A web browser for experimental writers ?

With the release of the open source Firefox browser, numerous spin off projects have been launched building off the core Firefox browsing functionality. Two of the more interesting offshoots are Flock and Songbird.

Flock advertises itself as a "social browser" because of its built in support for many social networking services such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati and others. Songbird describes itself as a mishmash digital jukebox, web browser and media player with some interesting features for "playing the web".

I got to thinkn'.... What would a browser geared towards those interested in an experimental writing practice look like ? How can the Web and network communications facillitate an experimental writing practice ?

We might be able to take some leads from the quirky Songbird project. Where Flock sees itself as a browser first and foremost, Songbird is more of a media player and media manager which utilizes the Web as a source for searching and culling media into your media library. I think a browser for experimental writers could be seen in a similar mish/mash light, in that it would be more of a text editor but with tight browser integration. What kind of features would it have ?

• leverage web based translation services for translating segments of text
  
  
• easy incorporation of "web snippets", segments of text found during browsing which can be added to a snippet manager, organized for later use in some writing project
  
  
• suggestions/variations based on web searches. A segment of text could be highlighted, and variations on a part of the text could be provided based on Web engine search results. This could produce works similar to Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry’s “The Apostrophe Engine.”
  
  
• The bookmarking functionality found in most modern browsers could be utilized as a means to manage inspirational or related texts (i.e. a corpus manager).
  
  
• If common literary algorithmic transformations could be turned into web services, the proposed browser/editor could activley use these as transformative functions available to the author over the Internet.
  
  
• a hyperlink authoring environment could be constructed and based on Firefox's excellent rendering engine.
  
  
• similar social networking features as in Flock, support for blog publishing of a users writing productions.
  

Looking over some of these ideas, the importance of a browser seems to be giving way to some kind of Internet/networking functionality inherent in the text editor. The (dis)advantage of a browser is in the access to an (over)abundance of mixed media. I was thinking initially more in terms of pure text, but a browser based text editor might facillitate works which are more multimedia than simple text based.

Well, that exciting thread seemed to dwindle down into a dull tap... it's late, and it feels as if the brainstorming fluid has sprung a leak... any other suggestions Dear World ???

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| |