The world of tech journalism is a strange place. There are tons of paradoxes that permeate throughout, such is life and the case with Mozilla Firefox’s supposed tablet redesign. Right now, the Firefox user interface on tablets is the exact same as the UI on smartphones, just scaled up. That kind of stinks, especially when it’s thebest web browser on Android phoneshands-down, in our opinion. Conflicting reports have appeared in recent days regarding whether Mozilla is actually working on a tablet redesign or not. It seems like the answer is, quietly, yes.
First, a timeline of events is necessary to understand where the confusion comes from. Almost two weeks ago, a user left a review on Google Play’s Firefox storefront complaining about the lacking Android tablet UI. Mozilla responded, saying that its team would “love to invest more in optimizing the browser for tablet devices” but that “the team’s focus is directed towards higher priority items on the product roadmap.” This was posted toReddit(viaSamMobile).
German reporterSören Hentzschel dug a little deeper, and it seems like the reactions from that Google Play review response didn’t hold much substance. In his research, he found that a Mozilla employee commented on Bugzilla, saying that the Mozilla team hopes to“make more concrete progress on more robust tablet behavior”in the first half of 2024. So, it seems that the Firefox experience on tablets is definitely being worked on, even if it’s not a high priority.
Last week, a new Mozilla prototype patch was posted onGitHub, and it contains a modification to the tablet version of Firefox in it. Using the code available on GitHub, Hentzschel was able to put together a demonstration video of how the tablet UI looks in its current form. As you can see in the video above, it’s clearly not just a scaled-up version of the phone app anymore.
Google Chrome is a great web browser on both mobile and desktop devices, and it’s used more than any other browser on each platform. However, we don’t think it’s the best due to its status as a resource hog and its “just okay” security. Additionally, Firefox on Android just got bolstered recently withsupport for extensions that work on desktop versions of Firefox. Because of that,there’s never been a better time to switch to Firefox, at least on smartphones. One day, when the tablet version of Firefox actually comes to fruition, we’ll be first in line to update the app.
