A few weeks ago I was part of a small team of Firefox designers, researchers, and product managers who brainstormed what the future of the web browser might look like.
We came up with some crazy ideas, but here are a couple of conceptual projects that I think we can do right now:
“The end of URLs”
The goal of this project would be to try to move Web browsers passed their current reliance on URLs. Desktop operating systems used to rely on the command line, but then moved to icon-based GUIs. To access an application, you clicked on an icon. To access a document, you clicked on an icon. As the web begins to split into “web applications” and traditional content-based sites, there are things we can learn from desktop’s transition from the command line.
Reliance on search is an option, but that still goes through a third-party service. The main challenge for a URL-less web is the need for a unique identifier. The user simply cannot type “Facebook” because there could be a Facebook.com, Facebook.org, Facebook.me, etc. Mobile devices have already *mostly* solved this problem. There can only be one “Facebook” application in the iOS app store or the android market.
This project would explore what a “web browser” would look like without URLs, or at least without them readily accessible. As mentioned above, the first challenge would be to solve the “unique identifier” problem.
“TiVo for the web”
The web is increasingly becoming the best source for breaking news. Even traditional news outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc are starting to change the content on their landing pages several dozen times a day.
But what if you do not keep up with the 24-hour news cycle? What happens if you go out of town and big news breaks? The answer used to be that a pile of newspapers would be waiting for you on your doorstep. But what is the “pile of newspapers” for web-based news?
The goal of this project would be to create a system that would allow you to “roll back” a content-based website to a previous hour, day, month, or even year. This functionality “somewhat” exists with the web archive project, but it is far from an approachable user interface. I’m calling this project “TiVo for the Web” because it should be as easy to use as a TiVo remote.
“Companion Mode”
What happens when Firefox on your phone gets close to Firefox on your laptop? Today nothing at all happens, we treat them as though nothing has changed. What might Firefox look like when the interface is spread across several screens or devices? Content on one screen and controls on the other? Full browser on one screen and videos and photos on the other? These are some of the concepts we can explore in this project.