China's Firefox browser has one feature the West lacks
17Lamp.net reports on one big feature that China's version of the Firefox browser has that the rest of the world still lacks: Live Margins.
What is the Live Margins feature? It's easier seen than explained, and can be viewed here. 17Lamp.net translates:
It's a new sidebar on the right, and apparently it is "a unique solution to the longstanding problem of tab browsing where only one tab is visible at any time." But it also gives "additional search results, relevant information, music, video, and much more." (It) is also localized, including information from the Chinese YouTube, and Chinese sites for music and other information.
It looks really cool, as it blends services from different Web sites into one view. It means I can be on CNN.com, for example, but can simultaneously, in the same tab/window, be browsing YouTube, perhaps to call up a related news video.
It sounds like a great feature, and is a testament to the fluidity of innovation in open source. Often decentralized, open-source innovation bubbles up to meet disparate, local needs. Live Margins is just the latest example of this.
Via LinuxToday.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I'd expect such a prestigious and widely circulated publication to properly research before going to print with claims that the rest of the world hadn't thought of multiple tab views in the same window. While the following add-ons for Firefox are by no means bug free, and some lack the advanced content filtering abilities that "Live Margins" allegedly offers, I'd say that the idea is not wholly original and credit is due to those who came before.
I hope that you might consider issuing a retraction of the "first" claim and provide coverage the other designers who spend a great deal of time maintaining and testing these "Live Margin"-esque add-ons. I personally use the "Split Browser" add on, and in fact I'm writing this comment in one window with your story on the right hand side with multiple tabs from the Add-On section of the Mozilla site on the left.
Split Pannel 0.8.6
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3275
Split Browser 0.5.2008112201
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287
Split Tab 0.0.2
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4981
Tab Splitter 0.9
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7327
a|split|bs 0.1
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9471
Also, I agree with with Behni and Dmm; I'd much rather have the entire Internet available to me than multiple tab windows with only "government approved" pages available.
- by AppleSuxLeo November 24, 2008 11:31 AM PST
- I hear the Melamine add-on is standard over there.
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