I’m pleased to announce that Firefox 4 (currently in beta) has a new feature called Firefox Panorama. This could be the killer feature of the popular browser that could win back some power users from Google Chrome.
Not all of the ideas that the Mozilla Firefox Team had indicated previously have made it into the official version of Firefox Panorama, but the core feature of being able to group tabs together and having an OS-like interface to quickly jump between tab groups is now going to be part of Firefox 4.
Aza Raskin has a detailed blog post in which he lays out how and why the Firefox team developed Panorama, including the basic design principles.
Some of the design issues he mentioned included:
- Harness the power of spatial memory
- Seeing is remembering
- Minimize required interactivity
- Remove distractions: out of sight, out of mind
Here’s a short video clip in which Aza Raskin explains what you’ll see in the new Firefox Panorama:
No related posts.
Some of the functionality reminds me of the way Mac OS X displays items in the dock and finder.
What do you think?