Firefox’s new Australis redesign looks an awful lot like Chrome

Mozilla’s new Australis interface is moving along in the Firefox development process and is on track for widespread release in either Firefox 29 or 30. Aurora is what Mozilla calls the pre-beta version of future Firefox releases. The Aurora version of Firefox 29 will turn to beta in mid-march and then become a final release on April 29. Firefox 30 is scheduled for a final release on June 10. Australis could end up in either one of those.

This has been a long time in the making, but after almost three months of testing in the highly experimental Firefox Nightly release channel, Firefox’s new Australis user interface has now found its way into the pre-beta Aurora channel. The new user interface, which the company has been working on for a long time, gives the browser a more Chrome-like look. As in Chrome, the settings and options are now behind the same kind of drawer menu next to the URL bar as in Google’s browser and rounded tabs at the top of the screen. These similarities with Chrome is likely the first thing users will notice. Indeed, if you quickly switch back and forth between the two, you’ll likely get confused about which one is which.