The Mozilla Blog

Foxkeh, the Firefox mascot developed in Japan, celebrates its 2nd birthday this week.  What better way to celebrate than unveil a new theme for Firefox 3?!  When a page is loading, Foxkeh runs in the upper right-hand corner of Firefox.  Adorable!  Get the new theme here.

Editor’s Note: Today we bring you a guest post from Felipe Gomes of Brazil, a winner of the Extend Firefox 3 contest.  Felipe is a newer, but very active Mozilla contributor. We asked him to share how he came to be involved with Mozilla.  Congrats again and thanks for all of your hard work, Felipe!

Hi all!  I’m Felipe Gomes, a computer science student from Brazil. As a geek, I’ve always appreciated and believed in open-source, and have tried to get more involved since going to college.  I began using Firefox add-ons when I started with web development, and that led me to learn more about the technologies behind Firefox and its platform. I learned XUL and JavaScript by reading, practicing and trying to run random ideas and experiments in the browser.

I had been following the Mozilla project for a while, but discovered how fruitful it is to be an active member earlier this year when I joined the Brazilian community.  I discovered that there are many passionate members all over the world who love Firefox and want to promote the culture and the browser, regardless of their city or country.  I’ve had the opportunity to interact with many community members this year when I gave talks about XUL and add-ons development.

It’s been very fun and rewarding to be involved.  During the frenzy of the Firefox 3 launch, I created a Download Day Countdown add-on, helped spread the World Record in Brazil and organize our local launch party! I also had the opportunity to work on the programming side, when I did some Processing.js demos and, more recently, submitted an add-on to the Extend Firefox contest.

I got involved with the Extend Firefox contest because when the betas came out it was clear that the browser was growing to a whole new level. There was just so much potential to explore in basically every aspect of the browser. And the Extend Firefox 3 contest was the perfect fit, encouraging developers to leverage the new potential that Firefox 3 brings.

To be one of the contest winners was a very special moment for me, and an honor, especially because of the number of great extensions that were submitted and chosen (I’m already using many of them!). The great responses, comments and suggestions that people have been sending in the last week made me realize that when you have an idea that you believe in, you really should work on it. Turns out, other people might like it and believe in your idea as much as as you do!

I’d like to thank all the nice people I got in touch with this year in Mozilla Brazil and the greater community: Marcio, Mario, Clauber, Fernando, Andrea, Mary and Chris. And congratulations to every developer who joined the contest! Let’s keep spreading the love for Firefox!

The Firefox community is the proud new owner of a Guinness World Record — each and every one of you!   Mozilla today received confirmation from Guinness World Records that we’ve officially achieved the record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.”   From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community!  Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we’ve relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.  Incredible work!

Don’t forget to get your very own personalized Download Day certificate.

Wondering what to do until we hear back from Guinness?  How about taking a moment to celebrate all the hardwork that went into Download Day and the launch of Firefox 3.  Check out Mozilla Party Central for a party near you or to host your own.

With the same enthusiasm that went into spreading the word about Download Day, the Firefox community has been planning parties with gusto!  There are over 700 parties planned worldwide. Here are some of the highlights:

• Catch a viewing of Kung Fu Panda with its director Michael Osborne in Palo Alto this Saturday.
• Fancy that Firefox 3 robot?  Come build one in Dolores Park in San Francisco on Sunday.
• The MVGeeks are planning a huge party in the Maldives on June 26th (editor’s note: the Firefox will need appropriate tropical attire stat!)
• Community members in Bucharest will be toasting Firefox 3 and the Mozilla 10-year anniversary!
• Bob Chao of MozTW will be hosting a Firefox 3 party for the Taiwan community on July 19th!

This is just a sampling…and please be reassured that it’s not too late to plan one!

Thanks to OLPC for throwing a Firefox 3 party on launch day!

We’re getting close to handing over our download logs to our judges for our Guinness World Record attempt.  We’re very lucky and honored to have Paul Vixie of the Internet Systems Consortium and Corey Shields of Indiana University.

Here is a little background on them both:

Paul Vixie has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems as a protocol designer and software architect since 1980, and was a cofounder of ISC in 1994. Early in his career, he developed and introduced SENDS, proxynet, rtty, cron and other lesser-known tools. Paul is considered the primary modern author and technical architect of BIND8, the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet.

Corey Shields is the Lead Systems Analyst for the High Performance Systems group in University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. Corey has had a long history as an open source software user,  advocate, and contributor.  He has made contributions to many open source projects including Mozilla and the Gentoo Linux distribution, and spent a couple of years managing the Open Source Lab  (OSL) at Oregon State University.

Currently, Corey is working with a team of administrators on the BigRed supercomputer at Indiana University.  BigRed is the 42nd fastest supercomputer in the world, and relies on open source software to operate and produce results for researchers across the country.

A huge thanks to them for supporting our effort!

Awesome job!  I am truly impressed by everyone’s hard work.  We exceeded 8 million downloads in our 24 hour period.  We’ll need to be patient as our judges and Guinness World Records validate our record attempt.  We’ll keep our map up and tracking downloads on Spread Firefox, but our judges will be reviewing the time period from 11:16 a.m. PDT on June 17th to 11:16 a.m. PDT on June 18th.

The Mozilla team at Download Day HQ as the attempt period wrapped! (Photo courtesy of Clare Bayley)

Update: You can catch the close of the 24-hour attempt live on Air Mozilla.

We’re at 7.8 millions downloads with just under an hour to go!  Can we break 8 million?

You can still be a part of the world record — just download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) today.  Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads.   If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Let’s go for the gold!

Attention Firefox fans:  Now is your chance to help set a Guinness World Record! We’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads.  Phenomenal — let’s see what the next 24 hours has in store!

To be part of the record please download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th.  Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads.   If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Please help us document this history-making event with photos and videos.  Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”

We’re just over 12 hours until the start of the long-awaited Download Day!  Our Guinness World Record attempt will start when Firefox 3 is officially launched at approximately 10:00 a.m. PDT (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday, June 17th.

At that time, please check out the official Download Day site to download Firefox and for a map of worldwide downloads!

Our Guinness World Record attempt for the most software downloads in 24 hours is just around the corner!  As soon as we roll out Firefox 3 on June 17th you’ll have until the same time on June 18th to download Firefox 3.  Don’t worry about forgetting — our friends at Mozilla Hispano and Felipe Gomes of Brazil have created countdown tickers for your blog or Firefox!  Felipe’s ticker add-on will also count down the 24 hours as soon as our attempt starts!

Please remember that we’re only counting complete downloads.  If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Don’t forget that Guinness would like to see images and videos of our global Download Fests.  Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”

Thanks for all of the hard work — we’re almost there!