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Mozilla labs has floating an interesting new project, dubbed [The Coop][1], that aims to integrate social network features directly into the Firefox browser. Of course the idea isn't new, [Flock][3], the "social" browser built on the Firefox code-base, was supposed to deliver more or less the same functionality.
But with Flock 1.0 looking more and more like vaporware every day, The Coop may be a way for Mozilla to implement some of Flock's good ideas in a more timely fashion. If there's any doubt about the Flock connection, the [wiki entry for The Coop][4] actually uses a screenshot of the Flock browser as an example of how The Coop might look.
Like Flock, Mozilla's proposed implementation of social networking features in the browser would add a horizontal bar with avatars for you friends as well as icons to indicate new shared content. The Coop would then allow you to subscribe to friends and add them to a sidebar and share content -- links, files, webpages etc.
The proposed sidebar navigation is pretty slick and mimics that of the iPod -- using back and forward buttons to tunnel into shared content. Navigation could also be done by content type.
[The Coop entry on the Mozilla Wiki][4] lists the following possibilities:
>The idea is to use RSS subscriptions to existing web service data feeds as a transport mechanism for all the various functionality. It will be up to us to cleverly mask this, but I'm thinking:
>* When user adds a friend, subscriptions to their Flickr photo feed, del.icio.us tag feed, MySpace status (we might use a Microsummary here, since I don't think it provides RSS), YouTube favourites list, etc, etc.
>* Indicators of new content are updated based on the content provided by those feeds (this is "pull").
>* When a user sends something to a friend (which is "push") it is done by submitting the URI to del.icio.us with a special tag that indicates it's from The Coop and for a specific user (based on userid); when the other user checks the del.icio.us feed, items tagged with these special tags will cause the glow-effect. Or we could use the de.licio.us "send" feature. Need to think more about this.
There are also some alternative ideas proposed,including using an XMPP server for "passing around data chunks about the stuff that's being shared."
Regardless of what form The Coop takes, it represents a significant change in how and for what tasks we use our web browsers. It would also be a significant departure for Firefox that would for the first time truly set it apart from IE and other browsers.
As it stands Firefox users tend to tout the browsers security and standards compliance over alternatives, but in the end the feature set is more or less the same as competitors (leaving aside extensions).
However projects like The Coop and the [proposed integration of microformats support][2] would give Firefox a unique feature set and could serve to drive adoption rates among those who currently see no reason to switch.
[1]: http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/04/keep-track-of-your-friends-with-the-coop/ "Mozilla Labs: The Coop"
[2]: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/firefox_3_to_su.html "Firefox 3 To Support Microformats"
[3]: http://www.flock.com/ "Flock"
[4]: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/The_Coop#Implementation_Thoughts "Mozilla Wiki: The Coop"
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