Early mockups published by Mozilla watcher Sören Hentzschel provide an initial look at a potential new design direction for Firefox, internally called “Nova.” The images present a concept Mozilla is currently exploring, though development is in its early stages and no release has been announced.
For reference, Firefox has seen several major interface overhauls, including Australis in 2014, Photon in 2017, and Proton in 2021. Now, five years after the last such, Nova may represent the next evolution in visual design, but it remains an internal concept at this stage.
A key feature of the Nova mockups is the prominent use of rounded shapes throughout the interface. Tabs, the address bar, and the navigation toolbar are noticeably more rounded than in the current Firefox UI. The top section of the browser combines the tab bar and navigation controls into a single rounded container, rather than separate elements.
This design language is applied throughout the interface. Elements like the sidebar launcher, start page components, and the content area of web pages are all shown within rounded containers. Compared to the current flat surfaces, the concept offers a softer and more cohesive visual style.
Regarding color scheme, some mockups use subtle gradients instead of single-color surfaces, often favoring violet tones. However, the accent color may depend on the selected theme or user settings, as other examples show a mint-colored start page with matching UI elements.
The screenshots also show how the design could support vertical tabs, a feature Mozilla is actively developing. The mockups include a visible compact mode option. While Firefox still supports compact interface density, it is currently hidden behind a configuration preference and not officially available in settings. Including a dedicated option in the mockups suggests Mozilla may restore official support for this layout.
Other images display the interface in both light and dark themes, along with examples of the Firefox menu and private browsing windows. One screenshot shows two tabs displayed side by side, highlighting another feature in development.
Once again – despite the detailed mockups, Nova is not a confirmed upcoming Firefox release. These visuals represent internal design explorations that may change significantly before implementation or may never reach stable builds.
However, a quick check references to “Project Nova” appear in Mozilla’s public Bugzilla tracker, where several development tickets reference UI refinements and onboarding redesign work tied to the project, which largely confirms that work has begun in this direction.
For more details and early views of Firefox’s Nova vision, refer to the original post on Hentzschel’s blog. Please note that the post is in German.
Image credits: Sören Hentzschel
Just Stop with the round corners …..
More CPU cycles wasted on drawing fancy tabs and curved buttons, if only Mozilla would work on the browser engine making it more compatible with websites that work better on chrome.
Beautiful! 🙂
ewww say what u will about chrome but there is a reason firefox struggles for market share . i assure it this redesing doesnt help their cause
This new style of design scares me, please keep the circles far away
Surprisingly I really like this
Mozilla developers… please make the scroll bar bigger!
I hated “new” scrollbars when they changed system’s, for a while some workarounds worked but now I just use:
about:config
widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style = 1
and
widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled = false
layout.css.scrollbar-width-thin.disabled = false (prohibit some sites to try to force it thinner)
it is terrible when page size isn’t visible and it isn’t simple to catch and drag scrollbar on a large pages when mouse wheel is to far from comfortable use
there are also some suggestions to use style 4 then widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override also works but it looks awful
BTW: there is a clear example on the provided screenshot, displayed page is obviously doesn’t fit into screen space but no scrollbars displayed and it isn’t clear how the will fit into this design with awful tabs (are they still called tabs? tabs on previous design where rounded and good as I remember, current “page selectors” look more rude)…
people still use the scrollbar? jk . I guess i never think about it since I use the scroll wheel on my mouse.
I also mostly scroll with my touchpad (external for desktop).
But, sometimes I need to grab the scrollbar to get something into focus starting at a specific line, and it’s not possible with the mouse or touchpad scroll to be this precise.
It’s also sometimes faster to grab the bar directly and go to a determined point way below or above when web page is really long (wikipedia for instance).
Having a Logitech Static Mouse the scrolling action works only on Windows.
🙁
I use to have a trackball mouse a year or so ago also that worked on ubuntu without issue. I stopped using it since I got tire of using trackball. It was a cheaper brand then logitech.
maybe by a new mouse i have 3 really cheap blueooth mice and scrolling works on all of them with ubuntu. I never knew that some mice did not work correctly on linux.I also have a wired mouse that works without issues.
Sharp corners scare me.
Way too rounded corners scare me.