Scenario 4, SandBoxMania:

SandBox Mania, a visualized secure Internet experience

The internet as we know it today, and especially the internet experience is in fact a very immature way of retrieving and sending information. Corporate and social environment tend encourage people to do more and more of their work using this 'new' medium. It seems however, that everybody agrees in abandoning the 'Internet-way' of communicating sometimes. Then it is time for a real Face2Face meeting. Visual expressions and body language, in short terms: Visual Data are still so important for us!
That immediately shows one of the major problems of the Internet today. Using the Internet, personal communication is very well possible. The problem however is that most of the data as it is represented to he user, is based on text. Images and videos are used separately in order to provide us with a picture of what is meant in the text. The future Internet use will be like walking trough an airport. Searching for the proper hall by using Icons that are backed-up by one or two words.

Another big change will come from the developers' corner. Currently development focus is shifting to open source software. Software of which the quality cannot always be guaranteed. Commercial software developers, during the past ten years have tried to live up to the demand for the use of open source software by creating 'Virtual Machines'. These are virtual environments on top of the computers' operating system in which applications can run. The Virtual Machine limits the type of operations an application can carry out on the operating system, e.g. the use of the filesystem, accessing the internet or using a webcam.
This upcoming trend for Virtual Machine 'sandboxes' is creating a completely new business model for the manufacturers of the operating systems. Because they do no longer have to worry about the security of 'home grown' applications, they shift their emphasis to enabling more and more people to develop for their 'sandboxed' platforms. Money is now made by selling the development tools to the open source community and by providing support about the technical possibilities of their sandbox.

10 Years from now

The current browser is mostly used as a 'window to the internet' an application to view webpages and some 'web enabled media'. To play video files and to chat, we still use separate applications. Within ten years from now, this will be fully integrated in the browser. The storage of data online will enable this. Browser developers will use one standardized core that runs in a sandbox and that will enable users to also become developers of browser plug-ins.

The standard browser core will itself be virtual machine to internet applications, and it will erase the fine line between on-line and off-line browsing. In fact, 'browsing' will be the new term for using a computer.

Conclusion

The Internet will be a place where interaction can be really felt instead of being imitated. Conventional input methods will be replaced by newer ones that enhance our overall experience of the World Wide Web. The focus on interaction with the browser will be central. The individual will interact with a browser and the Internet; because of the uniqueness of a user only one single identity will be needed. This could be acquired through the biometrics input device that is being used.
The strategy regarding Mozilla should be to prepare for this scenario by looking at ways to enrich the browser experience not by the conventional standards at hand, but by newer and innovative technologies.

Graphical timeline