Mozilla is said to be preparing a radical design overhaul of its popular Firefox browser, which will eventually lead to a new and (we hope) improved browsing experience for all of its users. TechCrunch recently had an inside peek at what we can expect from Mozilla as they attempt to change the face of their web browser in the coming months.

According to TechCrunch, the redesigned browser will be the result of an ongoing project called “Australis“, the fruits of which will soon be seen in Firefox’s release channel, beginning with an update known as “Nightly” once version 25 of the browser arrives (we’re at version 21 right now). For now, there’s a beta version of the new browser available to download – try it if you wish, but don’t blame us if it don’t work properly.

So what’s going to change? Well, from what we’ve seen from the screenshots and from TechCrunch, it looks as if Firefox’s designers are attempting to make the whole thing more simplistic to use. They’re also making it look a lot more like the Google Chrome browser, which may horrify some users – as you can see from the screenshot, the new ’rounded’ tabs are identical to those seen in Chrome, something that could even suggest Firefox might be dropping its Gecko rendering engine for that of WebKit, although this is just speculation.

Aside from the design, Firefox is going for a highly customizable approach. The designers’ goal seems to be to allow users to customize the browser almost entirely to their own liking, by removing the various aspects of the interface that they dislike or never use. In addition, there should be more ways to add features too, for example easier access to social media and web apps. In fact, we’ve already seen some of the new changes in the current iteration of Firefox – the new download manager and the combined stop/load/reload button are all the result of the Project Australis designer’s work.

“Maybe we shouldn’t even call it a browser anymore,” Mozilla’s Jonathan Nightingale said in an interview with TechCrunch. “‘Browser’ is really an antiquated word. People don’t really browse all that much anymore.”

Firefox’s redesign comes as NetMarketShare reports that it’s actually gaining market share in the never ending browser wars between it, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. According to The Next Web, which published the data, Firefox is now used by 20.63% of all web users, moving up from the stable one-fifth-of-the-market share its occupied for years. IE remains the most popular choice with 55.99%, while Google Chrome remains third with a 15.77% share, though of course this is all speculation according to some sources.

Mozilla hasn’t said when the final release of the new Firefox will be ready, but TechCrunch speculates that it won’t arrive until October at the earliest.