Published preliminary sketches of the future interface Firefox

Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander has published a set of screenshots showing how the future Firefox interface may look — with a number of important changes that give it a more modern look. You can see all screenshots here .



To be clear, this is what Mozilla calls "very early sketches." They were presented last week at an internal meeting in the company, and the team has not yet decided when they will be implemented and whether they will be at all.



Nevertheless, the sketches look good, so it will not be surprising if they are really implemented in the near future - especially since Mozilla is now working on a quick - fire 18-week release schedule.

')

So what's new?



The biggest change: there is no longer a search bar. One of the Firefox characters - the search bar next to the address bar - is gone and replaced by a field that apparently combines both functions, just like in Chrome. You can also switch to full-screen mode, in which a smaller version of this field and tabs are combined into one line, which further reduces the upper part of the browser and leaves more space for content.



The tabs have become more rounded (they are rectangular in Firefox 5), which is also very similar to Chrome. But in Firefox, they went further - only the tabs that are open now have rounded edges, while the other tabs have no edges at all.



The new "functional" menu includes common tasks (cut, copy, paste, open a new tab) and icons for extensions.















[ via TechCrunch]