14 DAY TRIAL // Tabs have without a doubt revolutionized website navigation. Long gone are the times of one webpage per browser instance, but this does not mean that the tab concept fails to leave room for additional improvement. Such an evolution scenario is explored by Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, looking to take Firefox tabs to a new level. A new standard of functionality for the tabs of the open source browser is of course synonymous with new end user experiences and enhancements in flexibility and productivity.
"I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to design interfaces at scale. The amount of time saved when the tasks we do often are streamlined is staggering when multiplied by a quarter of a billion users. At the moment, I'm interested in what we can streamline in the new-tab workflow. Right now, when you open a new tab, you get a blank screen. While clean, it has a 100% probability of not getting you where what you want to be. While it's good to not intimidate with an explosion of information, we can get a much more streamlined workflow-thereby saving huge amounts of aggregate time-by showing something. The question is, "What?"," Raskin explained.
The perspective is that at this point in time a newly opened tab is simply a vehicle, an intermediary stage to an action, but simply useless in itself. What Raskin is proposing is that a new tab learn the browser habits of the user and intelligently adapt to various tasks. At the same time, common actions could be centralized on new tabs, which would, as a consequence, display the results of understanding browsing behaviors.
"What I like about all of these is that they are zero-cost benefits. We, as the browser, can make wrong guesses and the worst offense we're committing is adding visual clutter. There is never a real penalty to the user, yet the benefits when right are substantial. My hunch is that some of the concepts here go overboard and would end up being more hindrance than help. Nothing here needs to be taken wholesale," Raskin concluded.
Firefox Proposal: A Better New Tab Screen from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.