Firefox 4.0 Interface For Linux Mocked-up (& Peek at Firefox 3.7, too!)

By , Published October 29, 2009

90dq10

Firefox 4.0 is not due to be released for well over another yeah but mock-ups of the premier open-source browser's proposed visual refresh as it will look on Linux have been mocked-up and shown off today.

Version 4 will see a raft of major new features and improvements €“ not least of which is the refined interface above. This will see the addition of : -

  • Tabs-on-top: Default tabs to top of UI.
  • Hiding the Menu Bar: Hide the menu bar and add Page and Tools buttons.

Another major addition will be Browser Sync via Mozilla Weave, allowing for cloud syncing of bookmarks, passwords and favourites.

Is it enough?

The majority  of the forthcoming improvements are a reaction to Google Chrome. The speed, features and slick interface it offers really puts the €œestablished€ browsers in the shade €“ and Firefox is stepping up it's game. But is it too little, too late?

Google Chrome will offer browser syncing in just a few months time (it's already in testing, add –enable-browser-sync as a flag to use it.)  Weave will rear it's head in Firefox well over a year away. It already has the interface, it's extension framework has potential to be far greater than Firefox's (add-ons can be installed, disabled and removed without needing to €œrestart€ the browser) and browsing just keeps getting faster.

In The Mean Time€¦

The next €œminor€ release of Firefox which will bear a visual change will be that of 3.7 which has also received some Linux mock-up treatment.

FileFx-3.7-Mockup-Linux-i01-T-Human-Brown FileFx-3.7-Mockup-Linux-i01-T-Oxygen

It includes the following €œimprovements€ : -

  • Consistent Back/Forward Buttons: Use the same back/forward shape as on the other platforms. The back button would use the same texture as the other buttons however it would be round and larger.
  • Buttons vs Icons: Switching to a button+glyph style for the toolbar items. This would be instead of the more representational style that is widely used. It also is a deviation from the common system standard of having icons and then a button shape on hover.
  • Curvier Tab Shape: Match the tabs to the proposed tabs on Windows and Mac while keeping the native texture and colour.
  • Removing Toolbar Separators: Reduces visual complexity as well as maintaining external consistency.
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. O/T – Make Firefox Netbook Friendly
  2. Add-On To Make Firefox Use Jaunty’s Notifications
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • http://twitter.com/cryogenic Kevin

    oh my god… is that a NATIVE KDE INTERFACE I spy? Please please please let them actually give a crap about KDE 4 for a change. :)

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      it is totally overdue isn’t it

  • http://twitter.com/vshl Vishal Ravishankar

    I feel it needs a more native feel. It feels totally outta place

    • http://ndrw.me AndrewNoNumbers

      That’s why Ubuntu’s Firefox ships with a Ubuntu Modification Pack addon. But that just defeats the point of a redesign on Mozilla’s part.

      • guest114

        Do you even know what ubufox is?

        • Guest

          Yes I do, so what’s your point?

  • Paul567

    Saying Firefox 4 is ‘too little, too late’ is a stretch.

    While Chrome is quick and regular surfing the web is rock solid Chrome does not have the polish when it comes to extensions. I know you keep saying that Chrome has extensions but Adblock+ on Chrome is does not work nearly as well as Adblock Plus on Firefox.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      But it’s not supposed to because it’s an Alpha extension – Adblock for Firefox is a stable extension. Firefox is no longer innovating; it’s doing a Microsoft and just stagnating in its own comfortability. Weave has been knocking around in labs for the best part of 3 years. Google Browser Sync has taken less than a year to develop and will be stable long before Weave. Mozilla need to seize the initiative or i can see many Distros electing to go with Chrome/ium over Firefox. Firefox looks unusably slow compared next to Chrome.

      • Informed

        Mozilla is nowhere near the size of Google’s powerhouse, and on top of that has ongoing efforts to rewrite critical browser systems to compete in addition to heavily participating in HTML5 affairs and quite a few experiments. I say that Firefox 4.0 will be enough if executed as planned. But not for those who just have to have everything now.

        Interface mockups do nott tell the whole story.

  • Jimbo

    TBF, a lot of these changes are inspired by netbooks. You yourself have written pieces about how to make Firefox less vertically huge on netbooks. Google Chrome came out of the gate with netbooks in mind, Firefox is now playing catch up, but its less about copying Chrome and more about making sure it is useful on netbooks.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I never said it was copying chrome, only reacting to chrome.

      • Jimbo

        I never said you said it was copying chrome ;-)

  • Mohan

    Kinda like the 3.7 more the 4 mock-up, but then again I like the way 3.x integrates itself into Linux with the theme and stuff a lot. Also I am pretty much switch over to Seamonkey 2.0. Going to check the beta of FF 3.7 when it comes out.

  • http://twitter.com/kinesthesia kinesthesia

    That’s gorgeous.. and in the end, no matter which browser I try, I always end up returning to Firefox.

    • Mohan

      Yeah I do the same.

  • http://www.patrickmicka.com Patrick Micka

    I’ve already installed the dev version of 3.7 (codename “Minefield”) but I must admit that I’ve been using primarily Chrome for the past few weeks.

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    its looks amazing, but the problem with Firefox is startup speed, and that should be FF #1 Priority.

  • http://ungzd.livejournal.com/ ungzd

    How they will integrate this combined title bar with window manager?

    • http://yann.universfantastiques.org/ Yann Dìnendal

      And how are they going to make the buttons round, while keeping the “texture” of the buttons… I believe these are only optimistic mockups… But that would be great!

  • ste

    “Google Chrome will offer browser syncing in just a few months time (it’s already in testing, add –enable-browser-sync as a flag to use it.)”

    So have you managed to get Bookmark Sync working in Chrome/Chromium on Ubuntu? I’ve only been able to get it working on Windows machines. How did you do it?

    • John

      Would like to know also – I’m running 4.0.223.11 and even with the –enable-browser-sync flag I have no option to sync bookmarks…

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        Browser Sync is horrendously crashy in Windows so feel lucky it’s not in Chrome for Linux yet! =P

        Browser sync was available (via the flag) for a few builds a few weeks ago but i hadn’t noticed it was now gone again

        • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

          Sync is working amazingly well on Window 7, i’m not experiencing any problems at all, the only problems i have is from using xmarks its very buggy

          • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

            Hmm.. i wonder what my problem is then? If i enable it Chrome freezes and is unusable. Not that i care too much since i use Xmarks anyway.

  • Anonymous

    where is the transparent effect of composite here ?
    in Seven they did good job with airo activated.

    • it

      i’m sure playing with compiz or some other.
      as for 7…..they don’t use metacity :P

      when they start focusing on emerald themes life will be much better

    • it

      sorry…. wasn’t clear
      just saying that in windows mozilla devs look at the inbuilt compositing and use it

      they don’t seem to do that in linux (chrome didn’t do it either) :-(

  • Ade

    Where’s the home button gone?

    • http://yann.universfantastiques.org/ Yann Dìnendal

      In front of the tabs. I’ve heard the “homepage” of this button could be like the “smart dial” of chrome’s new tab.

  • Anonymous

    Well looks nice – but in that mockup it wastes a lot more space, so I hope it’s more compact – and maybe editable.

    Presently I use the ‘Chromium Extreme Carbon’ theme, with TinyMenu – and it’s really slick. I’d like to lose the top bar too.

  • Mel

    To me FF is an old, slow cow. It’s dead.

    Chrome is my default browser, not just because the minimalist and cool UI, but the freaking awesome speed!!

  • Anonymous

    The new tabs on FF4 look really good, As to whether it’s too little to late for Firefoxs’ improvements?, I don’t think it is as people will invariably want a browser that is slick and performs well, and Firefox does that no problem.

  • molecule-eye

    The curvier tabs are nice. The missing menu bar is horrible. It breaks consistency with the rest of the GUI. To free up vertical space they should merge the awesome and search bars together (like Epiphany, Midori, Chrome, etc.). People can then usably put the url/search bar beside the menu bar and buttons. Another option would be to hide the title bar (if possible) since the title of a page is usually revealed in the tab (useful if tabs are always visible), or have the title displayed in the status bar, since most of the status bar typically goes unused. And there are other options that don’t require messing up interface consistency.

  • anonymous

    Firefox has always been my fav browser but it’s become so bloated that it won’t even run on an older computer… and that’s without any add-ons!

  • Lupin

    Tabs on top (or bottom) as default should die already. Most monitors are wide screen nowadays, so you have much more space to the left or right (ever seen a webpage that’s 1900 pixels wide??). But you can never have enough height when viewing webpages. And no matter how wide a screen is, after a certain number of tabs they have to get “squashed”, up to the level where you can’t read the title anymore.
    I’m currently using the “tree style tabs” extension to get the tabs to the side in a useful manner. Hope this will still work with 4.0.

  • http://www.freebie-link.com/ Chris

    That’s awesome. I love Firefox!

  • Zac

    Mockups not bad, but they need to get rid of the that menu (File, Edit etc) because it wastes too mark screen space.

    I have been using Chromium (now 4.0.226.0 Ubuntu build 30050 on Ubuntu 8.04) as my default browser because it is takes alot less CPU, start and shutdown are very quick, 2cm more vertical screen space, I prefer the bookmarking, the one awesome bar is all that is needed, generally very efficient in operation and visually as well. Ocassionally a flash video may take most of the CPU resources but it doesn’t slow the browser as does with Firefox, and I can just go into Chromium Task Manager to see whith tab is the problem and shut it down. It doesn’t happen often though.
    BTW: I am comparing it with Firefox 3.0 on Ubuntu 8.04.

    The mockups, and with new features are looking good.

  • http://www.electroniccigarettesinc.com e cigarette

    Nice Mockup design. Overall it looks great!

  • anonymous

    Learn how to write an article. I couldn’t stand to read past the first few sentences.

  • David

    I would like to see history syncing too.

  • Mason

    It looks like Chrome.

  • http://www.66mobile.com/ David

    Firefox is the best, rarely crashes and has cool add-ons .

  • emarkay

    Enough of this “Dog and Pony show” What about stability and configurability, and did I mention security? More and more things are going to “one button does all” mode, using valuable page space for pointless “pretties” and adding non-productive “fluff”.

    Some of us spend a lot of time each release functionalizing the browser desktop; no Flash, no icons (text only) and whatever add-ons we can find to maximize the display area, while still leaving a toolbar and a status bar. No “Awesome” bar, no autocomplete, no geolocation, nothing but a stable and secure environment to accomplish a task.

    Look what happened to GM when they found out that “pretty” can still be a fecal mass, and the Orientals keep refining quality.
    Will Mozilla need a bailout too in a few years?

  • http://www.samibeyoglu.com/ sami

    First one looks like mixture of ie and chrome

  • shaffan

    is it me or does that mockup seem to look a lot like google chrome?

  • Anonymous

    This is a terrible idea. This is nothing more than Firefox attempting to imitate Chrome. Why can’t we keep Firefox as it already looks? Or, at the very least, create a unique design for it?Additionally, Firefox has a nice theming/plugin engine. Should the appearance decisions really be made by the Firefox team? Or should it be by the user when they select between different theme add-ons? If the Firefox team wants to add the ability for a theme add-on to select between Chrome-style tabs and traditional tabs, that is great and fine, but they really ought to leave the design and development of the themes to thirdparty developers who make the add-ons.

  • ray

    I’d rather have consistency… what’s the point of an operating system having a GUI if every app is going to have its own UI. Hiding the menu bar??? That’s not really a decision for an app developer to make in the first place. Let the OS designers work on the OS, please, and app devs stick to their apps. How much time and energy did Kai Krause waste on eye-candying Bryce and then OS X and Vista came along anyway — he would have been more productive offering his services to Apple and Microsoft. If tabs are an improvement on MDI, let the framework engineers implement them for everyone to use as a standard.

  • http://clubpenguintips.com/ club penguin

    I can’t use any other browser now except firefox. It just keeps getting better and grabbing more market share too.

  • http://twitter.com/ZioVic Zio Vic

    That mockup is by math defition EQUALS to chrome.

    Jeez, even the bookmark button is a chrome feature (although needs to be activated with a command line option).

    But hey, better this than something worse, if they don’ t have any better idea so be it.

  • http://linuxization.com/ guray

    Qt gui would be better.

    I’ ve liked the button instead of icons

  • http://linuxization.blogspot.com/ guray

    Qt gui would be better.However; I’ ve liked the buttons instead of icons

  • Serge

    “Firefox 4.0 is not due to be released for well over another yeah”

    Yeah, right…

  • http://disqus.com/forums/omgubuntu/firefox_37_amp_40_linux_mockups/trackback/ Dusan

    those back/forward buttons are of course impossible with GTK or QT or any other GUI toolkit, you sure can make them look like this, but you will loose “themability” which is core of all UI frameworks, be it on Mac/Win/Linux. If you want so special UI and differ from other applications, you have to go the route of Chromium, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon if at all. but nice mockups, indeed :)