Before you read on, make sure you’re seated comfortably. If you’re wearing a tie or belt, loosen it. Usually you’re told to brace in such instances, but I find it easier to just kind of just, like, go limp. Ready? Firefox is receiving yet another interface overhaul. Dubbed Australis, the new UI (and UX) will span, embrace, and unify the desktop, tablet, and smartphone versions of Firefox.

The last year or two has seen Firefox experience something resembling an identity crisis. You will all remember when Firefox 4.0 introduced a wildly different interface (called Strata) with The Big Orange Button, but Mozilla has also been experimenting with different tablet and smartphone UIs since Firefox for Android’s inception. For a variety of reasons, Mozilla never tried to bring Strata to the mobile platforms, resulting in a very fragmented user experience — mobile Firefox had almost zero resemblance to desktop Firefox.

Australis, rather sensibly, is an attempt to build a user interface/experience model that works and feels the same across every platform; Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Starting with the premise that Firefox is “soft, friendly, and human,” Australis is as curvy as a curvy thing. While the desktop version of Australis obviously has more browser chrome (buttons/widgets) than the smartphone and tablet versions, all three share one recurring feature: Rounded corners everywhere. Tabs are positively swoopy (their curves are likened to those of an aerodynamic supercar). The bottom left and right corners of the browser window will be rounded. The tab thumbnails (when switching tabs on Firefox for Android) have rounded corners. Pop-up dialogs, such as Settings or Downloads, have rounded corners. The address bar and search bar are no longer rectangular: They’re rounded rectangles.

A lot of attention is being paid to the Metro version of Firefox, which will hopefully be ready in time for Windows 8’s release this fall. For the most part, the Australis version of Metro Firefox looks a lot like Metro IE10, but with a few more rounded corners (pictured above). The timeline for Australis on Windows 7 (and Windows 8 desktop), Mac, and Linux is probably similar to the Metro version (i.e. towards the end of 2012). The current Nightly build of Firefox 15 has a few Australis-like features (cleaner, simplified buttons, and the new Download pane), but the swoopy tabs are yet to be seen. Firefox for Android already has a few Australis elements. For the time being, Mozilla has provided interactive, web-based demos of the Australis theme (Windows/Mac/Linux).

In other news, it looks like Firefox for Android (and probably Metro) will soon have a Reading Mode, which — much like Instapaper, or Safari’s feature of the same name — strips away a web page’s cruft so that it’s easier to read (pictured below).

For more information about Australis, and some of Mozilla’s other UX efforts, hit up the Firefox User-Experience slides, which were presented by Madhava Enros at the Firefox Workweek in Toronto.



Read about Firefox’s New Tab Page and Home Tab (which are in Firefox 13 beta)