Firefox Australis Will Be as Customizable as Firefox Has Ever Been

Mozilla has been working on Australis, a proposed redesign of the Firefox UI, for a lot of time now. While there may have been some progress, it seems that a Firefox Australis is still a long way off since Mozilla isn't done debating what should and shouldn't go into Australis.

While the Australis look has been pretty much locked in since the get go, more than a year ago, the nitty gritty still needs sorting out.

Specifically, Mozilla is trying to work out just how customizable the UI should be and what options should be available.

Since, at this point, customization is the only thing Firefox can still claim to do better, much better, than all other popular browsers, it's a touchy subject.

One thing that Mozilla is trying to accomplish with the Firefox Australis customization options is to make it easier for people to customize the browser.

While it's now possible to change anything about Firefox, it's open source after all, few people have the skill to do it.

Even things like changing button layout or removing toolbars aren’t as simple as they could be. With Australis, Mozilla wants everyone to be able to customize the browser and to have the confidence to try it out.

This not only means making customization more intuitive, but also safer, removing options that can break browsing.

But power users will be served as well, Mozilla wants Firefox to be heavily customizable. However, some more advanced options may only be available via add-ons, an approach favored in other parts of Firefox as well.

It's probably the right approach too, Firefox should pack only the things most people use, everything else can be added via extensions.

As for the more practical considerations, Mozilla wants to keep the merged stop/reload button functionality and customization options, i.e. merge the buttons into the URL bar, keep two separate buttons and so on.

And to keep users from breaking the browsers, there are plans to make it impossible to remove crucial buttons like back, forward, or the URL bar, but still allow users to move them around.