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I'm getting a bit of pushback to my previously announced plans to
use <a
href="http://monacoeye.com/birds/index_files/recurvirostra_avosetta_pied_avocet_08.jpg">Avocet</a>
and <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Painted_Bunting_by_Dan_Pancamo.jpg">Bunting</a>
as branding for Thunderbird releases 38 and 45. I'm curious - do I
have any support for this, or do you think it's a bad idea? I would
appreciate feedback, just reply with your attitude on a scale of 1-5
with 1 being "I hate it" and 5 being "I love it" (this is for the
branding names, not for the graphics below).<br>
<br>
Briefly, the reasoning behind switching from Thunderbird
17/24/31/38/45 as major release branding to named versions using
alphabetical bird names is:<br>
<br>
1) Those numbers are meaningless to anyone who is not a gecko geek.
They was never intended as branding, it just accidentally resulted
when we cut back our release schedule to only use esr versions. Even
Firefox is trying to change this now (though we need not follow
Firefox here). The existing release branding is terrible.<br>
<br>
2) I want to counter the market sense that "Thunderbird is dead"
with a new message that we are alive and have an active community
moving forward. The <a
href="https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/">last
blog post</a> was a first step, and generated a lot of discussion
on the internet. A named release helps with that message, "38" does
not.<br>
<br>
3) Why birds? Well we are a bird, and birds have interesting shapes
and coloration that make interesting graphics targets. As one
concept for how to use this, I asked Elio Qoshi to come up with a
concept of a modified logo that we could use when we are referring
specifically to our next release. This would not replace our current
logo, only be used where the release is being mentioned, such as
blog posts, the about dialog, and start page. Here it is (or see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mesquilla.net/Thunderbird38Avocet-v4.jpg">https://mesquilla.net/Thunderbird38Avocet-v4.jpg</a> if the inline image
fails) Note that the Pied Avocet, which is the specific specie
being depicted here, has a distinctive <a
href="http://monacoeye.com/birds/index_files/recurvirostra_avosetta_pied_avocet_08.jpg">black
and white coloration</a>:<br>
<br>
<img src="cid:part5.00030907.03080608@caspia.com" alt=""><br>
<br>
R Kent James<br>
<br>
P. S. If you really hate it, see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg</a> which was a major theme
of my grad school lab, "It's good though!"<br>
<br>
<br>
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