Firefox redesign rumoured


16 Apr 2009

Firefox may be rapidly growing up to become everyone’s favourite web browser, but Mozilla is rumoured to be giving some thought to a redesign, in order to more accurately reflect changing internet usage patterns.

According to a report on ReadWriteWeb, one of the most radical proposals Mozilla is said to be considering is shelving browser tabs and replacing them with an interface that looks more like iTunes than the current Firefox browser.

According to Olivier Reichenstein and Aza Raskin, the head of user experience at Mozilla, tabs worked fine when internet usage patterns dictated that people never had more than about 10 of these open at any one time.

However, with browsers gradually turning into operating systems, tabs have become more of a hindrance than a handy organisational tool to keep web sessions nice and tidy.

So it would seem Mozilla wants to move away from tabs towards organising the browser more like a multimedia file system, which would produce something that looks more like iTunes, with tabs ranged along the side, than the current look and feel of Firefox.

Firefox 3.0 is now the most popular browser in Europe, holding 35.05pc of the market, in comparison to the 34.54pc held by Internet Explorer 7.0, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.

By Jennifer Yau

Pictured: mockup of Firefox with an iTunes organisational vibe