Mozilla Unveils New Firefox Interface for Firefox 9

Mozilla’s user experience team has unveiled a new and very different look for Firefox. For now we only have some very pretty mockups to feast our eyes upon, but in a couple of weeks Firefox 8 will migrate from the Nightly channel to Aurora — and after that, the new interface will begin to emerge in Firefox 9, 10, and 11.

Mozilla Unveils New Firefox Interface for Firefox 9

An exact time line isn’t yet known — Mozilla hasn’t actually started implementing the new interface yet — but we are told that the overhaul should be complete in the Nightly and Aurora channels before the end of they ear.

At first blush the UI mockups undoubtedly resemble Chrome, but if you take a moment and actually look at the new Firefox you will find a much richer, feature-rich interface than the spartan, one-button-fits-all Chrome — and in fact, it actually looks quite a lot like Internet Explorer 9. For a start, notice the Home icon that seems to have a permanent, very visible location on the left of the tab bar. This button will bring to the foreground Firefox Home, a new feature that will take a similar form to Chrome’s new tab page, but with more functionality. You’ll be able to open your favorite sites and launch web apps, but you’ll also be able to access other areas of the browser like the contact and account manager. The green Christmas tree to the right of the Home icon is what pinned tabs will look like.

View the entire set of Firefox 9 (or 10 or 11) UX mockupts.