The current tab-based navigation might not be the most efficient in the world, but we can't deny it works. The vast majority of users can move between tabs easily; however, Mozilla believes it causes a loss of information, or rather, amnesia in the browser, since the fifth or sixth link has no reference to the first search that led us there. The Trails experiment aims to fix that, but is there really something to fix...?
The Problem with Tabs
Imagine a person who turns to the web to find a good place to eat pizza. They open the browser and search with their favorite engine. The results lead that person to a portal like Yelp, which has recommendations and feedback from other consumers. Inside Yelp they pick one of the first entries, which in turn opens a new tab with data about the place in question. Now... what's the problem? For the average user, the answer is none, because the search process worked more or less as expected. However, Mozilla believes it's too linear and destructive. The last tab with information about the pizzeria has no data linked to the path that led us there, so the navigation history for that specific search got lost.
How Trails Works
This apparent loss deepens when the user returns to Yelp to explore other entries, or to the search engine hoping to find additional restaurants there. Now, the major browsers have a history that allows access to previous searches, but Mozilla's Trails experiment plans to present that information as a kind of narrative. The narratives would be recorded (apparently) on the right side of the screen, and the user would move from one to another in something like a 3D exploration, seeing the complete trail each time. Other features being considered for Trails include the possibility of sharing entire routes instead of URLs, offline support, note-taking, collaborative research, and adding new pages to an established trail.
Is It Necessary?
In summary, Trails is shaping up to be a new "lossless" interpretation of the classic tab mechanics, preserving all the history that took us from "A" to "B" in intermediate tabs. The question is, do we need something like this? Personally... no. In fact, I do everything I can to purge histories in my browsers automatically, and what interests me is saved as a favorite. At the same time, this looks like a new privacy conflict knocking on the door. For Trails to work, the browser will need to collect a lot of information, and I don't think everyone will agree with that. For now it's a simple experiment, and they still have to create the prototype.
