Mozilla Unveils Aurora Concept Browser

Barence writes "Mozilla has unveiled a spectacular new concept browser, dubbed Aurora. The bleeding-edge browser is part of a new Mozilla Labs initiative, in which the open-source foundation is encouraging people to contribute ideas and designs for the browser of the future. The Aurora browser demonstration shows a highly advanced way of collaborating data gathered on the web, and represents a spectacular introduction to the new Mozilla Labs, which much like Google Labs looks to become a home for offbeat projects which would otherwise probably never see the light of day. More details, and a video demonstration, are on the Mozilla Labs site."

Comments

Re:The future of Firefox is MSIE?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Ugh. I really hope they figure out threading. Right now web2.0 is like windows3.11 level multitasking-- One site or plugin starts to eat all of your resources and until you manage to close it or it fixes itself you can't use any of your other (web)apps.

Organization = disorganization?

[e2d2]

What is with this new desktop "paradigm" I keep seeing everywhere from this new browser to the new multi-touch displays? Where everything is disorganized and you simply wander through everything tossing it out of the way like looking through your dirty clothes hamper for a clean set of underwear. Call me old fashioned but I like hierarchical data and tree structures.

I understand it's just a concept, but seeing this type of thing everywhere has me wonder who exactly is doing usability and what they are smoking because I want some.

Re:Organization = disorganization?

[Ramirozz]

Yes, why to add all these effects and nice looking,sci-fi movie-like widgets and features if most users around the world do not know what bookmarks or tags are? We, technical people, are used to learn new stuff quick even if it is not 100% usefull. Mozilla needs to remember there is still a gap between technology and users. Internet is very young and there is a lor of people who only uses the address bar... that's all they need. I do understand all these are concepts but I'm not sure if all this "Minority Report" tools are the way to go. Usability is not fashion

Re:Organization = disorganization?

[jollyreaper]

Except Gmail encourages you to use tags, which are functionally no different to folders/directories if you just use one.

It's marginally easier to put many tags on one file as opposed to creating one file and then all the shortcuts you want in different folders as they apply. People just don't understand shortcuts. At one job, we had a big bunch of marketing cruft in a folder, 30gb of videos, pictures, etc. So and so would want that stuff in their personal folder and sure enough, they'd copy and paste. Management refused to let us set size limits on folders and so it would be a constant cycle of losing drive space, looking for the new offender, explaining how shortcuts work, making shortcuts for them, then watching some other idiot make the same mistake, then going back to the first idiot who forgot everything you told them making the mistake all over again. And any time we tried to put restrictions on things management would order them removed.

I'm of the opinion that if you can't let someone do something bad, then you won't end up being angry they did it. If people demonstrate they won't listen to instructions like "stay away from the angry bear" and management refuses to let you put the bear in a cage, you shouldn't be responsible for maulings. Doesn't work that way, though.

there is no browser

[KatTran]

This is just the release of part 1 of a 4 part series showing a mock-up of what a future browser might look like. There is no code, there is no browser, this is vapor-ware at its finest. Additional Adaptive Path, the people who made the video, are throwing a party to celebrate their release of the video.

When did software development turn into movie producing?

Re:there is no browser

[hansamurai]

Well, software development is not just code, there's also requirements gathering and design, among others. I'm not saying Adaptive Path didn't jump the gun, but the coding part is easy enough with excellent developers, design, and communication.

Re:All in a name

[byolinux]

Ask them to change.

Re:Sombody please tag this story!

[ShieldW0lf]

Looks like a tornado touched down and sent all the guys bookmarks spiraling into a huge disorganized mess. Overwhelmingly craptastic is how I would describe it. I really find this push on all sides to transform my computer from a deterministic machine to a non-deterministic one rather disturbing. I think these are the sorts of tools that, used habitually, will make a person intellectually pliable and mentally deficient. Sabotage the persons capacity to organize their shit, teach them to fuzzy search everything and accept what they receive, throw some corporate propaganda in there to make a few bucks on the side. No one really knows what the computer is going to spit out this time, so they'll accept it. Brawndo, it's got what plants crave...

Not especially well-received by the Internet

[JayDiggity]

Echoing other comments seen around the web...

• Holy crap, look at all that clutter! Icons everywhere!
• Not only that, but none of the icons have text in case someone forgets what one of the thousand icons means.
• What the heck is up with that 3-D mouse? Is Mozilla supposed to invent that?
• Isn't this just a fancier way to copy-paste a link over Skype and initiate a voice chat with them?
• This can't possibly just be a Mozilla project. You'd need a whole new OS!
• Radial menus may work sometimes, but four unlabeled cloverleaves with 5 tiny unlabeled dots that don't reveal their function unless you hover over them?
• The only worthwhile thing there is turning numbers into graphs. So Mozilla just needs to merge with OpenOffice or something.

who's the target audience?

[speedtux]

I can't figure out who this is supposed to be for.

My parents and family would be thoroughly confused by it, as would likely be most other "normal" users.

As a power users, I'm not sure this helps me either. I don't want icons "drifting away" from me, and it doesn't seem to make anything I do any faster.

Uhh oh...

[ProppaT]

I can just see it now. The girlfriend (replace with "mom" for the typical slashdot user) sits down at the computer and opens up Aurora. All of a sudden she's swept with a tornado of porn, bizarro internet videos, bookmarked pictures of her hot friends on myspace, etc. Thought that changing the name of those bookmarks to "email" and "lolcatz" was enough security? Not any more, buddy...