Brands are fundamentally very abstract things…they exist in people’s heads more than they do in any well-designed logo or fancy style guide. On his new Brand Tags site, Noah Brier starts with this notion and adds the Web 2.0-ish twist of letting people tag various brands with whatever attributes they see fit. It’s really a pretty fascinating experiment.

Of course, maybe I just like the site because Firefox comes across well…the Firefox Brand Tag page is dominated by generally positive associations, like “Internet”, “browser” and, my personal favorite, “awesome.” On the flip side, Internet Explorer doesn’t fare as well.

My only quibble with the site is that I’d love to somehow know more about the demographics of the people doing the tagging - obviously this is a fairly narrow sample so it’d be interesting to know who they are, exactly. Overall though, it’s an awesome site - and don’t miss Celeb Tags if you’re feeling a little more lighthearted.

(Thanks to Asa for the heads up on the link.)

I showed my wife the Awesome Bar last night, and our conversation confirmed that we’re definitely onto something with that name. It went something like this:

Me: Another cool thing about Firefox 3 is that, instead of having to remember the URL of a site, you can just start typing any part of the address to find what you’re looking for. It makes it much easier to get back to sites you’ve visited.
Her: Wow, that’s really awesome!
Me: Actually, it’s funny you should say that…

It seems that the Hubble telescope has discovered the Firefox logo floating around in deep, deep space (around the star V838 Monocerotis if you’re keeping track). Polvi, if you’re behind this somehow my hat definitely goes off to you.

It’s been quite an adventure since his flying saucer-battling origin, but now that the final Firefox 3 beta has been released everyone’s favorite open source robot has retired to a comfortable and triumphant life of adoration from a grateful populace:

As it turns out, a lot of the action has been taking place around the (fictional, of course) city of Gran Paradiso. Although it’s nice to see it rebuilt after the carnage, it does change the context a bit knowing that there’s a gleaming modern urban area right around the corner from that quaint seaside village:

This entire robot series has been immensely fun, and huge thanks are due to Nobox for their concepts and creativity throughout. Also, props to Mr. Mike Beltzner for figuring out how to tie it all back in to Gran Paradiso in the end.

Coming up next: a variety of robotless designs related to the Firefox 3 launch.

The new and improved addons.mozilla.org is a huge step forward, and although Basil, Madhava and Morgamic have already written excellent posts about it, I thought I’d chime in with a few quick thoughts.

As something the other browsers either couldn’t or wouldn’t duplicate, the volume and diversity of add-ons has always been one of Firefox’s competitive advantages and have been detailed accordingly as a key part in our overall communications strategy. However, the old AMO site wasn’t the easiest thing to navigate, especially for new users who needed a more gentle introduction to that world. The redesigned site (along with the new add-ons manager in Firefox 3) is much more accessible and makes our job of spreading the word about how to customize your browser much easier.

From a design perspective, a couple of key issues we had to solve were 1) how to make individual add-ons as discoverable as possible and 2) how closely should the site’s navigation be integrated with Mozilla.com (the old AMO site shared a top nav bar with Mozilla.com, but some of the links were different…a major UI headache). As you can see from this early mockup, the original answers were 1) tabs with a secondary search bar and 2) keep the close ties to Mozilla.com.

However, after more thought we introduced the more prominent search field and replaced the full header navigation with a small Mozilla.com tab off to the side. There’s also a much clearer list of the categories down the left side of the page and a menu to access Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Sunbird add-ons at the top:

This redesigned site is the product of the hard work of dozens of people across the Mozilla community. On the visual side, special thanks go to Madhava Enros for his amazingly detailed wireframes and Henry Brown for his graphic design work.

Admittedly the Firefox 3 betas offer a bit more than just cool robot art, but I have to mention that the first run page in tonight’s Beta 4 release brings us the latest chapter in the ongoing robot saga. Now that the scene has shifted to a final battle in space, it’s all building to a big finish…stay tuned!

Adding more open source flavor to our design process is one of my top goals, so I’m excited to announce that we launched the Firefox 3 T-Shirt Contest today.

Our challenge to the Mozilla community (and beyond) is to create the coolest, most interesting Firefox 3-inspired t-shirt design (if you need inspiration, here’s some info on suggested themes). The winner will be determined by a public vote and will have his/her work sold in the Mozilla Store as our official Firefox 3 t-shirt (note: all Store proceeds benefit the Mozilla Foundation).

With Operation Firefox last fall, there were some complaints that it wasn’t international enough (due to some legal restrictions around liability issues), so we took that feedback and made sure the t-shirt contest would be more globally accessible. We’re excited to see the range of styles we get as a result.

There are plenty of other details to cover, but rather than list them all here I’ll just direct you to the official contest page set up on Spread Firefox by Tara Shahian. It should answer most questions, but definitely let us know if there’s anything we missed. The key thing to know for now is that design submissions are due on March 16th, so get those creative juices flowing and send us your best stuff!

There are still many unsolved mysteries, but his return for the Firefox 3 Beta 3 brings a few more clues about his origins and mission. You guys had some truly excellent theories about the beta 2 page, so I’d love to hear your take on his newest adventures…please leave your thoughts in the comments section (alas, no contest this time though).

Where does he go from here? That remains to be seen…

Once again, thanks to Nobox for the very cool illustration.

Alix and I are working on the Firefox 3 features content for the redesigned Mozilla.com and would like your input. Our goal is to increase the amount of description and detail (compared to the current site) to give interested parties a better picture of everything that Firefox offers. We plan on listing each feature along with a short description…see below for our list so far.

My question to you is, how does the list look to you? Did we overlook anything? Miscategorize your favorite new feature? Or maybe it’s all exactly perfect already? (wishful thinking, I know)

Take a look and add a comment with your thoughts if you have anything to add. As you read, please keep in mind that 1) this list (and the site in general) is geared more towards the mass audience rather than developers and 2) the wording isn’t final, so don’t worry if you see acronyms or phrases that won’t make sense outside the Mozilla community. Thanks in advance for your help!

Here’s our proposed features list as it currently stands:

Top New Features:
• Awesomebar
• Site identity tool (i.e., Larry)
• Improved performance
• One-click bookmarking
• Full zoom
• Password manager

Security & Privacy
• Anti-malware
• Anti-phishing
• Site identity tool
• Parental controls integration (Vista only)
• Anti-virus integration (Windows only)
• Plug-in version check and disabling
• Secure add-on updating
• Password manager
• Clear private data
• Site-specific security permissions
• Automated update
• Pop-up blocker

Personal
• Awesomebar
• One-click bookmarking
• Library
• Tags
• Smart folders

Productivity
• Pause/resume downloads
• Smart keywords
• Spellcheck
• Session restore
• Live bookmarks
• RSS feed reader RSS preview
• Choice if you want to load images or not
• Platform native look & feel
• Full zoom

Tabs
• Save on exit
• Reopen closed tab
• Drag & reorganize tabs
• Smooth scrolling

Performance
• Improved memory management
• Smaller memory footprint
• Faster page load
• Graphics engine improvements
• Faster Javascript?
• Better DHTML?

Customization
• Thousands of options at AMO
• Fully integrated add-ons manager
• Themes & personas
• Customize: toolbars, search, web protocol handlers, site-specific preferences

Universal Access
• 40+ languages
• Customized per locale (dictionary, search providers, live bookmarks & web feeds)
• Text rendering
• Accessibility

Search
• Integrated web search (including adjustable search window)
• Choose from hundreds of search engines
• “Find in” page
• Search suggestions

Help
• In product help
• SUMO
• Live chat

Standards
• Online application support [email, calendar, etc]…i.e. web-based protocol handlers
• Offline browsing
• Advanced graphic stuff – SVG, Canvas
• Color profile support
• Support for CSS, Acid 2, MathML, EcmaScript 4, APNG, Cross-Site XMLHttpRequest, Microformats

Last month I announced an impromptu contest to see who could come up with the best interpretation of the Firefox 3 Beta 2 ‘robot’ artwork. I have to say, I was both surprised by and impressed with the volume and creativity of your comments. There were certainly a lot of great ones.

It took me a little longer than planned to determine the winners, but I’m pleased to report that after much careful deliberation, I have the results. Before I go any further, though, let me make it clear that these are not the “right” answers. There is no single “right” answer…it’s all just a matter of highly subjective interpretation, and these were the three that struck me the most (and won the t-shirts).

The “Extremely Thorough Analysis” award goes to Lim Chee Aun:
“The robot doesn’t seem like a bad guy. It’s actually a good guy! It’s beaming up the Firefox logo in the sky, just like in the Batman movies! It’ll fight off all the bad guys with its powerful boxing gloves and could run super fast like Flash (notice the Flash superhero symbol on the ears?). It’s built to be tough against any attacks, bugs and even evil UFO’s that shoot down buildings. ‘The world needs Firefox 3!’ The robot’s antenna (on the head) shall spread the news through all forms of telecommunication. Though it’s getting dark (notice the dark background and the sun sets), the robot shall not rest and will always fight till the end! Firefox rules!”

The “Should Have Been the Sequel to ‘the Matrix’” award goes to Lachlan:
“This is of course a picture taken at the mighty Firefox take over in 2011, Giant Robots will be built from rival software developers to destroy the Mozilla headquarters, but of course, the robots discover the power of their programs and preach holograms of Firefox and Thunderbird logos! Reminding the world to switch.”

The “Abstract Art Interpretation” award goes to Veekay:
“Well, here goes my thoughts… The robot is FF3 ! And the buildings are actually IE - look at the three buildings that look prominently - thats the ‘E’ lying down and the ‘I’ had already fled the place fearing the UFO’s that are the bugs that hit you hard due to non-standard HTML done by ‘IE’ gurus”

Thanks to everybody who participated…this was a lot of fun. And will we see the robot again in the future? Stay tuned!