14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is making good progress with its Firefox web browser. It already has two versions out under the new, rapid release cycle and Firefox 7 is just around the corner.
All the while, work is done on Firefox 8 and Firefox 9. It all seems great, but Firefox 6 doesn't really feel all that different from Firefox 5 or Firefox 4.
That's one downside of the rapid release system, new versions are fairly similar. What's more, Firefox 4 was a major upgrade in the UI department and, apart from a few tweaks, much of the work in later versions of Firefox focused on the under-the-hood stuff.
That is no longer the case, the upcoming Firefox 9, which is in active development in the Nighly channel, aimed at developers, testers and advanced users, is already sporting the biggest interface changes since Firefox 4.
And, from what's been implemented so far, it's going to be a pretty significant upgrade.
The focus seems to be on cleaning up the interface, dropping buttons and elements that aren't used, updating some of the older design elements and components and overall simplifying things.
And it's working, Firefox 9 is not a major departure from previous versions, Firefox 4 and up, but the small changes and tweaks already make for quite a difference in day-to-day use.
The forward and home buttons are gone
At first glance, you may notice that some things are gone. The ubiquitous "forward" button has been removed. The button got a lot less use than the "back" button so the Firefox UI team removed it by default to make room for more useful stuff.
The home button, which is included in default installs, is now also gone. Of course, you can customize Firefox and add or remove any of the buttons yourself.
Pinned App Tabs remove the navigation bar
One more thing that's gone is the entire navigation bar from pinned app tabs. Firefox already removes the nav bar (i.e the one with the navigational buttons, the Awesomebar and the search box) when visiting internal pages such as the Add-on Manager.
Now Mozilla has taken it one step forward and removed the unnecessary UI elements from pinned tabs. The thinking is that you don't need to see the URL or any of the other info when using a web app.
A refreshed search box
The venerable search box in Firefox has gotten a fresh new look. The name of the search engine currently selected is now displayed on the right, rather than just its favicon.
This should make it clearer where your search will end up. Visually, it's a nice improvement and it's probably better from a usability point of view.
A new download manager
One of the most requested features to date, Firefox 9 finally includes a revamped download manager. Gone is the windowed downloads list, the manager is now integrated into the Firefox UI and does its best to get out of the way until it's actually needed.
You can check out a more thorough description and several screenshots of the feature in action here.
A new default favicon
This is probably the less substantial change so far, but Firefox 9 also comes with a new default favicon, for websites that don't provide any, new tabs and so on. It's a small change, but it's one of the pretties default favicons in any browser.
A new tab page
Finally, perhaps the biggest new feature in Firefox 9, is a new tab page. For ages, new tabs were simple blank pages in Firefox. Now, you get a list of bookmarks as well as a list of the most visited websites.
The design of the new tab page is minimalistic, future versions may change this, but that's not a bad things. The websites are displayed in a thumbnail grid which looks good and also provides easy access.
Already Firefox 9 looks like a solid release and the changes listed above are linked to the UI exclusively. Firefox 9 also promises to be faster and more efficient and also include new features under the hood. Note that the screenshots are for the Linux version of Firefox 9, but the changes should be similar on all platforms.
