So this is maybe a bit of an odd thing, but if odd things aren’t meant for blogs then I’m not sure where they belong!

I was thinking about browsing and links and what links really should be.

So in the beginning (note: not really a history), there was the browser and links could either open in your current window or in a new window. That’s how navigating the web was when I was a kid. Then there came tabs, and they were good, because they allowed you to have multiple things open in a window so you could read an article, open the links in new tabs, and then flick back and forth to your heart’s desire. Well, it was more acceptable than good, really, at least for me because when I’m trying to cross-reference complicated things it ends up being a lot of state to carry around in my head while I’m transitioning between contexts. It’s especially frustrating on mobile when I sometimes I have the experience of pages refreshing when switching between them.

What I was thinking, though, is that it would be beautiful to have the option of partially opening up links through gestures much like the now standard two-finger-zoom-in. I could have as much of a preview window as I like, perhaps even moving it off to the side or pinning it above the text I’m currently reading, and I could simulate the physical effect of having two books open side by side or doing That Thing where you hold the book open in multiple places and rapidly flip between them.

So if this isn’t a completely absurd idea, I’m guessing other people have thought of improving the browser interface like this, but I could find anything about it other than a reference to an OS X update improving the desktop browser, but nothing about more interesting gestures and metaphors for browsing on mobile.

Are there any browsers people know of that are trying to do novel UI things? As someone who doesn’t have experience in either android or ios development, what are the obstacles to making more rich notions of presentation of links?