Snowl brings messaging to Firefox browser

"An Experiment with Messaging in the Browser"

8 August 2008 11:38 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Mozilla has released a new add-on for its Firefox browser that promises to allow users to integrate messaging into the browser from multiple sources.

Dubbed Snowl, according to the developers, the initial prototype supports two sources of messages: RSS/Atom feeds and Twitter.

And it exposes two interfaces for reading them: a traditional three-pane "list" view, targeted to active reading of important messages; and a "river of news" view, based on the concept popularized by Dave Winer, designed for casual browsing.

“It doesn’t matter where messages originate,” said the organization in its labs blog.

“They’re alike, whether they come from traditional email servers, RSS/Atom feeds, web discussion forums, social networks, or other sources.”

Users can download the extension with Mozilla looking for feedback on their experiences however Mozilla warns that the initial prototype is a primitive implementation with many bugs, and subsequent versions will include changes that break functionality and delete all your messages, making you start over from scratch.