As described on the Latitude website:

Latitude is a powerful, content-centered browser for Mac OS X Leopard and above. Its core functionality is designed to make your browsing experience as straightforward as possible, without the limitations and rusty mold of existing browser conventions. Today, we don’t parse hypertext, but watch videos, keep tabs on news, slide through vacation photos and much more. Latitude is geared towards providing you with the tools to finally make the best of the wealth of content that is the World Wide Web. No manual required!

Latitude first came into being as a concept and list of features from Sebastiaan, on the Cocoia Blog. Sebastiaan detailed a list of features for the next generation browser and provided mockups for a working interface design. The idea sparked great interest in the Mac community and shortly thereafter development began in earnest on the project.

For more information about the Latitude browser and the team, visit the Latitude website. For updates on Latitude’s progress and other ramblings from Sebastiaan himself, visit his blog, Cocoia.

Read the interview with the Latitude development team, exclusive to Mac Fanatic, on the full post, here.

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Everyone: First off, how do you use a browser? Are you a facebook junkie, casual surfer, or YouTube insomniac?

Team: Practically everything, thats part of the idea behind Latitude. All of the current browsers offer a flat experience not tailored to any of the new features of the internet. We want to change that.

Everyone: Can you safely say that you’ve tried just about every Mac browser available today?

Leo: No, I haven’t tried camino or Shiira.
Seb: I have tried them all except icab.
Danny: Same as Seb I have used them all bar iCab and omni web. But I’m sticking with Camino until Latitude is out.

Everyone: Do you feel that My Dream App has or will influence the development of Latitude? The whole process so far seems very similar. A mockup was made and developers are onboard to create the next big thing.

Team: No, we intend to build an application that you can use at the end of it. We aren’t a competition of any kind we are merely keeping the design process relatively open.

Everyone: Do you believe the Gecko engine to be a viable development option on the Mac today?

Danny and Leo: No not really. Webkit makes it so easy to create a fast, accurate, and standards compliant browser, that Gecko doesnt really come into the equation.

Everyone: Do you believe in a plug-in design for a browser, such as Firefox, or do you think a browser should provide most user’s needs exceptionally well and leave it at that?

Team: While plugins are great in some contexts, they shouldn’t be necessary for a properly designed application. For Latitude, we are completely open to suggestions but at the moment the only plugin support will be browser plugins (like flash) and input managers (such as 1password).

Everyone: Do you believe that the project will gain enough momentum to be a long-term success? The Mac browser market seems fairly saturated already. Also, the key to keeping a great 3rd party Mac app seems to be innovating features quicker than Apple can adopt them in their own applications.

Team: While we agree the market is completely saturated for old style browsers we think we can open up an entirely new one with a revolutionary browser. This, we believe, will be our key to long term success. We disagree that having a great app is just about iterating faster than apple, the key is simply having a great application.

Everyone: What is your primary browser? What would be your favorite feature from this browser and how would you integrate it into Latitude?

Danny: Camino, I genuinely don’t have a favorite feature, hence the need for Latitude.
Seb: Safari, its simplicity and straight forwardness. We will try to keep this the same in Latitude while adding more functionality.
Leo: Safari, (jokingly) the bookmarks bar. This will make an appearance in Latitude’s sidebar.

Everyone: What do you believe to be the strongest trait in OS X today? And how will that influence the development of Latitude?

Danny and Leo: The new improvements in cocoa such as Core Animation, these will feature heavily in Latitude.
Seb: The finder sidebar.

Everyone: What is your current Mac and how long have you been an Apple user?

Danny: I run a Core Duo Macbook at the moment as Im saving up Seb’s rig, and Ive been a user for 1 year 7 months, so Im a bit of a switcher.
Leo: MacBook Core Duo as well. And about 2 years.
Seb: Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Powermac G4, MacBook CoreDuo…. *at this point Danny and Leo hang up the skype call*, I have been using for 2 years.

Everyone: Just for fun, what will be the first iPhone application you will place on your phone?

Danny: Frenzic.
Seb: Candy bar mobile.
Leo: I don’t have one, thanks for rubbing it in. *laughs*

Sebastiann: When I first saw your post about Latitude, I imagined this to be just another mockup of an app that was never to be. Did you feel the same way, or did you expect development to begin in earnest?

I just expected it to communicate to the people who make browsers in the hope that it would give them some decent ideas. I never expected a dedicated app to start being built so soon.

Sebastiaan: In an interview on Browsersphere, you mentioned that the Flock interface is too busy and Shiira doesn’t add any new features. However, a lot of the suggested features seem to be existing ones, only implemented in a more clutter-free way. Are there features that don’t exist in any form being developed, or is the focus of the project to modernize the Mac browser?

Both, there are lots of features that will be augmented but there are other, new, features that are simply required to give a better user experience.

Sebastiann: In the same interview on Browsersphere, you drew a few comparisons with iTunes. I love iTunes just as much as the next guy, but do you ever feel that maybe Mac developers spend too much time trying to imitate the iTunes interface?

Yes I think a lot of developers try to mimic the interface and simply do it badly by trying to force too many concepts. For our application it makes perfect sense.

Sebastiaan: When do you expect the official Latitude website to be live?

Now! latitudebrowser.com

Sebastiaan: Is the project going to open-source?

No, but the design process will be fairly open and we welcome any help. But thats more of a question that you should be asking Danny and Leo.

Sebastiaan: How can Mac Fanatic readers get involved?

By sending us lots and lots of money ;-). In all seriousness you are welcome to get in touch with the team through the website latitudebrowser.com, about any talents you can offer, but please don’t get in touch just to say you can test the app. We are no where near that stage. But stay tuned.

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I’d like to thank the Latitude team for their time away from the project to answer my questions and provide everyone with a glimpse into the design process and ideology behind this next generation web experience. If you have any other questions for myself or the team, post them in the comments!

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