Original Post 08.26.2008

These and other questions are what Mozilla Labs is hoping to answer with their Concept Series, which is dedicated towards discussing and preparing for the future Web. And one of the first and most interesting projects from the Concept Series is Aurora, a fully thought-out idea of a browser in 2018.

Aurora is the brainchild of Adaptive Path, a design and consulting firm. Aurora doesn’t exist as a real application, it is simply a set of ideas and graphical mockups. But it does point to a possible new direction for Web browsers. Looking at the Aurora concepts it reminds me of other 3D interfaces such as Sun’s Looking Glass. The Aurora interface is designed to be highly interactive, to use real-world interface methodologies, and to be contextually aware of what a user is doing and what they’ve done in the past.

Looking at these initial concepts for Aurora, the amount of work that Adaptive Path had put into their mockups and browser ideas is impressive. One could easily see this being a next-generation browser. However, the concept ideas use the real-world simulated interface and I’m not sure users are ready to go there yet. The other concept that Aurora is working on is to adapt to what a user is doing by bringing some content front and center while pushing back other content. In my experience these work OK in some dedicated work contexts but most real people are too unpredictable and spontaneous for these to really work.

Still, I like what Mozilla is doing with the Concept Series and Aurora. These types of projects will most definitely lead to a future Web that will make browsing, surfing and finding stuff online alot easier and more enjoyable.

To check out the Mozilla Concept Series go to labs.mozilla.com/projects/concept-series/ and information on Aurora can be found at adaptivepath.com/aurora/