Firefox with Native Android Interface

The development of Firefox for Android will take a turn for the better in future versions as far as the interface is concerned. The app will no longer use the current XUL implementation, but go instead with native Android interface, for some very good reasons.

Johnathan Nightingale, Director of Firefox Engineering, presents some very solid arguments for ditching the current XUL-based UI in favor of the native Android UI: faster startup, less memory usage and better responsiveness.

The entire project is in incipient stage, and issues deriving from this change of plans have still to be solved. One of the problems is support for extensions, which has not been discussed yet with the Add-on SDK team.

Beta and Aurora versions of the browser will not be affected by this change, and Gecko layout engine will still be driving Firefox.