. To
digress I'm still unimpressed with the rebranding efforts.

[1] [http://www.davetitus.com/mozilla/](http://www.davetitus.com/mozilla/) [2]
[http://spectrumstudio.net/cmsimage/9184/large](http://spectrumstudio.net/cmsimage/9184/large)
[3] [https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/nearly-
there/](https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/nearly-there/)

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ominous
Maybe there's a reason, but why is this linked to webcache, and not jwz? Is
this a common practice?

edit: on topic, liked the article, thank you.

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bd
Because if you link to jwz's site directly from HN, you'll get redirected to
this :)

[http://imgur.com/32R3qLv](http://imgur.com/32R3qLv)

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ominous
Ahah nice.

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cs702
When I clicked on the link, my browser was redirected to:
[http://imgur.com/32R3qLv](http://imgur.com/32R3qLv)

It seems there was too much traffic coming to jwz's site coming from HN.

Apparently, Jamie Zawinski has strong opinions about HN.

~~~
samwillis
Copy and paste the URL to another tab. It's a redirect based on referer
header.

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RRRA
hahaha thank you jwz for that imgur

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teddyh
He neglects to mention some points, which most people probably would get the
wrong idea about if they read only his text: The first commonly-usable web
browser (since it was written for then-common graphical Unix workstations,
MacOS, Windows and Amiga) was actually NCSA Mosaic¹, written by NCSA (National
Center for Supercomputing Applications), commonly known as “Mosaic”, and was,
like much of their other well-known software²³, released with source code
under a non-commercial license. _Netscape_ was a later company which was
writing a _proprietary_ web browser, and the name “Mozilla” was created
because this new web browser was supposed to be a “Mosaic killer”; a
“Godzilla” for Mosaic. It was supposed to stop people from using Mosaic and
instead use this new proprietary program.

①
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_\(web_browser\))

② Before the web, NCSA had released good free software versions of TELNET for
various platforms.

③ NCSA also wrote and released a web server, which was later patched and re-
patched by the Internet community so much that the project name was changed to
“A patchy server”; i.e. “Apache”.

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throwanem
He's not talking about the first web browser commonly used by people with
access to Unix workstations, which was basically nobody outside CS departments
and industry. He's talking about the web browser that made the web a household
word.

It's also kind of cool that you're arguing the history of Mozilla with the guy
who wrote a whole lot of Mozilla. I am not in all respects a huge fan of jwz,
and I often find his uncompromising style and go-fuck-yourself attitude
grating, but it is a lot easier some days than others to understand why his
web server is configured to bounce HN visitors to a picture of a testicle in
an egg cup.

~~~
jacquesm
Mosaic ran on windows.

[https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-033/USGS_3D/software/pcwindow/...](https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-033/USGS_3D/software/pcwindow/mosaic/readme.txt)

