New Enhanced Modern Mozilla Firefox UX

Firefox’s UI is being revamped and modernized, now including enhanced privacy protections in ‘Private Browsing Mode’.

This new update ranges across five categories, featuring changes like streamlining, decluttering, ‘privacy shields’, and more.

What’s new with Firefox?

The first category, ‘Simplified unencumbered navigation’, relates to the toolbar. Navigation has been changed and streamlined, improving back forward and refresh.

The address bar features a privacy shield to keep ambient information protected and a security lock where you type in the URL. Frequently used settings have been improved and allow for a reader mode, zoom level, and bookmark.

The second category is ‘streamlined clutter-free menus’. They now feature ‘the hamburger menu’, a button on the far right with three horizontal lines, and the right-click menu.

They have prioritized the content on what people clicked on when they visited the menu, labels have been outlined and easier to understand, and removed some icons so people can see at a glance where they wanted to go.

Next was ‘productivity-inspired new tab design’. Tabs have been redesigned so that they ‘floated neatly’ and added visual indicators, like blocking autoplay videos until you’re ready to visit that tab.

They also detached the tab from the browser to invite you to move, rearrange and pull out tabs into a new window and organize them so they’re easier to find.

Next, ‘we shushed notifications’, they address the overflow of notifications, and if you must be notified it should be eye-catching but not a distraction. They consolidated the panels to allow users to respond quickly and get back to why you were online in the first place.

They specifically reduced some of the frustration and re-prompting associated with getting in and out of Google Meet meetings.

Lastly, ‘fresh, new firefox for IOS’, they state they made key changes to Apple devices. The improved iPhone/iPad has a modernised and optimised UI for Firefox. They reduced the steps to search in a new tab by automatically popping up the keyboard, focusing the ability to quick search with the search engine logo, and adding the append feature.

They also improved navigation around the app with new tab views and moved the synced tabs into the tab tray for easier discoverability. They also refreshed design elements such as iconography and menu items naming are more consistent across desktop Firefox and for Android.

This is based on an analysis of ’17 billion clicks in the Firefox browsers’. Of those clicks, there were three major areas they focused on.

In the tab bar, about 43% of the clicks were on the top portion of the browse. The navigation bar saw 33% of the clicks go to the area below the tab bar where people can move forward, back, refresh and add the URL in the address bar along with other functions.

The bookmark bar saw 5% of the clicks to the section where people bookmark their frequently visited place. Check out more info here.