What would you do with a Firefox home tab?

For Firefox 4, we’re thinking of replacing the home button with a home tab. It would be a mini-tab, not taking up any more space than the current home button; it would still be “click to go home”, but “home” would be a special page that is always open in a tab.

If the contents of that special page are useful, this could be a great feature. Because the home tab is part of the browser, like an extension, it would be able to do things that a normal web page can’t, like use statistics about your browsing habits to show you useful things. On the other hand, if the contents of the home tab aren’t useful, then it’s a pointless feature.

Given that… what would you put on the home tab?

That’s the question asked by the latest Mozilla Labs Design Challenge, which is open right now. If you have some ideas, go check it out!

 

Design Challenge, summer 2009

If you take a look on the right side of the page, you’ll see a Mozilla Labs design challenge logo. That’s because we’re running a Summer 2009 Design Challenge, which is currently open to submissions! The topic is “Reinventing Tabs in the Browser” (a topic I am very interested in).

Click the logo in the right sidebar (or click here) to go to the page with the detailed description of the design challenge, including the deadlines and the instructions for submitting your concept. Go check it out!

 

Extension Development Boot Camp

Labs is currently running a Design Challenge, in which design students from around the world are taking their ideas for the interfaces of the future from the initial concept through to a working prototype.

We’re doing a series of web seminars to help these students learn the skills they’ll need to complete their prototypes.

One of these tutorial sessions, taught by Myk Melez, is now up on the web in video form for public consumption:

Extension Bootcamp: Zero to Hello World! in 45 Minutes

If you’ve ever been interested in writing a Firefox extension, but never knew how to get started, then this is the one for you. Despite the title, it’s actually over 90 minutes long. Nevertheless, I highly recommend finding 90 spare minutes to follow along with Myk’s awesomely thorough tutorial. I honestly don’t think there’s ever been a better way to learn the basics of extension development.