Arstechnica recently wrote a preview article on AT&T’s desktop web browser. It’s an interesting development considering the changing habits of web browsing (see: snacking, RSS, social media) and the advancements in web page implementations (see: RIA, Silverlight, AIR, etc). The web space is becoming more of a place than a collection of documents serving up bits. Behind that content are consumer goods, social relationships and answers to research questions. As they become more engaging, more advanced controls will be necessary to manage emerging habits.

While it is still in private beta – aka broken – it toys with the idea of a changing browsing experience. Instead of making something more efficient, it introduces functionality that helps organize pages, and collection of pages (which they call “cells”) for user’s to manage as opposed to favorites and hierarchy of favorites. Another component to Pogo is the notion of a visual history. While I haven’t personally experienced how this feature interacts, I’m curious how this is realized and why they see this as a large unmet need. I mean, they made it 3-D and extremely visual. AT&T is really experimenting with the market new ways we as consumers will potential engage with our online world.

Flock is another interesting implementation of web browsing in that it exposes the practices in the context of social media and interactions. It is still a rather traditional web browser, with similar metaphors, but it is built around the embedded access points into social web sites like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. Shiira is another emerging web browser (based on the Webkit foundation, like Safari). These browser are introducing new ways to manage multiple pages at once and visualizing them in ways other than tabs.

The question this raises is how this will impact the relationship between client side (browser) functionality and server side (RIAs) functionality. Do I Digg to bookmark? Or do I bookmark within my browser? Benefits? Drawbacks? Anyways, just food for thought.

Here is also a video from TechCrunch via CrunchGear

First Look Into Pogo via [Ars]
AT&T Pogo Homepage