http://www.itproportal.com/oss/news/article/2009/4/16/firefox-drop-support-windows-2000-introduce-new-ui/Amidst reports of the forthcoming release of the fourth iteration of Firefox 3.5 Beta next week, several rumours have emerged about the long terms plans of Mozilla for the open source browser.
The next beta version of Firefox will include the much-improved TraceMonkey Javascript engine and could come out as early as April 22nd according to sources. The original Firefox 3.0 was introduced 10 months ago.
But future versions of Firefox could well use radically different interfaces compared to the current version.
According to Readwriteweb, one of the most interesting updates under consideration would be the possibility to switch between vertical and horizontal tabs.
This would mean having an interface similar to iTunes - or indeed Windows Explorer Classic edition - with a slim vertical bar on the left and a main frame occupying the majority of the screen.
The switch to a change in the layout arose because of the increasing number of tabs being opened by internet users as browsers are increasingly being used as working environments rather than simple internet applications.
There are also rumours concerning Mozilla's support for old versions of Windows especially Windows 2000 since it doesn't include the UxTheme API.
Computerworld reports that Mozilla developers and executives are considering eliminating support for Windows 2000, XP SP1 and SP2 in the 2010 edition of Firefox's browser.
