Firefox 4.0, early screenshots

It's been less than a month ago that Mozilla released version 3.5 of their all popular browser, Mozilla Firefox. Now the compony is looking into Firefox 4.0. Right now the compony is struggeling to choose between the tabs-on-bottom and tabs-on-top (similar to Google Chrome) designs. Mozilla highlighted the following pros and cons for the tabs-on-top design:

 

Positives:
- Save Vertical Space
- Efficiency/Remove Visual Complexity – Right now the tabs have to be connected to something. So we are adding an extra visual element for them to connect to.
- Shorter Mouse Distance to Page Controls

Negatives:
- Breaks Consistency/Familiarity – Moving things confuses existing users.
- Title is MIA – With the space removed from the titlebar you only get the truncated version in the tab.
- Longer Mouse Distance to Tabs – Takes longer to mouse to a tab.
- Lost Space – Sandwiched in between the application icon and the window widgets you lose some space.

 

Screenshots