Minimal 'Webian Shell' UI Could Become Chrome OS for Firefox

Chromeless promises to be one of the most interesting projects from the skunkworks teams at Mozilla Labs. The main idea is to create a browser base without any UI elements that developers can then build upon, either creating web apps that look and feel like native ones or with innovative new browser interfaces. Webian Shell 0.1 falls in the latter category.

"The idea of the Webian Shell project is to replace your computer’s interface with something much simpler, which treats web applications as first class citizens and does away with all the un-necessary clutter," Mozilla's Ben Francis writes.

"Shell started as a simple design concept with a few static mockups, but when Mozilla Chromeless came along it was suddenly possible to rapidly develop a working prototype using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript," he explained.

Mozilla Labs Chromeless is a relatively new project which has only recently started to pick up steam. It uses Firefox as its underpinnings and exposes the internal functionality thorough a series of APIs. It doesn't come with any UI elements, rather it enables developers to either do away with any browser UI or create their own.

The retired Mozilla Prism offered similar functionality, for web apps, the but the APIs the Chromeless team is working on make it much more than just a way of running web apps in full screen.

Webian Shell takes advantage of Chromeless to create a new browser UI to explore new concepts. It takes inspiration from several places, but it could prove quite interesting nonetheless.

The most obvious parallel is with Chrome OS which also does away with the traditional operating system in favor of a browser and minimal UI. Chrome OS handles all of the tasks native apps would normally do.

Webian Shell has the potential of doing the same, though to run it stand-alone on a bare-bones Linux framework for example, will take a lot of work. But even now it can prove rather useful.

Its full screen UI means that you can focus on what you're doing at the moment, while still having access to some of the info and tools available through the regular operating system, just the clock for now, but the plan is to add more functionality.

"This initial early release really just gives you a minimalist, full screen, tabbed web browser with a clock and a rather empty looking home screen. I hope this is enough to convey the basic idea behind the project," Francis explained.