Mozilla has just released a major update for Firefox, bringing version 30.0 along with the Australis user interface, which the company has been working on for almost two years. This is the most radical design change to the Firefox user interface in recent history, giving it a more Chrome like feel rather than the Firefox interface we are used to.
You can download the update to your device by heading over to Help > About on your Firefox browser or by pointing your browser to Firefox.com. You can also download the latest version and install the update manually using the links which follow
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. “Outside the core stuff, everybody uses the browser differently,” he noted. Some people, for example, never use the back button (which seems weird, but maybe they use keyboard shortcuts).
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. Customizing is now as easy as dragging and dropping elements to wherever you want them.
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. They basically fade in the background, which allows those of us with lots of open tabs (and maybe lots of app tabs, too), to focus on the ones we are looking at.
Besides these changes, Firefox now also features an improved bookmarking mechanism, which uses an almost un-Firefox-like animation when you star a page (the star then drops into the bookmark list button to show you where you can find it again).
As part of this update, Firefox now also uses Mozilla’s Firefox Accounts for syncing settings and bookmarks between machines. Instead of its rather arcane older syncing system, which mostly avoided using any cloud services for storing your information, the new system relies on Mozilla’s online services. The new Firefox Accounts uses the usual combination of email and password instead of random codes. The new accounts are obviously already integrated deeply into Firefox OS and will also be made available for Firefox for Android
- Download Firefox for Windows
- Download Firefox for Mac
- Download Firefox for Linux
- Download Firefox for Android
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. “Outside the core stuff, everybody uses the browser differently,” he noted. Some people, for example, never use the back button (which seems weird, but maybe they use keyboard shortcuts).
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. Customizing is now as easy as dragging and dropping elements to wherever you want them.
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. They basically fade in the background, which allows those of us with lots of open tabs (and maybe lots of app tabs, too), to focus on the ones we are looking at.
Besides these changes, Firefox now also features an improved bookmarking mechanism, which uses an almost un-Firefox-like animation when you star a page (the star then drops into the bookmark list button to show you where you can find it again).
As part of this update, Firefox now also uses Mozilla’s Firefox Accounts for syncing settings and bookmarks between machines. Instead of its rather arcane older syncing system, which mostly avoided using any cloud services for storing your information, the new system relies on Mozilla’s online services. The new Firefox Accounts uses the usual combination of email and password instead of random codes. The new accounts are obviously already integrated deeply into Firefox OS and will also be made available for Firefox for Android
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