Firefox 4 design gets updated. Possibilities ensue…

If you had to pick a favorite browser, which one would it be: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera…..Internet Explorer? Apparently the answer to that question is increasingly becoming Firefox. Over the last several quarters, Firefox has been gaining ground on the old giant (IE) so much so that according to recent reports, Firefox now commends more marketshare than IE7 — no small feat. Naturally, a browser that is growing larger by the day would obviously attract some attention concerning a freshened face.

An updated UI to Firefox is far from a surprise. For many, the upcoming Firefox 3.7 was a beacon to a beautified appearance. Although, numerous statements from Mozilla have pushed the full on UI overhaul further down the road for the herald 4.0 release. Even though 3.7 isn’t even here yet, many are anxious to see what a revamped Firefox would look like. Mozilla contributor Stephen Horlander shares many of our interests and as such, has made a few design mock-ups of the Firefox 4 (Windows) layout public on his personal blog.

A quick glance will draw most readers’ eyes to the (almost always) orange tab/button popping up in various forms along the header of the mock-up images. The button will reportedly hold all of Firefox’s “action menus” and allow some customization on the user’s end as well.

These updated UI shots are pretty good looking in my opinion and show what is a simple yet “different enough” update to keep Firefox fresh in the years to come. How do you rate the Firefox 4 UI update so far?

You can check out more info at Stephen Horlander’s personal blog, though you may have to wait awhile as currently his site is getting hammered and returning database connection errors.

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