It’s been public knowledge for a while now that Mozilla intends to provide a uniform interface for Firefox across all platforms. The aim of the Australis project is to ensure that the browser looks and feels the same just about everywhere (as much as possible, anyway), and you can read more at MozillaWiki.

This is no longer just theory, though. Jared Wein, a Software Engineer at Mozilla, has written a blog post with an image of the new Australis design (or the new curvy tab shape, anyway), which he says aims to bring “more customizability in a cleaner and fresher user interface”. And if that’s not enough, he’s also created a test Firefox 16.01 build so that you can view it for yourself.

The build is Windows-only, unfortunately, but comes in two forms: a zip or an installer. Following the links above or below will get you the zip version, but the blog post also links to the installer if you need it.

And on launch you will see the new rounded tab shape. Which is more or less as shown in the design documents which have been released (so no need to feel too left out if you don’t have a Windows system – looking at the grab here gives you more or less the same information).

Still, there’s no doubt the interface is looking good, and we’ll be interested to see how the Australis interface develops in future releases.