Jonathan Nightingale

Matching Firefox's new rapid-release development cycle, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has downsized the traditional congratulatory cake it sends to its browser rival.

The new cake arrived last week to Mozilla upon shipment of Firefox 6. Jonathan Nightingale, director of Firefox engineering for Mozilla, posted a photo of the cake on Flickr.

Under the rapid-release program, new versions of the browser ship every six weeks, which means the change in features from the earlier version is correspondingly smaller. No doubt Microsoft--which is still using the big-change, infrequent-update approach with IE--was poking fun at the new release philosophy when it sent the diminutive cake.

The first IE cake I noticed was for shipping Firefox 3 in 2008, but there have been others since then. Each bears the same message: "Congratulations on shipping. Love, the IE Team."

In looking back over the history, though, I noticed that Firefox 5--which gave an early taste of the rapid-release program when it arrived three months after Firefox 4--also received a cupcake. Evidently shrinking the congratulatory baked goods already is the new tradition.