Mozilla has unveiled the beta testing for Firefox 29 on Thursday, a day after releasing the stable version of Firefox 28. Firefox 29's most visible addition is the use of the Australis design, which, according to some experts, resembles Chrome.
The Australis interface was developed for almost two years, and it is the flagship improvement for Firefox 29. Other changes for this version include the removal of the Firefox orange button located at the upper-left corner for Linux and Windows browsers. Mozilla developers have replaced this with a new design which is more compatible across all operating systems.
Firefox 29 sports a main menu design which is similar to the "three horizontal lines" icon of Android applications. The Settings tab was changed into bigger, easily recognizable, and touch-friendly icons. The curve angles on the Firefox tabs look very similar to the Firefox Android version, reinforcing the browser's "unified look."
Those who were chosen to test the Firefox 29, called Nightly users, have contributed positive feedback for the newest browser. According to eWeek, the newest browser version will be available to the public by end of April.
"[T]he design changes we've made proved a big hit with our Nightly users," Chad Weiner, product management director for Firefox, explained to CNET."The biggest compliments we got were for the simpler, flexible UI that makes it faster and easier to do get things done and the ways we've made it easier to customize Firefox."
The new version of Firefox also has a Sync log-in option which requires all users to create a Mozilla account. It also offers end-to-end encryption for Mozilla's cloud-based application.
"Signing into the new Sync is easy to do with a Firefox account," written in the company blog post. "No more pairing codes or recovery keys. Just sign in with your email and password and you're set."
