Firefox OS is still very young and about to endure something of a growth spurt. In the coming months Mozilla’s fledgling mobile platform will see a pretty dramatic reinvention of its UI. A core piece of that reinvention is EverythingMe, a contextual search interface that delivers results from the phone and the web simultaneously. Pulling down slightly from the title/address bar will open the search dialog that doubles as an application launcher.
Big changes are coming to Firefox OS over the next year as Mozilla moves the browser-based operating system away from its current Android-style functioning. At the Mobile World Congress show here Sunday, the nonprofit organization showed what’s in store for its mobile OS. Much of it’s about the interface changes — notifications, task switching, app discovery, search. “With the new model, we’re really simplifying and making what we think is the ultimate browsing experience,” Josh Carpenter, the user experience leader for Firefox OS, said at a press event. Browsing on Firefox OS means a lot more than just opening Web pages: Because all apps are built with Web technology, Mozilla counts anything on a Firefox OS phone as browsing. Swiping from the edges, as in Windows 8 touch-screen devices, becomes key in the new operating system.