(Multi)Design Spotlight: Mozilla

With the launch of Firefox 3, Mozilla redesigned all of their sites (save for the Mozilla Foundation at Mozilla.org). As usual, their designs are clean and usable, and they have the signature “Mozilla Look” that they’ve had since the Firefox project took off. Let’s take a look at some of the new pages.

The New Navigation Bar

Mozilla’s site-wide navigation bar has changed a bit, though it retains the blue coloration. It’s smoother and more “plasticy,” and I think it’s a bit of an improvement, though I think it would look better if it had 100% width like its predecessor.

Mozilla Navigation Bar

Mozilla.com

Mozilla.com

Well, it looks a bit…different. The big download button is still there, and so is the big Firefox logo, but the new background image certainly is different. I kind of like the “tube” theme (it’s that “the internet is a series of tubes” meme again…), and the graphic style sort of reminds me of the artwork frequently seen in the PCWorld magazine. It doesn’t look bad, though it may take some getting used to for some people.

I like the way they’ve done the footer:

Mozilla.com Footer

It’s a little hard to see here, but the white page background runs down to a “torn paper” edge that transitions into the light brown footer. The links are layed out decently, and overall it’s a good “Big Footer.”

Spread Firefox

I really like the new Spread Firefox site.

Spread Firefox Design

The header is a nice orange (a very underrated color on the web) with Mac OSX-like swooshes in the background. The boxes look good. Overall, they did a good job at packing a lot of information onto the page wihout making it look crowded. I like the tabbed navigation too.