14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox 4 is in the final polishing phase, but it's still not done yet. That's not keeping part of the Mozilla team from looking forward towards Firefox 5 which is supposed to land only a few months after Firefox 4, according to Mozilla's new release schedule. Among the changes planned for Firefox 5 are some refinements for the UI and related features.
The Mozilla UI team has been working on concepts for new UI features in Firefox 5 and uploaded some mock-ups to its "Are We Pretty Yet?" website.
One feature that could be landing in Firefox 5, though it's only a concept for now, is menu buttons for individual sites. Using Firefox's implementation of site specific browsing, shortcuts to certain sites will load Firefox with a minimal UI which will incorporate a menu button customized for each site.
For example, the mock-up shows that a menu entry for Twitter would allow users to create new tweets, check out direct messages or mentions and even search the site. Similar actions are listed for sites such as IMDB or Facebook.
The search engine box is getting a revamp as well, if the mock-ups become reality, though it's not a major change. The name of the current search engine will be highlighted by a custom background color for each, making it easier to visually recognize on which site you're going to search on.
Another proposed tweak is making the search box page specific, meaning that the query will only show up on the tab it has been conducted on. However, there doesn't seem to be any plans of merging the search box with the AwesomeBar.
There are plans to better promote Firefox Sync, though, which has been integrated in Firefox 4, exposing the feature to more people. The add-on manager, which has only received a major update in Firefox 4 will be further tweaked as well.
For now, most of the changes are on 'paper' and there are no clear plans to implement them in Firefox 5, but they should provide an indication on the type of visual changes to expect in the upcoming version.
