Mozilla announced that it will be going through with a complete redesign of the Firefox web browser.
"Maybe we shouldn't even call it a browser anymore," Mozilla's VP of Firefox engineering Jonathan Nightingale told TechCrunch. "Browser is really an antiquated word. People don't really browse all that much anymore."
With that philosophy in mind, the new Firefox redesign seems to be optimizing itself to mostly web applications and tries to think about what tools make someone a productive web user. The project that is looking to answer most of these questions for Mozilla is Australis.
The new features of the Firefox redesign are expected to come out soon with version 25. Nightingale said that they'll begin to release it through the usual channels. He hinted they might hold back from the stable channel a bit longer in order to ensure that, when it does go out, everything runs smoothly.
Users who want to try out the Australis version of Firefox right now can check out its UX branch test. However there may be bugs and TechCruch warns users that it might crash a lot or "shred your hard drive."
At first glance, the new Firefox looks a bit like Google Chrome. It's cleaner and more intuitive for the user. It will likely feature a solid base to organize web apps as well as a reportedly redesigned system of tabs. Similar to Google Chrome it will put them at the top of the page. Unlike Chrome, when the tabs become numerous it will not simply shrink them to an unrecognizable size, it will instead convert users to a scrolling tabs bar once the maximum number of tabs has been reached.
Another thing that the Australis wants to stress in its redesign is customization. Firefox, in its current incarnation on the web, has a lot of ways to customize. However, they aren't easy to find and they aren't fun enough for users to want to utilize. Australis hopes to change that by making it a bit more obvious to users of the new Firefox that their browser can be optimized for how they want to use it.
