Introducing Snowl
Christopher Beard
Conversing (a.k.a. messaging) is a common online activity, and a
number of desktop and web applications enable it. But with an
increasing variety of protocols and providers, it’s getting harder and
harder to keep track of all your conversations.
Could the web browser help you follow and participate in online
discussions?
Snowl is an experiment to answer that question. It’s a prototype
Firefox extension that integrates messaging into the browser based on
a few key ideas:
1. It doesn’t matter where messages originate. They’re alike,
whether they come from traditional email servers, RSS/Atom feeds, web
discussion forums, social networks, or other sources.
2. Some messages are more important than others, and the best
interface for actively reading important messages is different from
the best one for casually browsing unimportant ones.
3. A search-based interface for message retrieval is more powerful
and easier to use than one that makes you organize your messages first
to find them later.
4. Browser functionality for navigating web content, like tabs,
bookmarks, and history, also works well for navigating messages.
Read more and install the prototype at http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-snowl/