As the Mozilla wiki notes, these are merely sketches of what Firefox 4.0 might look like. The point is to throw some ideas against the wall and see what sticks. So far it looks like Mozilla could have a bit of Chrome envy — one of the proposals uses the same tabs-on-top look that Google pioneered with its Chrome browser.
Couple that with the plans to isolate each tab to its own process and Firefox is starting to sound (and possibly look) a bit like Google Chrome. Protected tabs are definitely a good thing (a single page won’t crash your whole browser), but, judging by the discussion on the Mozilla wiki, the tabs-on-top design is somewhat more controversial. Keeping tabs below the menu bar for the default theme and offering an advanced option to move them to the top strikes us as a good compromise.
Other ideas in the screenshot mockups include consolidating the Stop, Refresh, and Go buttons into a single button on the right side of the URL bar. The idea is to save space in the toolbar and to make the button contextual — when you type in the URL bar it would turn green and be a Go button, when the page is loading it changes to a Stop button and when the page is done it would become a refresh button.
The three-in-one button on the right is pretty similar to Safari 4, though the Mozilla mockup makes it much more clearly a button than what Safari offers.
As with the earlier screenshots, the mockups are limited to Windows themes; there’s no hint of what Firefox 4 might look like in Mac OS X or Linux. But fear not Firefox fans, there’s still plenty of time before Firefox 4.0 arrives.
Your Comments
0 Responses to "Mozilla Considers Copying Elements of Chrome For Firefox 4.0"