Home Tab: The Future Firefox

There’s nothing that excites me more than a great open source project that innovates. Nothing, that is, except for a an open source project that leans on the community for innovation. So what do we get when both are combined? Mozilla announced the “Home Tab design Challenge” recently. It’s open to all, and it’s goal is to create a new, fresh and intelligent home page for the next version of Firefox (Firefox 4). But what is it about, and what’s the “home tab” anyway?

Mozilla is taking act on the several innovations that have been popping up these last years in interface design, and they’re taking act. According to the last Firefox 4 mockups from a developer, the interface will slightly ape Google Chrome’s as well as one feature from Office 2007. First of all, the tabs-on-top configuration is likely to take over. Secondly, Mozilla will be adding an “app button” that will group all of Firefox’s most common actions. Some other ideas, like a progress bar sitting on top of the browsers’ tabs, that the blog post doesn’t talk about are also features in the mockup (below).

Firefox 4 Mockup

But the real innovation may be yet to come. The “Challenge” proposed by Mozilla has the goal of creating the content of the “home tab”, an entire new concept that will be introduced with Firefox 4. It’s now the users turn to tell the developer what they need.

So you’re bored now that you’ve received your Christmas presents? Why not have a go a that challenge? The next Firefox may have a bit of you in it.

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Thumbnail credit: Arjan Menger

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