Mozilla Lab has released a new addon called Contacts. The idea of the addon is to integrate your online contacts from different sources with your browser, so you can search and browse your contacts in the browser and also let other web services use your contacts information (with your permission) to invite them to their services. For eg: if you create a new account with a social networking site, then that site can use your contact information (with your permission) to invite your contacts or add them to your contact lists, if they are already registered.
According to Mozilla, the Contacts prototype consists of these pieces:
- A browser-based Contacts database that stays in sync with your address books (so far, it supports GMail, Twitter and Mac OS Address book)
- A generic importer system for Contacts from desktop or web-based address books (so you can implement missing ones)
- An email autocompletion feature, which demonstrates how the browser can auto-complete email addresses on any website. The autocompletion is performed entirely in the browser, without sharing the your list of contacts with the website.
- A
Javascript API that websites can use to access the Contacts database, with explicit user permission and filtering.
The addon is currently in the alpha stage, so use it at your own risk. You can download it from here.
Credit: Mozilla Labs.
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