On Tuesday, April 29th, 2014, Mozillla rolls out Firefox 29. The new Firefox is a complete overhaul over its previous version.
With version 29 of its Firefox browser, Mozilla debuts the Australis interface and a new Accounts function, allowing users to synchronize data and settings across multiple devices. The browser's design is also redesigned with a new customization mode.
"It's not an interface adjustment or tweak. It's not a bug fix. It's a complete re-envisioning of Firefox's user experience, and it's been brewing for the past five years," said Jennifer Morrow, Senior User Experience Designer at Mozilla, in a blog post. She also compared the old Firefox UI to a sinking ship and said one could think of the redesign as "a new hull."
The update places Firefox more in line with Google Chrome, which is currently the world's most popular browser. And, like Chrome users, Firefox users can now create an account and sync their bookmarks, passwords, and settings in order to access them from any device. Nevertheless, the new browser still maintains a familiar oversized back button look, a separate search box, and default menu options in the toolbar.
Australis is characterized by its redesigned tabs that have more rounded corners and are brought forward and outlined when active, and by an intuitive and customizable menu. On the upper-right corner, the menu offers quick access to the browser's features, settings, and functions (add-ons, history, developer, full-screen mode, and so forth). On opening the new Firefox for the first time, users will find a short guide to the changes made in this new version.
According to Mozilla, the revamped feature "makes it even easier to setup and add multiple devices."
Mozilla's Vice President of Firefox, Jonathan Nightingale, said that users found Sync really difficult to set up. With the new version, Mozilla made it easier to discover, since many didn't know it even existed.
Mozilla announced the Accounts and Sync back in February 2014. Firefox Accounts is part of Firefox OS as well, and lets users keep track of their login credentials for various services, as well as their bookmarks, history, and any open tabs.
The Sync feature is also more secure. More specifically, Mozilla underlines three improvements:
- Client-side key stretching: a technique that protects against man-in-the-middle attacks, even when SSL credentials are compromised.
- End-to-end encryption: adds the difficulties for hackers to access a user's data, even if Mozilla’s servers are compromised.
- Public key cryptography and the BrowserID protocol: separation between authentication, authorization, and data storage servers to reducing attack surface.
Firefox 29 is primarily a major release for desktop. It comes with a new customization mode. Users can manually drag-and-drop features, add-ons, or tools anywhere in the browser. It's pretty straightforward and very easy to use. Drag-and-drop editing for the toolbar is a longstanding feature of Firefox, but the ability to edit the menu is new with Australis.
Nightingale said that it "took the most engineering and design time" than any other feature. And customization is what Mozilla calls "the most carefully designed browser interface on the planet," continued Nightingale. "The look of the entire UI has changed" as the company has spent quite a lot of time making it "more beautiful" and making sure information is present in a cleaner way.
The company says Firefox's overall look and feel now focuses more on its users' web content. With tabs that have a "more fluid and streamlined shape" and are positioned higher up in the browser, Firefox is trying to enhance users' experience while they browse the internet.
As part of the redesign, there's a new menu panel that includes all of the browser's controls, features, and add-ons. Users can find familiar tools in it like copy/paste, print, etc., but with an additional section dedicated for Firefox add-ons. This is where users can find them when add-ons downloads are completed. The single menu not only makes using Firefox simpler, but it actually brings the browser closer to a mobile UI, which helps Firefox to be developed across several platforms.
Mozilla also removed a few things from the main toolbar. Bookmarking and management has been combined. The download manager now only shows up if the user has downloaded a file recently. The same goes for the forward button: it only shows up if it might be needed.
Mozilla was first planning to have Australis ready for Firefox 25, which arrived in October 2013. There were many delays back then. When Firefox 29 beta was launched in March, users found that dragging the Firefox window was difficult. The company added "a pixel or two" of extra click space as well as a checkbox in customization mode to turn on a full title bar. And after several glitch fixes, the final release has gotten the redesign.
Firefox 29 Changelog
- New: New customization mode makes it easy to personalize web experience.
- New: A new, easy to access menu sits in the right hand corner of Firefox and includes popular browser controls.
- New: Sleek new tabs provide an overall smoother look and fade into the background when not active.
- New: An interactive onboarding tour to guide users through the new Firefox changes.
- New: The ability to set up Firefox Sync by creating a Firefox account.
- New: Gamepad API finalized and enabled.
- New: Malay [ma] locale added.
- Changed: Clicking on a W3C Web Notification will switch to the originating tab.
- Developer: 'box-sizing' (dropping the -moz- prefix) implemented.
- Developer: Console object available in Web Workers.
- Developer: Promises enabled by default.
- Developer: SharedWorker enabled by default.
- Developer: input type="number" implemented and enabled.
- Developer: input type="color" implemented and enabled.
- Developer: Enabled ECMAScript Internationalization API.
- Developer: Add-on bar has been removed, content moved to navigation bar.
The massive redesign comes at a time of challenge and opportunity for the company's leaders. Mozilla was riven with internal strife several weeks ago when company co-founder and longtime Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich was assigned to Chief Executive Officer and then resigned in less than two weeks later following a public outcry over his financial support for an anti-gay marriage law in California.
But the improvements in Firefox 29 for desktops also come a day after the U.S. and UK governments cautioned users against using Internet Explorer. This opportunity is an advantage for Firefox to get a little bit more traction by gaining many Internet Explorer users.
Firefox 29 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and for Android. Although Firefox 29 is meant more for desktop computers, Mozilla is also aiming for bigger market share in mobile devices where it lacks popularity (mobile Firefox users are estimated to be 0.01 percent). The first attempt at Firefox for Android, which debuted in March 2011 alongside Firefox 4, was scuttled in June 2012 for a complete rebuild of the browser that addressed long-standing complaints about speed and performance. The global market is also not that kind to Mozilla when its desktop users have slowly decrease over the past year, from more than 20 percent in May 2013 to 17.26 percent in March 2014.