Snowl turns Firefox into messaging hub

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 8 Aug 2008 at 10:02

A new Firefox add-on from Mozilla Labs aims to turn the browser into a messaging centre.

Snowl will allow users to read their email, Twitter updates and RSS feeds in one combined interface. The add-on provides two views for reading your barrage of combined messages: a traditional feed-reader view and the so-called "River of Messages" that displays all your messages in a web page style.

Mozilla admits it's merely dipping its toe in the water with Snowl. "We want to know if the concept has promise and is worth pursuing further," the Mozilla Labs Blog claims.

"We're particularly interested in feedback on how messaging might fit into the browsing experience and if there are other interfaces (or refinements to the two interfaces built into the prototype) that would make it easier for users to have online conversations."

Firefox does already handle RSS feeds via its Live Bookmarks feature, while Mozilla also has the dedicated Thunderbird client for email. The organisation admits there will be some crossover. "Last week at the Firefox+ summit there were related discussions about the future of Thunderbird's user experience, with many ideas that overlap the ideas embedded in Snowl," the blog claims. "We expect that some of the Thunderbird ideas will influence Snowl's future, and that lessons (and possibly code) from Snowl will influence Thunderbird's future."

Mozilla has released an early prototype of Snowl, that handles just RSS feeds and Twitter, although you'll have to register with Mozilla to participate. Our brief tests resulted in a number of formatting and stability errors, betraying Snowl's prototype status.