Now that Firefox 1.5 has been released, we can begin awaiting the next incarnation of our favorite little browser: Firefox 2. One of the more exciting features that will hopefully make it into 2.0 is known as Firefox Places. This unified approach to bookmarks and history is particularly interesting because all of the modern browsers I can think of treat them as separate entities. Not only will merging these two elements improve findability, but I think it will greatly improve bookmark usage. As websites are found through the traditional search or navigation methods, it should become remarkably easier to mark said websites for future reference.

The Mozilla wiki entry for Firefox Places is still rather lacking in information, but what is there is particularly interesting (especially the user interface documents). I've been seeing several pieces of the Places puzzle fall into place in the nightly trunk builds, so that provides some hope for this feature making it in to Firefox 2. It should be interesting to watch how this idea develops, and how it transforms our browsing future.