Sharing more about Project Nova

[rjacob]

Hello everyone!

Many of you have noticed some of the design updates appearing in certain Firefox configurations over the past few months. Internally, we’ve been calling this work Project Nova, and today we’re excited to share a deeper look at what we’ve been building and where we’re heading next.

The goal of this work is to create a more cohesive foundation for Firefox: making the browser feel cleaner, warmer, faster, and more adaptable.

Some of the areas we’re working on include:

• Simpler navigation and a redesigned Settings experience
• Easier access to features like tab groups, split view, and vertical tabs
• The return of Compact Mode
• Refreshed visual updates across tabs, icons, spacing, and browser surfaces
• More customization options, including new themes and wallpapers

The redesign work also focuses heavily on cohesiveness, accessibility, and making Firefox feel more consistent across desktop and mobile experiences.

This work is still evolving, and we want to continue building this in the open with all of you.

As always, let us know what you think below. We’re listening.

[Jon]

Well, we shared more about Project Nova...and collected a lot of great feedback (thanks!)...and now we're ready for you all to take it for a spin in the latest version of Firefox Nightly. 

The team working on Nova just kicked off a new discussion thread with more info on the latest updates and also how to test it - check it out here: Take Project Nova for a spin in Nightly! 

As always, it's a great opportunity to share feedback and interact directly with the Firefox team. Hope to see you all there 😀

[testreeeeee]

I know it would be not easy to implement fast, but Firefox would benefit from:

1. Having ability to optimize screen space as user wants(Think: Compact UI - Standard UI - Touch UI), specifically to make sure that users won't feel like their software using their monitor inefficiently.

2. Add ability to change curves, with option to change curvature of top-right-bottom-left akin to how Vivaldi done it.

3. Option to turn on Liquid Glass-esque effects, that can make browser look nicer and cooler.

[jwolf]

hi 🙂 Thanks so much for your feedback. I know the answers to 2 of the pieces of feedback so I'm going to share. 

1. With Nova we are going to support Compact UI, Standard UI and Touch UI.  We've added UI to select between the options in settings under the appearance area. 

3. We've started to look further in Liquid glass effects. We started to last year but it needs more attention before we're happy with a solution. We want to make sure we support all the platform features while not causing any performance or design issues. 

[MrGoatsy]

Please make it optional. I like the square corners, rounded looks terrible to me.

[pebwindkraft]

exactly, I like rounded corners, cause these stubborn Windows rectangle layout hurt the eyes;-) Ivy won't even loose a word on this crap layout.
Design is a question of "form follows function", and if we let these windows fan boys take over ruling of Firefox layout, **bleep** is pre-programmed. But hey, their problem ...

[initiallytk]

I'm not in love with the perimeter around the app. Am I alone here? It seems like it's there more for aesthetics than functionality, and it's taking up space that's probably not needed. Especially when maximized. But, if it does stay...

On Windows when maximized, I'd love to be able to whip my cursor up to the top-most pixel and be able to drag down and pull the window out of full screen, but the entire perimeter is functionally dead and does nothing on click, drag, or right-click. If the top-most border at least behaved like a title bar and allowed you to move the window around, that'd be a huge help.

EDIT: I just had a non-clickable URL selected and tried to drag and drop it onto the tab bar, but ran into the same issue. Naturally dropped it at the very top, but the top is the dead border now so it did nothing. This is going to take a while to get used to 😔

While I rarely click and drag on scrollbars, having a deadzone to the right of a scrollbar makes it much harder to click on, especially with it being so narrow nowadays. But I think that's probably not a huge issue. Just figured I'd bring it up since it's another drawback to the perimeter.

[TReKiE]

What I'd like to see is more personality in the new look.  For example, the throbber animation in the tab when a page is loading, why not have kit (or just their tail) run/jump across the tab while that's happening and then jumps away when its done loading, or a splash of colour representing a container when you open a new tab container, or anything else that would make the browser distinctly Firefox, and/or give someone a smile when they see it.  Given that you're trying to get users to accept something new, I believe the new look needs to induce these moments of joy to really pay off.