Mozilla wants to make a powerful comeback and regain its market share by resuming its role as a "disruptor" rather than simply trying to keep up with the competition. As part of this effort, Mozilla revealed it has built a Product Design and Strategy team to "identify where we can be the first or the best," and detailed a trio of projects - "Search Tabs," an iPad browser called "Junior," and a social feature called "Presence" - in a video presentation on Thursday, June 14.
The video unveils three functional prototypes the company has been working on. With the first project, "Search Tabs," Mozilla pledges to be "taking search to the next level, restoring real search engine choice and expanding the search market." Perhaps the most exciting project from the trio, however, is "Junior" - an iPad browser which, according to the company, "re-thinks browser user experience from the ground up." Lastly, the third project on the agenda is "Presence," which is designed to enable users to talk with others, share links and connect with friends directly from the browser.
Disruption
"What are we doing to make sure that the ones working to disrupt Mozilla's products is Mozilla itself, instead of our competitors?" is one of the questions driving the company's efforts. "How do we focus on innovations in areas where Mozilla can be the first, the best or the only organization that can deliver outstanding products?"
"If anyone is going to disrupt Mozilla it has to be Mozilla, and we got disrupted by a product called Google Chrome or, depending on how you look at it, iOS or Android," Alex Limi, the new teams' leader, said in the presentation. Starting from this disruption, Limi went on to ask why a user would choose Mozilla's Firefox over Google's Chrome, and said he has no answer to that question. One reason, however, might be that users get "pretty much the same experience" regardless of the browser they use. With this in mind, Mozilla comes up with easier browser customization as a solution, allowing users to tailor Firefox according to their specific needs.
Search Tabs
The new feature called "Search Tabs" reflects Lini's belief that eventually browsers will no longer feature search boxes. Instead, Mozilla envisioned a vertical row of search engine and social networking icons displayed down the left of the screen after users search for something.
Mozilla is aware that users rarely set Firefox as their default search engine, and this is the actual reasoning behind Search Tabs. The company aims to improve user experience by providing single-click access to other engines, thus making it easier to find a wider range of results. As Limi points out, Google or Microsoft are most likely not going to adopt the same approach with their Chrome and IE browsers, nor is Apple likely to do something similar in Safari.
Junior
"Junior," the second innovation, is Mozilla's browser specifically designed for the iPad. While there are many third-party alternatives for browsing the Web on iOS, Mozilla has been so far absent from the stage. According to Limi, however, this is about to change, as Mozilla wants to be on iOS although it cannot use its rendering engine and has to use WebKit instead. "We have no vehicle on one of the biggest consumer markets in the world right now," he explained.
Mozilla has come up with a full-screen browser as a solution. A new navigation tool provides snapshots of recently viewed pages, displays bookmarks as buttons, and offers integrated Web search. The navigation tool replaces tabs when accessed.
Presence
The third planned product is called "Presence," and aims to provide communications services such as social networks and email. According to Limi, Mozilla can do this much better than multi-network messaging clients, and a demo shows the company has created a chat window that appears at the bottom right side of PC screens. Basically, Firefox logs in to the users' chosen communication services, allowing messages to be sent to and from this new chat window.
