Mozilla Desktop Environment

What do you think of a Mozilla Desktop Environment? If you already use Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and some more of its applications, you might like the idea that the entire desktop is based on that. This was proposed in one of the Mozilla discussion lists.

Surely, not an OS, but Mozilla can build a window manager and a desktop environment. A clean XUL based platform for applications. What I am surprised about is the idea of a Browser Based Desktop Environment. I think that is a different animal, and I am quite scared of him. I would not like to live my life out of a browser. I agree that most of the time my browser is up, and I do a lot of things using it. But that does not mean that I do not use other applications. I like that some of my applications are independent of the browser.

A desktop based on a platform is something I prefer, not on an application. Or will the browser be a platform by itself? I find this movement of using browser for everything a little scary. I like the idea of smart clients, and I sometimes use portable apps for mobility.

I do believe that Mozilla can build a good desktop environment. The only thing I would like to see before the development starts is the bottom-line benefit for the users. There might be benefits for the developers or someone else, but they will not matter until they propagate to the end user. Identifying these benefits can build the biggest case for need of MDE.