We spoke about some sneaky features in Firefox 3 yesterday here at our registry cleaner blog. Well here is a new feature Mozilla is working on.

A new Firefox extension allows you soon not needing separate programs for instant messaging and speech in web forums.

Mozilla has many ideas for its Firefox browser and one of these ideas are now in the form of a prototype called Snowl who will give Firefox better ability to handle messages. It is not a new feature, but it is more about a way for Mozilla to determine whether Firefox will be able to function as a communication center in the future.

With Snowl you no longer need to have separate clients to get your instant messages, posts in the web forums and the like, but everything would be integrated into the browser and maybe end up in a separate tab instead. A search function would be included so that it can search through all sorts of messages from a central location.

The whole case that is said is an experiment so far, but anyone who wants to can download Snowl and see if it can be something that would improve Firefox or if it just adds unnecessary features.

More information is available on the Mozilla Labs.