Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 is a classic case of "because we can build it"-based design instead of "what problems can we solve for users"-based design.
Been playing with it for a little while now. So far the commands are very natural to what you'd think they are. Google Maps is "map", Gmail is "email", in-line translation is "translate {selected text} from {language} to {language} (by far my favorite feature so far). And all you have to do is start typing for it to suggest commands it has. Makes it very easy to learn what it can do. If the "trusted network" of commands gets going like they plan, new commands are as easy to get as visiting a website and installing like a plugin after reviewing whether it's one you like & trust. Once this gets a feature to let me use Thunderbird to email, I'll like it even more!
It's working fine for me on Fedora 9 x86_64.
Really, I'm getting a bit tired of the comments on the 140-character limit that Twitter imposes. The idea behind the limit is something tha
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?