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Mozilla Labs' "Ubiquity" Helps Automate Web Interactions
Martin writes "Mozilla Labs have released a prototype version of the Firefox add-on Ubiquity. It is basically Launchy (the application launcher) for Firefox with the difference that Ubiquity makes use of web APIs and the Firefox browser. The official website contains examples, a command list, information about creating your own commands and of course the Ubiquity extension that is compatible with Firefox 3.x. Ubiquity can pull and send data to various services like Twitter, display, find and embed Google Maps, perform searches, write emails, add entries to the calendar, digg stories and more."
I thought I'd heard this name before.
So correct me if I am wrong, but could the Black hats write something that could hijack this? Suddenly I am seeing bogus emails going out to my credit card companies, etc..
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
This is very handy - especially since it's much easier to code up a Ubiquity command than a ful fledged Firefox plugin. And the fact that it's interactive differentiates it from Greasemonkey.
Interesting choice of name, given that IBM recently announced Ubiquity XForms, a 100% AJAX implementation of XForms which lets web application authors to use markup to control DOJO and YUI and other libraries, and which runs in Firefox, IE, Safari, and Opera.
I just installed Ubiquity. Its amazing. They should have done this a long time ago.
Maybe its a good idea to have the top 10 social bookmarks in there, like Stumbleupon, Delicious, etc as well.
slashdot rocks
when the CEO accidentally twitters the list of layoffs thanks to a hotkey.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Some of the examples seem nice, but I'm not quite convinced. How is this substantially different from the various site-specific Firefox extensions, like the kind Flock uses to help you integrate Flikr photos with your blog?
I'm the sort that is always conflicted about whether I really want my browser to be a web-application platform or I'd rather keep it as a plain document viewer. The latter seems safer and more efficient for a lot of things, but here I am posting on Slashdot, and webforms already make it more than a passive viewing application. But anyway this sort of thing exacerbates the tension for me because I can't quite figure out what new direction the devs are pushing the browser towards.
Don't we hit a point where we take a step back and ask, "What are we really trying to do here?" and then build a system for that purpose? If we want to standardize web application interaction, then it makes me want to ask: Should we really be trying to rebuild the browser to use the backwards hacks that people are currently using to make web applications, or do we want to build a new web application framework and a new sort of web-application platform built for that purpose? Must we squeeze everything into the web browser?
But I might just have a mental block on what they're trying to do. And besides, they're only claiming to have made an experimental prototype/tech-demo, so I guess there's no point in getting into a huff.
Now, someone tell me that I don't understand what the Internet is.
This entire article reads as if the new FF extension at least solves world hunger and maybe even provides world peace. It's a command line interface that pops up in some black dialog box, where you can type commands instead of pointing and clicking with a mouse. It's great, but users will have to learn those commands, won't they?
You can't handle the truth.
Hmm, this doesn't get me anything that the Services plugin for Sawfish does. Oh well.
next...
Wasn't Firefox supposed to be the anti-bloat fork of SeaMonkey? Are we going to have another fork in another year that's the anti-bloat version of Firefox?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This is a classic case of "because we can build it"-based design instead of "what problems can we solve for users"-based design.
I installed this and it doesn't work at all for me on Firefox 3.0.1 on Ubuntu, I can fire up Ubiquity but I can't issue any command 'cause for some reason the enter key after typing something doesn't do anything.
[insert lame sig here]
I thought Ubiquity was the name of the Ubuntu live-CD installer.
kernel: lp0 on fire
I just downloaded it. It's pretty buggy but it has great potential.
what's next?
Comparing this to "Launchy" is pretty silly. Recognize this for what it is, the first steps of a new wave of Interface Design brought about by Interface Engineering.
Ubiquity's pedigree is MUCH older, going all the way back to the Canon Cat and the late Jef Raskin's idea of The Humane Interface, this being a subset closer related to The Humane Editor and Aza Raskin's Enso.
The Humane Interface is, in fact, an entire rethinking of human computer interaction, restructured around what Cognitive Science has to say about human mental capabilities instead of a strange, cobbled together desktop metaphor and separate applications.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
this seems to be an interesting concept that has the potential to be useful given the right systems and tools added to it. It would be a good fit for any number of these micro linux projects like gOS (thinkgos.com). As things move to the web and speed up I can see this become a pseudo operating system. I can write emails and pull up info on the net. I should be able to sms and IM on the thing.
It seems clear to me that browsers are or will be in direct competition with social networks now!!
I see 2 groups: (1)Those of Vista + and facebook with lots of money who pay the browser/OS/soc network to live their online life for them, so they can live in the real world
(2)Those of Linux/Firefox + ubiguity with less/no money who don't pay the browser/OS/soc network but still have their online life lived for them, so they can live in the real world
It will just be a few Adams, Allen and Anderson that will get upset, the rest would be outside the 140 character per tweet limit.
If only twitter, Erris, and the rest of the gang could stay in the 140-char limit once in a while.
I installed it today, and decided to quickly create my own useful plug-in for it: ROT-13 Encoder/Decoder.
One of the nice things about Ubiquity for anyone here who hasn't tried it is that it can modify the content of a website. As such, you can use my ROT-13 plug-in to decode the following text in-place (just as I'm using it to encode it in-place):
It's the ability to actually modify pages which makes this a bit more interesting.
Yaz.
Some folks on the Ubuntu forums advocate changing the hotkey to SHIFT+SPACE. Do that, and you'll have the command functionality in Linux.
It's a bad idea though for most people, esp. if you use capital letters when entering something.
We got some
(2)Those of Linux/Firefox + ubiguity with less/no money who don't pay the browser/OS/soc network but still have their online life lived for them, so they can live in the real world
First we need decent support for Linux in Ubiquity, which doesn't seem to be immediately forthcoming. They can't seem to decide on a toolkit to use for their transparent popup window a la Mac and Windows, so those of us using a free system are, for the time being, without many of Ubiquity's features. Since I'm not going to change platforms just to try it out, that makes it a lot less interesting than it might have been.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ok, I read the article and I don't get the excitement. Did Firefox just implement AppleScript? Tell firefox send selected text to twitter I mean, ok, the ability to have semi-natural language scripting is neat, and the ability to have it interact with the displayed document is neat, but once the initial golly-gee wears off, so what? -- JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
I suppose it's nice for people whose only interaction with the computer is a web browser, but I already do most of the things they described naturally without using crippled browser interfaces for everything, using the Mac's native services and scripting. It's almost funny that he demos a scripted way to copy a map out of a browser window when I already have a little scripted shortcut that pulls up the map based on an address (and it's not limited to craigslist and some restaurant site) and the Mac snapshot-region shortcut lets me paste the map in email (an ANY mail program) or any other document I'm editing... and he's running his demo on a Mac.
I've routinely used similar tools on UNIX, all the way back to when an "advanced editor" meant "vi" instead of "edit".
I guess it might be useful for Windows users.
translate "googleplex direciÃn" to english | imfeelinglucky | map | send to johndoe@xpto.com
map should use the first address found from the google's im feeling lucky search