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Mozilla Corp. is nearing a release of the first beta of Firefox 3.0, which is several months behind schedule, making a final version of the open-source browser this year unlikely. Mozilla’s schedule for Firefox 3.0 pegged Beta 1’s debut as July 31, with second beta in September and the final before the end of the year. That, however, was when it predicted only six alpha versions; so far, Firefox has run through eight.


The next generation of Mozilla Firefox browser has gone through a heavy visual makeover. Software isn’t just about functionality anymore, users want brains and beauty. And beauty, as we know, is in the eye of the beholder, which is why the team behind Firefox 3 plans to ditch the unified cross-platform look of the browser in favor of a sexier look tailored to specific operating systems.Rather than a single look across all platforms, which is the way Firefox currently ships, Firefox 3 will feature different skins for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and various Linux distributions. With so many Linux distributions available, most of which ship with different themes, work on customizing Firefox for Linux is still in the planning stages.

While most people will welcome a Firefox that fits the look and feel of their OS, there are some downsides. To a certain extent Firefox may lose a bit of brand identity since it won’t look the same on every OS, but Faaborg isn’t worried about that because he says Firefox’s identity comes more through its features than its interface. Alex Faaborg, Mozilla’s interface designer points out that when Firefox 1.0 shipped, most responses centered around tabbed browsing and add-on capabilities, not the appearance of the icons.

Screenshots and mockups that Faaborg has posted show that the team is already hard at work. The differences in some cases are subtle, for instance, the two Windows themes use different icons and color palettes to reflect the “plastic” look in XP and the “shiny” look of Vista.