We’ve seen a few mockups for the Firefox 4.0 user interface re-vamp before in July, and now we’re getting some more. These latest shots come from Mozilla dev Stephen Horlander’s personal blog where he shares heaps of info regarding the latest changes to the Firefox UI. He does mention, though, that these changes will likely be present in Firefox 4.0 and that no UI re-vamp will occur in Firefox 3.7.
It appears as though Mozilla is taking cues from both the Ribbon interface we see in Windows applications such as Wordpad, Paint and Office 2007/2010 as well as Google’s Chrome browser. One thing does stand out in the new screenshots is the application button, which is said to replace the menu toolbar that fills up space on older Firefox versions. This application button is being tested in many locations (below).
Also present is tabs on the top of the navigation buttons, a feature that started with Google Chrome. If you closely compare these screenshots with an open window of Chrome you will also notice that the icons and layout of buttons is very similar. It’s good to see that Firefox is trying to cut down on the space used by the navigation bar.
Personally I think that top-right option looks the nicest out of the five options in the mock-up above. You can compare the Strata 4.0 mock-up with the current Firefox 3.5 default theme below.
