Firefox 3 goes native: Native skins for Vista, XP, and OS X

Filed under: Design, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Open Source

Firefox 3 goes native: Native skins for Vista, XP, and OS X

by Brad Linder Oct 21st 2007

Firefox 3 is going to have a whole bunch of new features, including a new rendering engine and a new way to organize bookmarks. But probably the first thing users will notice is the new skins. And those skins will be designed to integrate smoothly into your operating system.

In fact, as of right now, the proposed Windows Vista skin looks a lot like Internet Explorer's, while the proposed OS X skin is reminiscent of Safari. There will also be two separate sets of Windows icons: one for Vista and another for XP.

Mozilla is also working on a standard theme for Linux, but this is a bit trickier, since there are many different Linux distributions and desktop-styles.

Honestly, it's nice to see the team working on a visual refresh for Firefox 3. But we kind of like the standard Firefox look and feel. We can open Firefox on a Mac, PC, or Linux machine and pretty much know where the menus are without struggling with a new menu system. Of course, most computer users don't find themselves switching back and forth between 3 or more operating systems on a regular basis, so we might just be in the minority here.

Tags: firefox, firefox-3, skins, visual-refresh

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

David Chartier said 10:23PM on 10-21-2007

This is great to hear, as Firefox's UI really sticks out in a bad way on the Mac.

I also hope one of those new features is a better way of handing cache; seeing Firefox gobble up over 1.2GB of Virtual Memory over one or two day's of medium-heavy use is getting old.

Twist said 10:24PM on 10-21-2007

Only problem is it is just a theme. I wish they would just use the system native UI elements so that Firefox would finally play nice with ShapeShifter. Sure Camino on the Mac does that but I am hooked on my Firefox extensions.

kdmurray said 10:24PM on 10-21-2007

I'm glad to see a move like this from the Firefox folks. As an admin in a medium-sized corporation one of the things holding us back from pushing out Firefox to the masses is the reaction of less-technical end-users who wouldn't be able to handle the switch.

If we can put in Firefox and make it look to some degree like Internet Explorer, we won't lose as much productivity to the complaining of exasperated end-users.

michael said 10:26PM on 10-21-2007

I still prefer IE7 over Firefox due to security and speed, but Firefox 3 looks really nice. So far.

Maybe I might switch when it comes out.

Mohammed Nour El-Din said 8:22AM on 10-24-2007

I really like Firefox more than IE. But I guess we all like the standard view of Firefox. We don't need such skins. It may affect Firefox performance.

They need to care more about the memory. Firefox still killing the memory of the machine. They should care about these issues more than skinning.

They also need to make better invest in the RSS reader.

g2g591 said 12:35PM on 11-11-2007

I love the incredible speed up.
Also @ michael:IE more secure than Firefox?! How many drugs are you on!?

Ziggy said 7:05PM on 12-14-2007

I found a firefox 3 concept via flickr, not sure of its authenticity but you can view it at http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2110985971&size=l

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