The Browser of the Future — Control, Freedom, Personality.
The Next-gen of Internet Browser-ing
This is not ‘ready’…. but I’ve been slacking terribly in my 3D Web Journey AND my podcasting… sooo… gah… as penitence, I have to share what I’ve been working on intermittently, despite its embarrassingly stark appearance.
Its just called the ‘UI Overlay Project’ right now… heavily inspired by games.
Allow me to explain:
On the top left, you have… You. Your profile, avatar, identity, persona, etc…
On the top right, you have the ability to transfer your activities, notifications, settings, between your desktop and your mobile device(s).
The top bar is, by default, your tab-management bar. On which you can view, switch, and see all of your tabs as you usually would, but also where you can see notifications for any (preset or custom) groups of services and sites you are subscribed too. This allows you to keep track of social media, newsletters, emails, etc all in one spot rather than having to go to any one of those sites or even a hub site.
The tear-drop thingie is one attempt at just making more of the browser fun… interactive… you can click on it and a traditional search/address bar slides down, in which you can search or type your address… but also, once you press enter… the tear drop actually falls down onto the middle of the page and creates a ripple effect that acts as the loading page… this small and totally superfluous mechanic I think will go a long way in just making the internet more engaging in a creative manner. Furthermore, you can then customize this animation and effect (or use other ones) to add your own touch to it.
Furthermore, the tabs themselves arent just there for show… the color or saturation of the tab will actually show you how long it has been since you last used it!! Maybe it can even gray out so much that it disapears, but worry not! You can find any tab that died in a ‘graveyard’ of tabs with handy tags indicating their time of death (and life) as well as what they were about haha.
The bottom is none other than a Hotbar! This the most obviously inspired by RPG/MMO gaming.
Each of these tools are like ‘skills’ in which allow you to do certain things…
I explain them in the outline, so no point putting them here, but suffice to say that this is a non-exhaustive list… people can add more or different ‘skills’/tools to the bar.
I also wanted the vertical bars to be holding spots for whatever the user wants to put in… like a widget for various feeds, so that you can view, comment, and interact with your social media pages without actually going there…
Hopefully this would make it less likely you’ll descend into getting hooked haha…
Also, I wanted to add little [?] for tutorials, introducing new features, or even to give feedback on the functionality of the element; as well as little icon things for quick customization and another to access the store, where you can buy and sell custom skins, widgets, and non-essential features!
Additionally, there should also be a button/switch in which will allow you to turn the whole overlay into an in-depth customizer to really make your browser YOURS!!
That being said, everything shown above can be moved around, removed, or added upon… You can recolor things, you can completely change the layout, the form factor, sound of actions, and any/every aspect of the design and functionality…
Even your Avatar/Profile/ID can be as traditional as a selfie or clipart…. or as involved as a 3d, animated, character model. You can then click on the avatar area to either customize it at anytime, or to see all of your preferences, favorites, settings, and even network effect (influence, productivity, and other metrics and analytics).
This is meant to be the ‘ultimate’ browser… at least for the next few decades, haha.
