However, this whole concept of GUI is no more restricted to Operation Systems, things are moving into other softwares as well. The new release of Adobe Creative Suite 4 refines the look and feel of softwares. And then there are browsers like Opera which are not just advanced functionally, but are also eye cady with a little bit of creativity.

Firefox has not been behind. the concept of themes in Firefox came much earlier and you could make your favorite browser look amazingly eye candy. However, Firefox is no more dependent on themes to be eye candy. There are already plans of integrating 3D wall feature in next release of Firefox 3.1. However, with a small extension you can still achieve this.

The extension is called as FoxTab and makes your tabs look beautiful. Following is the description of FoxTab from the official web site.

FoxTab is a Firefox extension that provides a new fascinating and elegant method for tabs management in the browser.

FoxTab applies to the concept that surfing the web should be easy and fun, so with it’s innovative eye candy interface, now anyone can quickly and easily manage, locate, and switch between tabs in a convenient visual appealing way.

There are 5 layouts which you can choose from:

Stack – Tabs are 3D-stacked one behind the other.
Wall – Tabs are displayed on a wall (similar to a TV store).
Grid – Tabs are aligned on a grid.
Row – Tabs are arranged horizontally.
Circle – Tabs are placed around a 3D circle.

Following is a video of FoxTab.

Mozilla has released a new beta version of it’s popular Firefox. Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 has been released and is up for grab here. You can download the version for both Linux and Windows by navigating to the relevant category. I think they have some issues with the “What’s new Page” because it’s a 404 page. Actually, it was the case till yesterday when I downloaded and installed it but today the page seems to be up and is pretty neat.

Let’s see what are the improvements which have been incorporated in the new Firefox

• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• Ctrl+Tab 3D interface: A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to. Use CTRL+Tab to check the new tab navigation feature.

• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search. A complete guide about this feature can be found here.
• Faster JavaScript: It supports faster javascript due to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. This feature however is not enabled by default. You have to enable it by following the steps below:
  1. Open about:config in your browser and click I’ll be careful I promise button.
  2. Paste javascript.options.jit.content into the filter box.
  3. Double-click and set the boolean to true.
• GeoLocation: In the previous version of firefox you had to install Geode extension to get this feature working. But in the new beta release this feature has been made native. The purpose of this feature is to get information from web sites based on your location.

We are however yet to see the Privacy browsing mode and the much talked about “New Session Restore“. You might want to check out this post for more on the technical features for web developers which come with the new version.