An early look at Firefox OS's upcoming looks and features (pictures)

A year from now, Mozilla's mobile operating system will look very different -- and it'll work differently, too. Here's a preview of coming attractions.

Stephen Shankland

Feb. 23, 2014 5:20 p.m. PT

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Future Firefox OS task switching

Mozilla showed off a preview of the new version of its Firefox OS mobile operating system at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. One big change is in switching among tasks, where you can slide your finger in from the left or right edge of the screen to leaf through the apps like pages.

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Future Firefox OS interface

One of the biggest changes coming to Firefox OS in the next year will be a unified search mechanism that leads users to content on the phone, on the Web, or to the Web-based applications Firefox OS runs. It starts off as a small label at the top of the screen showing what app is running or Web page is open.

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Future Firefox OS universal search

When you pull down a little bit from the top of the universal search bar, it expands into a more spacious view into which you can type search queries. Pulling down even farther invokes a status bar -- not the Android-like notification bar in today's Firefox OS.

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Firefox OS will predict what letter you're likely to type next and make the tap target for that letter larger -- invisibly -- to try to improve typing accuracy.

Future Firefox OS: Notifications from the bottom

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Future Firefox OS: Notifications from the bottom

The notifications screen now is reached by dragging up from the bottom of the screen.

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Firefox OS multitasking options

A long-distance pull down from the top of the screen shows tasks if you want to switch from one app to another. It can also be reached with a long press on the home button, a feature in today's Firefox OS.