But Mozilla doesn't just want to give you quick access to the sites you visit most. The team also wants to make sure the new tab area isn't too distracting. And that's led to a completely new concept that the developers are calling a "cognitive shield."
What happens is that Firefox will keep track of your recently and frequently visited pages. But instead of showing you a list of links or thumbnails every time you open a new tab, Firefox will show you a dull gray set of icons for those pages. If you type an address or search term into the location bar, you'll never see anything other than this unremarkable list of icons. But if you scroll your mouse over the page it will expand into a colorful list of web sites and favicons.
Unlike Opera's speed dial, the Firefox bookmarks are automatically generated. But unlike Google Chrome's thumbnails, you can add or remove links from the Firefox new tab page. You can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.
In order to try out this concept design, you'll need to have the most recent beta version of Firefox 3.1 and then you can download and install the New Tab prototype add-on. Eventually this feature or one very much like it could find its way into a future version of Firefox.
Mozilla unveils "cognitive shield" new tab concept for Firefox originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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