Mozilla Design Challenge: The Home Tab

Posted in: Interface Design at Jan 29th 2010

From December 2009 till the 14th of February Mozilla’s new design challenge will take place. The challenge is to design the new interface (or purpose) of the so called “home tab”, a new feature in Firefox 4 that will replace the home button. The home tab can be seen something such as Safari’s top sites feature or Google Chrome’s welcome page, but in a different way. The goal is not to mimic those features, but to create something new only seen in Firefox.

Since I quit my study and not having a job at the moment plus being a Mozilla fan, I decided to give the challenge a try. However, with every challenge comes a problem. In this case it’s getting information about what should go on the home tab, and that’s why I need you (yes, you). I decided that before I would start designing at all I needed some feedback from browser users. To make your life a little bit easier, I’d love if you would be able to answer the questions listed below.

  • Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
  • If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
  • What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
  • Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
  • Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)

When answering these questions please try to be as clear as possible. Take a look at the example below to see what I mean.

Wrong:

Q. Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
A. Yes.

Correct:

Q. Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
A. Yes, whenever I move to a new page I first go back to the home page.

You can provide this information using the template and comment system below.

Template

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Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
A:
 
Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
A:
 
Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
A: 
 
Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
A: 
 
Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
A:

6 Comments

  • David

    Jan 29th, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: No, like never. It’s even still set to the standard settings. A new tab is an empty page and I use my favorites or browsing history to go whereever I want to go

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: Showing a house like it does now is alright. Frankly I don’t care. Just remove it :)

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: Check Facebook, Twitter (using an add-on), blogs, forums, read articles, write comments on stuff

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: Yes, yes and yes :) I got some extensions (add-ons!?) that make coding easier like colorzilla, firebug, html validator, web developer. and a twitter add-on (echofon). I have my bookmarks organized in multiple folders and use bookmark bar aswell as the bookmark menu. Bookmark bar holds the sites I visit often, menu holds the rest of them. Browser history is great to pages that I visit often but that don’t fit on my bookmark bar.

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: No. Would have no benefit for me. Propably only shows that I spend way too much time on the internet :D

  • Ana-Maria Nascinschi

    Jan 29th, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: Yep; I set it to iGoogle. It has some widgets I sometime use, like translators most like it. Although now on Macbook I should probably use the one I have in the Dashboard… just a habit I got from when I was on PC.

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: Hmm, I don’t really know… I have bookmarks toolbar for all my frequently used websites.. Maybe something with all kinds of utilities? Useful is always good..

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: I keep in touch with my friends via Facebook, check my emails, watch TV episodes and movies online, shop, check my bank account, browse through journals and deviations on dA…

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: Yep, I use bookmarks quite a lot for items I could buy for example but I need time to decide so I bookmark different options and organise them in folders. I use the history too when I need to look back for a page I visited, something someone linked me to but I didn’t bookmark and so on.. As for extensions, hmm, got Greasemonley and that’s about it, I think.

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: Nah.. But could be fun actually! :D

  • Flix

    Jan 29th, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: no. if i have anything like a home button, it is feedly. but even that i don’t use very frequently

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: nothing. i would disable it. i prefer to be my browser to be minimalistic.

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: research, networking (private and business)

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: i don’t use browsing history. i have a number of extensions to have my browser just how i want it: as few buttons as possible, still 100% functional. I have some bookmarks, but I assume not that many

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: Can’t say I am.

  • Stijn Rietveld

    Jan 29th, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: No. Never even did actually. Every time if I open up a new page, I just typ Control + T.

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: Don’t really care; I don’t use it and you can get used to everything reasonable. But something obvious like a house would be okay.

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: Mostly to check Facebook/Hyves/E-mail. watch video’s of online guitar lessons, online shopping, check my bank account and of course lotsa porn. :B

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: Sometimes when I find something cool, like a dude playing an awesome guitar riff on Youtube or a cool item from a webshop, I’d use my history viewer. But that’s very rare, because every time when I close my browser and re-open it, it gives the same website when I closed my browser. So if I find something cool, I’ll keep it and close it when I’m done.

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: No thanks. It would only make me say: “GIMME MOAR !” :P

  • Paul Chater

    Jan 29th, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: Hardly ever use the home button at all. Unless I want to search, but even then there’s the Google Search Bar.

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: I would like it to show my usage statistics, a cover flow of past viewed websites, recent tabs closed, etcetera.

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: Mainly develop my websites, check facebook / twitter, someteimes browse net.tutsplus.com; But I mainly use it for compatability / coding.

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: Yes, I use quite alot of extensions, FireBug&PHP, WDT, Colorize!, FireFTP, etc. General web dev stuff really. As for the second half, Firefox isn’t my primary browser so I tend to not use them.

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: Yes, definitely. It would be cool to show things like website most viewed, and then list them in a “Top 10″ formation in a cover flow type thing. Sure that’s ripping off from Safari but it’d be cool.

  • Marbels

    Jan 31st, 2010

    Q: Do you use the current home button, if so, how ?
    A: Yes, I do. I use it whenever I open a new tab to get to google asap, without needing to type out the whole address. I love the homebutton when I want to look for something in google (since it’s my homepage) in a little rush.

    Q: If this so called home tab would be included in Firefox 4.0, what would you want it to show ?
    A: I really have no idea, as long as it’ll still have the same function the homebutton has now. Also, would be nice if the symbol would be a logical one, like the little blue house ;)

    Q: What do you do on the web. I’m not interested in your porn addiction, I just want to know the general use of your browser (e.g. watching movies or checking facebook).
    A: Good one. I read my email daily, I use google to look up stuff I’m curious about, I watch movies and other clips on any site that will stream what I want to see (veoh, youtube etc). Oh, and every now and then facebook, trying to get rid of that addiction.

    Q: Do you use extensions, bookmarks or your browser’s history viewer ?
    A: I use bookmarks to be able to find back some sites that contain valuable information to me, but have an address that’s way to difficult to remember by heart. I also have greasemonkey, does that count as extension? I never look at my history though.

    Q: Are you interested in geek related information, such as system info or the amount of webpages you’ve visited over the past 2 weeks ? (optional)
    A: Hrmm, not at the moment since I’m not smart enough to know how to use it, but it might be fun if it was easily accessible.

    I really have the feeling my grammar sucks today, sorry for that :B

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