I like it, but I'm seeing some serious similarities to chrome. If I had not seen this announcement and I quickly glanced at those screenshots, I would not think it was Firefox.

Does it matter?

Not really. I do think it makes sense as a design. I'm just saying it looks like chrome to me and I think a lot of other users will think similarly.

i like the big menu better than the chrome menu. less confusing. and tech users dont care about it since they use regular menus ;)

yes but believe it or not, the new firefox UI/UX has been in the works for so long and chrome's development so quick that it seems like firefox was inspired by chrome when in fact that didn't happen

I'm a Firefox developer and I don't think this is true. As far as I know, most of the key elements of the Firefox 29 theme redesign emerged after the last major UI redesign (Firefox 4) was released in 2011.

Can I ask you why Mozilla removed so many useful customisation options for australis?

has this new firefox UI been "in the works" since 2008?

because several features of those images are even similar to the first version of chrome

Pretty good. A small tutorial or help page in game would go a long way though... plenty of users will install without thoroughly reading the description.

They call it "open", then turn around and charge ~$50 to access the web-browser version of the sim for a year? Doesn't feel very open to me.

I recognize just how important C. elegans is to neural/bio research, and how ambitious the project probably is. I just think this would be so much cooler if they were offering it to all curious minds free of charge.

They need to spend money on infrastructure/raw power for the interactive worm sims simulation.

The code is open, so I guess that means you can host your own version if you'd like?

It does look like they're providing their results for free.[1]

That makes a lot more sense. You're paying to host the virtual "organism", not paying for the sim itself.

[1] http://www.openworm.org/downloads.html