Labs/Proposals/Snowl

This is a proposal to prototype a next-generation Firefox-based "conversations application" that aggregates the different ways users send and receive messages online (email, feeds, social networks, etc.) into a unified datastore of messages, a set of task-based interfaces for reading, writing, and recalling them, and an API for extending the app with new views.

The primary goal is to make it easier for people to have online conversations without regard to the medium through which those conversations take place.

Secondary goals include experimenting with models for bringing messaging to the browser and investigating the potential of XUL and other Mozilla technologies to enable the building of desktop-quality hybrid remote/local applications.

The initial prototype of this application will include:

• support for two message sources, one of which is feeds;
• two views, one targeted to casual browsing, the other to directed reading;
• basic fulltext and attribute-based search;
• an API for accessing messages and building new views of them.