Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3’s New Look
Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg continues his public previews of the design refresh coming in Firefox 3 with today’s post covering some of the icon differences between platforms. Like the various lock icons depicted here, Firefox 3 will feature a look and feel designed to integrate with all the various platforms on which it runs.
As Faaborg writes:
In addition to feeling familiar and comfortable, I want users to think of Firefox as the browser their computer should have shipped with. On OS X I want you to feel like you’ve upgraded to latest large predatory cat, on Ubuntu the latest Adjective Animal alliteration, and on Windows you’ve just installed Service Pack Awesome.
The icon designs are not yet complete, this is merely the first draft turned in by the various designers, but it gives a good overview of the subtle, but noticeable differences between Firefox on various platforms.
While the icons, and indeed most aspects of the coming visual makeover for FIrefox 3, have yet to make it into the developer releases, there are some way you can experience the new look and feel in the Firefox 3 beta 1. I’ve been running Firefox 3 beta 1 with the “Proto” theme for Mac OS X for some time and haven’t had any problems (other than the lack of Greasemonkey and AdBlock plugins, which of course has nothing to do with the theme).
Note though that beta 1 won’t run the latest and greatest version of Proto, for that you’ll need to grab a nightly build, but version .7 works just find and does a very nice job of integrating with the look and feel of OS X.
One other thing to keep in mind, these are the default themes for Firefox as it will ship on each platform. There will of course be nothing stopping you from customizing the browser with your own theme of choice (provided it gets updated to work with Firefox 3).
Also worth noting, the main Firefox application icon is getting a makeover. Jon Hicks, who helped design the original, has posted a teaser sketch.
See Also:
