Mozilla's new baby, Snowl, is an experimental project that the company hopes will allow users to gather all their inbound communications, from email to Twitter posts, in one place for easy management. The new feature, which is currently in a very basic form, is designed to fit neatly with Mozilla's much-loved Firefox web browser and make way for seamless web browsing and message administration without needing to switch between the two.
In a recent blog post, Mozilla outlines the big question on its mind: is it possible for a web browser to help users follow and continue their online discussions?
Snowl is the experimental answer. The new prototype integrates Firefox and messaging functionality based on key issues that Mozilla have drafted up. The company intends to develop Snowl so that it collects messages from all of the services you use - whether it's email, SMS, social networks online forums, RSS feeds... you get the idea.
These messages will be organised by importance, switching interfaces accordingly based on what type of message it's dealing with. This will differentiate between important messages and more casual browsing-related ones.
The Snowl interface will allow you to search through your messages without requiring you to organise them first, which allows for a more powerful service that's easier to navigate.
Finally, the functionality that Firefox is renowned for will transfer to Snowl, meaning that the ease Firefox users can navigate through web content using functions such as history, bookmarks and tabs will also apply to messages.
Currently, Mozilla is looking for feedback from the initial user experience of its current release. The blog team warn that "the initial prototype is a primitive implementation with many bugs, and subsequent versions will include changes that break functionality and delete all your messages, making you start over from scratch."
The current release is available for download from the Mozilla addons site and functions with Firefox 3.
It'll be interesting to see how Snowl develops. Already the programme has generated a lot of interest, with many Firefox users asking questions and giving suggestions to the company for improvement. As is Mozilla's style, it's likely that the future of Snowl is bright. This bigmouth can certainly see Snowl developing into precisely the messaging tool that Mozilla envisages it as, making Firefox even more indispensable than it already is and further legitimizing Mozilla's aims to take over the digital world
