Firefox 157: Could bold new look be just what Mozilla needs?*

Yet another new version of Firefox, with a significant reskin

Firefox 157 is here, but this time, Mozilla is making an unusual amount of noise about this release and its new look.

This release has a new theme called “Nova,” which in the release notes Mozilla calls “Firefox’s biggest visual refresh in years.”

The new theme is the flagship here, and aside from that, the new features in this version are fairly modest. They’re all welcome enough, though. Video calls which use WebRTC – Web Real Time Compression – now use hardware compression,  and a bug which made video appear upside-down has been fixed, along with half a dozen others. The Firefox Suggest feature that tries to guess what you’re looking for now works in 16 more European countries.

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One change that sounds small but which we are pleased to see is that in new tabs or windows, Tab takes you straight to the search box instead of the choose-a-search-engine button (although you can get back to this with Shift+Tab). We suspect this may reduce how often the Reg FOSS desk shouts at his computer in moments of stress. If you navigate to a new page and then immediately start typing, Firefox 157 now waits – it won’t immediately start searching new pages that haven’t fully loaded yet for text.

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The updated sidebar has become more customizable, and there’s an option to disable the new version (which also hides vertical tabs). However, another change may irk those clinging to old ways: the option to show or hide the sidebar has been removed from the Settings screen.

Saying all that, Nova is the star here. There’s even a video advert for it:

This does, admittedly, plug some Firefox features that we suspect may win Mozilla new users more effectively than a skin, such as enhanced privacy, less snooping, and the global AI off-switch. We really don’t think that a new look with more rounded buttons and tabs is what Chrome users are looking for, and we’re irresistibly reminded of Mozilla’s 2013 launch of its new, more rounded, Australis theme. That was so unpopular that it motivated the fork that created Palemoon and Basilisk.

This jaded old curmudgeon can’t see much difference: it looks very similar to us, except for a very faint violet-purple tinge, and visibly more-rounded tabs. A welcome change is that the toolbar customization dialog once again offers “Compact” as a layout density – we did miss that.

Some Brits, and notably Welsh readers, may notice the Firefox logo somewhere new: Mozilla is now sponsoring Wrexsham AFC. Wrexham is, apparently, the third oldest football club in the world.

The new sponsorship deal reflects some significant changes at Wrexham Association Football Club since 2020. It is owned by two 49-year-old actors from North America: American Robert Dale McElhenney III, AKA Rob Mac, and Canadian Ryan Reynolds. Yes, that Ryan Reynolds. We knew we liked him for a reason, and his self-description on Linkedin is a good example:

“My skills include writing, re-writing, tweeting, mixing cocktails, backend engineering for software platforms and watching lower-tier Welsh football matches. Proficiency ranges from excellent to absolutely awful.”

Reg FOSS desk is not a sports fan, and for this vulture, Wrexham is more famous for beer than football. It’s the home of Wrexham Lager, which was arguably Britain’s first lager and is today the oldest lager beer still brewed in Britain. It turns out that Wrexham Lager also sponsors Wrexham AFC as well, and since 2024 the brewer has been owned by… none other than the same two 49-year-old North American actors.

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So there you go. Perhaps they should have gone with "Firefox is Deadpool’s preferred web browser," or something along those lines. Perhaps that would persuade the Chrome users to check it out?

At the time of writing there’s no corresponding version of Thunderbird yet.

Bootnote:

* We are intentionally invoking Betteridge’s Law in the title of this story.

Also, our editor insisted that we call it “football”, rather than “soccer” to distinguish it from the game of handegg. ®