Wondering what the upcoming Firefox ‘Photon’ redesign will look on Linux?

Well, wonder no more. An update to Mozilla’s Stephen Horlander‘s interactive Photon mock-up offers up our first glimpse of the Linux rendition of the upcoming redesign.

And the Firefox Photon Linux design looks exactly how you probably imagine it would:

Although the design is a mockup it does gift us a glimpse at the sort of look Firefox devs are hoping to create with the Photon redesign, which is (tentatively) scheduled to debut in Firefox 57 later this year.

Work to support Firefox CSD is said to be ongoing as part of the Photon theme work. Now that Ubuntu (the largest Linux single Linux desktop distro) is not only switching to GNOME but actively adopting CSD, there’s likely to be more momentum behind Firefox adopting them than before.

Photon is more than just a lick of paint on the exterior. As explained in previous posts, Firefox is effectively getting a new theming framework, one that makes the browser UI more resource efficient, more responsive, and better able to adapt to device inputs. The bits of Photon that we see are just the fruit – behind it sits a veritable orchard of optimisations and improvements.

You can play around with the interactive Linux mock-up here.