14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few months, Mozilla ran a competition to see what kind of ideas people come up with for the new Home Tab feature, which should be introduced with Firefox 4. After the entry period closed, the organization put it to the vote with users everywhere asked to weigh in and choose their favorite design. Now the Firefox UX (user experience) team has unveiled its choices for the best design from several points of view.
And the winners are: · Chatree Campiranon and Craig Birchler for Best in Class: Innovation - for the solution that has the newest / most original interaction model; · Amine Zafri for Best in Class: Producible - for the solution that would be the easiest to ship to users immediately; · Yatrik Solanki for Best in Class: Design - for the solution that has the most visually expressive concept; · Daniel Goodwin for Best in Class: Risk Taker - for the solution that tests the limits of current thinking · Blake Cutler for Best in Class: Utility - for the solution that has the highest overall utility.
All of the winning designs are featured on this dedicated page. The 'jury,' made up of Firefox's UX team, went through all the submissions, several dozens, and picked the one they found the most interesting or practical. The winner for best design was also the winner of the People’s Choice Award for the Home Tab Design Challenge (Winter 09) and you can check out his entry here.
Of course, as with the vote winner, just because these designs were picked doesn't mean that they'll get implemented in Firefox 4. However, it is likely that at least some of the features or ideas will be there in one form or another, this is why Mozilla ran the challenge in the first place. Still, Firefox 4 is a long way off and, judging by Mozilla's previous track record, it may not even be launched by the end of the year as is planned.