Labs/Ideas
(These need to be organized into categories for easier digestion. Ideally, we have a structured format, tags, browseable, searchable, submission date, author and contact info.)
- Idea: Reflect geolocation into the DOM
Initially for mobile browser applications but could be extended for wireless roaming. Imagine going to fandango.com and it already knows what area you are in. Or going to maps.yahoo.com and Yahoo! Maps knows where to start the default map. Advertising can be specific not only to the user, but also to where the user is physically at.
- Idea: Support unwritten/endangered languages for literacy, community-building and research
Most of the world's languages are unwritten, even if there are high literacy rates among the native speakers. Quite commonly though, they are the unifying cultural thread of unique small societies that are marginalized and have very high levels of illiteracy. Unfortunately, literacy and socio-economic development come with assimilation of these groups into larger/dominant ethnic communities and the gradual or rapid loss of their heritage languages.
In some cases (native American languages of California, Aboriginal languages of Australia), languages are moribund: the sociolinguistic forces towards extinction seem unstoppable, and if there are any interested linguistic researchers, their priority is to document as much as they can of the language for posterity, or for drastic revival interventions like Master-Apprentice language programs. In other cases, the languages are still actively used in homes and learned by children but are often restricted to certain social functions while languages of larger communication occupy major social domains. For speakers of some unwritten languages (e.g. in the Philippines or India) there may be 3 or 4 languages of wider communication (1 or 2 regional languages, a national language, and a world language like English), so metadata to identify languages would be important in presenting or editing texts. The One Laptop Per Child initiative is using Gecko to build an interactive environment called Sugar to support education in developing areas where these languages are in use.
- Idea: Presence, attention & tagging
Develop an extension which would show you which of your friends are online, what they're tagging, etc. sort of a combination between IM and tagging.
- xmpp4moz is being used to implement Instant Syndicating
- Idea: Photo Management
Develop experiments in what to build into the user interface to allow easier moving around of pictures/video/etc -- in particular from a user's desktop to the web
- Idea: Clickstream control & Privacy
Offer users ways to give users control and insight into their attention and clickstream. Are users willing to have their clickstream anonymized, aggregated and monetized? "Will you give me your clickstream for a free latte at Starbuck's?"
- Idea: Microformat Detection
Notify presence of of microformats in pages, display metadata about them, etc.
- Idea: Metadata Handler Extension API
Add an API to Firefox that lets core code and extensions register themselves as metadata handlers, get notifications when users load pages containing metadata, and get hooks into the UI for providing capabilities to users (f.e. "email all the people on this page" and "add the people on this page to my address book" for an hCard handler). More details
- Idea: Active identity Management
Ideally we want to be able to switch plugins such as Quicktime that cannot be installed automatically via the update service with software that can.
- Idea: Improve download process
- Metalink bug 331979 (Mirrors and checksums for faster, more reliable downloads)
- Bittorrent support bug 236755 (perhaps code can be taken from AllPeers for this), potentially with HTTP/FTP seeding bug 320251
- Cross-session resumable downloads
- Idea: Gui Improvment - Search Box
clear search box with single click
- Idea: Bookmark Watchlist
set bookmark on watchlist, show message that page has been changed
- Idea: Bookmark Thumbnail
show thumbnail of page in bookmark list
- Idea: Bookmark links checker
mark bookmarks that refer to obsolete pages. combine with watchlist?
- Idea: Mozilla hosted integrated social networking plattform
- mozilla hosted to prevent comercial interests - integrated to make a standard
- Idea: Foaf Detection
- detecting foaf, a RDF based social network as like RSS
- integrated with human bookmark to surf blogs.
- Idea: FoxCard, user-based identity for ID2.0
- integrated existing personal certificate manager and master password to an identity wallet against Microsoft Infocard
- support backup and import/export
- Idea: split browser
a way to split the browser in two browsers (vertically / horizontally)
- Idea: Tab Loading Progress
It would be cool to show the progress of loading tabs, like showing 56% instead (or inside) the rotating circle when the tab is loading.
- Idea: JavaScript Error Notification
It is very helpful for developers to be notified if there is an error in their pages; so a pop up, or a status bar icon that shows the error status would be nice.
- Idea: Save As MHT
Saving all resources of a web page in the same file is very helpful & portable, so adding a 'Save As MHT' would be a great idea.
- Idea: Develop "Official Extensions"
Many features could be re-implemented as "official extensions." Firefox could then deliver broadly useful features (e.g. anti-phishing, spellcheck, search suggestion), but in a removable manner, thus serving as a palliative to those concerned about "bloat."
- Idea: Integrate a preloader into XULRunner/Firefox
It may could be done by an extension but nicer would be to add a commandline argument e.g. --preload. This should be a replacement for the nasty Firefox Preloader for Win32 and should take the Preload-Advantage to all the other Firefox-compatible-OS. The preloading should be optional, but help to speed up the opening of new windows, even if there is no open at the moment(this now requires a start of firefox/xulrunner). The implentation directly in XULRunner might not be good, because much programs may do not work correctly with this featrue(they expect when they main window is opened, the program was just started). See too: Article "Rethink the preloader" at "XhochY english flavoured stories"
