Firefox for Android 14.0 arrives with new UI, improved performance

After teasing "Something BIG" late last week, Mozilla has now launched version 14.0 of Firefox for Android, a major update to the open source mobile web browser. Described as "a snappy and dynamic upgrade" by its developers, the new release improves the browser's overall performance while also updating its user interface (UI) and adding features.

One of the first things existing users will notice in 14.0 is a completely redesigned UI with a new "Awesome Screen". Unlike previous versions of Firefox for Android, the browser now uses Android's native UI elements to provide "a fresh, streamlined look"; past releases have used XUL, an XML-based language that is interpreted by the Gecko rendering engine.

The Awesome Screen replicates the functionality of the "Awesome Bar" from the desktop version and supports Firefox Sync, allowing users to synchronise their browsing history, bookmarks, passwords and form data from other Firefox instances to their Android device. The personalised start page includes a user's most visited sites and the open tabs from the last time they used the browser. When searching using Google, all queries are now sent in encrypted form by default using the HTTPS protocol; this means that all traffic between the web site and the browser is secured using SSL encryption.