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Get Firefox Beta - Modzilla is launching its most important release of Firefox in a very long time today. The new version looks significantly more like Chrome than the old Firefox. It features the same three-bar menu on the right and rounded tabs, for example. “The point of the redesign is to adapt the design to how modern users engage with the web,” Mozilla VP for Firefox Johnathan Nightingale told me earlier this month. The redesign, which touches many more aspects of the browser than just its user interface, is meant to give people the ability to fully customize their browsing experience. Firefox always features extensive customization options, but those were always somewhat hidden, especially for mainstream users who may not always dig into the advanced menus of their browsers.
With this redesign, the “Customize” button is now always present in the new Firefox menu.
After clicking on that button, the browser switches into the customization mode and you can then move around virtually all of Firefox’s user interface elements and organize the browser according to how they work with it. Other changes that are meant to adapt the browser to all kinds of types of users include the fact that Firefox now completely de-emphasizes unselected tabs. As part of this update, Firefox now also uses Mozilla’s Firefox Accounts for syncing settings and bookmarks between machines. The new accounts are obviously already integrated deeply into Firefox OS and it’s coming to Firefox on Android today, too.
Given its fast release cycle, why did it take Mozilla so long to release the redesign? Among the more than 1,300 changes, the sweeping improvements in Firefox 29 for desktops introduce a new Firefox Account to simplify the cross-browser Sync feature, a customizable graphical menu, and rounded tabs that emphasize the tab you're in over the others.
The menu button has jumped completely from the left to the right side of the browser, and introduces a touch-friendly, icon-based, customizable menu to Firefox fans.
To call up one of the browser's best-loved features: customization.
Tabs, Nightingale said, are a "critical detail."
Firefox has developed a reputation as a browser than can smoothly handle dozens of tabs, and so Nightingale said it was important for Mozilla to make sure that tabs remained legible even as more of them got crammed onto the tab bar.
The browser relies on your mouse scroll wheel or navigation arrows at either end of the tab bar for you to access overflow tabs.
The new Firefox Sync steps back from the previous way users were asked to set up the feature, which allows you to synchronize tabs, bookmarks, add-ons, preferences, passwords, and browsing history across devices and operating systems. Mozilla began making Firefox Accounts available to the public several months ago through its developer's build, Firefox Aurora. "Five to 10 percent of the new Firefox Accounts on Firefox Beta re originating on Android," Nightingale said. While people flocked to desktop Firefox a decade ago, driven by a desire for a faster, more secure, and more personable alternative to Internet Explorer, the Android Firefox hasn't met with the same response.
"We've been seeing a lot of response to [Firefox for] Android," he said, noting that the browser has passed 50 million downloads, with 20 million active users and a 4.5 star rating in Google Play.
3D games, he noted, are running at close to native code speed in the browser thanks to Mozilla technology such as Emscripten and ASM.js, and the long-awaited Unreal Engine for game-building running directly in Firefox.
Firefox 29 positions Mozilla's pieces on the board for a strong future.
