Mozilla is changing the interface of Firefox and is discussing its ideas with its users. Here is another round of mockups how Firefox X could look like.

We are not aware of any other software category that is developing at a similar speed while having a tremendous impact on billions of users – and change the way how we perceive and access information on the Internet. Mozilla is under massive pressure and is squeezed between an aggressive Google, which pushes Chrome into the market with accelerating success and Microsoft, which needs to stop the bleeding of IE market share. Mozilla is weaker than Google and Microsoft and will have to prepare Firefox for battle: Being competitive and being average does not cut it anymore. Mozilla needs to make bold moves.

 

The Death Of The Web Portal

Firefox interface designer Alex Faaborg posted a few new mockups how a future Firefox could look like. It is not revolutionary, but it appears that Mozilla is focused on improving tabs, content space and creating a new homepage.

While it is still just a concept, we have the impression that Mozilla is ready to collect feedback on these ideas and is ready to implement those designs. At the center of the user interface (UI) redesign is the Home Tab, which is intended to be consistent across smartphone platforms (Android, iPhone), tablet and desktop UIs. “Home” is a fixed app tab that cannot be removed by the user and is not just a web page. It is created as an application that pretty much resembles what we once thought a web portal such as Yahoo (does anyone today remember Lycos and Excite?) could provide.

There is a search field that also serves as location bar (there is no dedicated location bar in those recent mockups of the Home page), a listing of web apps, as well as a news feed, as well as local information such as bookmarks, browsing history and shared sites – which is a feature a web portal could not deliver. Faaborg imagines this page to be your start of the day, essentially your morning newspaper. I am old enough to remember that my weekdays started with no computer and a few newspapers on the breakfast table before I went to school. I can even remember press conferences in the late 1990s, during which PC companies were envisioning a day when we would read the newspaper on a PC screen instead of on paper. This was the time when we still had to configure modems and how they would treat a certain dial tone – no one could imagine in their wildest dreams that you would want to get the first information of the day from a computer screen.

Now it seems that the web browser is set to bundle all that information that we need to start into a new day.

 

New Tab: Predicting User Intentions

The latest Firefox mockup is the most coherent homepage idea I have seen to date. It is much more balanced than the app-heavy Chrome homepage. Faaborg notes that his approach follows “iGooge”, but it provides personal, local information that iGoogle cannot show.

The designer is very picky about the difference between the home tab and the new tab as well as the way how a new tab is opened – via mouse or keyboard. However, it shows how much brainwork goes into improving the browser interface today and how complex our user behavior has become. Are we happy with a page that presents a limited of pages and services or do we want to access the full breadth of the Internet and search for information when we open a new tab? What information do we want the browser to show and how is that new page most effective in any given scenario?

If Mozilla reduces the interface to certain apps and a few suggested (or stored) pages, the browser interface could be more effective, but it could also turn the user into a lazy user and prevent new discoveries that could be promoted with a much more open interface – or an empty interface that basically tells the user: What do you want to do? Start typing! Faaborg and his team are trying to figure out ways how the user intentions can be predicted: For example, if a new tab is opened with a mouse click, a user may be likely to click on an existing app or page that could be shown on the new tab page. If the tab is opened with a keyboard shortcut, a user could be targeting keyboard input to load a certain page. Different user input could show different new tab pages.

 

Multiple Versions

Mozilla’s challenge will be to create a consistent user experience across all platforms – desktop, smartphone and tablet. We previously reported and showed Mozilla’s tablet UI, which is substantially different from the desktop and smartphone UI. Yet Faaborg says that Mozilla intends to make the Home tab a consistent feature across all platforms.

We admit that we are not big fans of the Firefox tablet UI, but believe that Mozilla has an opportunity, if it can establish Firefox as a cross-platform browser before Google can do it. We still scratch our heads over Google’s decision not to offer Chrome on Android today, while especially Android 3.0 could use a decent browser on tablets. Mozilla can become the browser platform that makes the most sense for all computing devices we are using, if it can create an effective UI (and simplify its Sync feature.)

We already determined that Mozilla may have the best HTML5 browser at this time and is, as a result, the most attractive cross-platform browser available today (read our review here.) Mozilla is still in the game, but it needs to move faster and be much more aggressive than it is now.

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