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Firefox 3.2 Plans Include Natural Language, Themes

Posted by timothy on from the subject-to-change dept.

Shrike82 writes "Mozilla have described plans for the next version of their popular web browser, Firefox. Mozilla's "Ubiquity project" is set to become a standard feature, allowing "users to type natural language phrases into the browser to perform certain tasks, such as typing 'map 10 Downing Street' to instantly see a Google map of that address, or 'share-on-delicious' to bookmark the site you're currently visiting on the social news site." Also of interest is so-called "lightweight theming" allowing users to customise the browsers design more easily. The launch date is still somewhat unclear, and Mozilla are apparently unsure if version 3.2 will be released at all, apparently considering going straight to Firefox 4."

7 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Why don't they... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    save users a heap of bandwidth and build the entire Internet into the browser. Mozilla: the only browser that doesn't need a 'net connection! It'd have around the same amount of bloat.

  2. NOOOOOOOOOO! by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds... shit.

    Come on, Firefox was meant to be a lightweight extensible browser. I don't want more features. If they want to ship these features, they should be making extensions.

    1. Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      RTFA - Ubiquity is an extension ! But it needs a few changes under the hood, that's all. The main difference is that it will accept commands typed in the location bar, and you don't have to type ctrl-space first (which is what the extension was all about). The actual commands will have to be downloaded/installed from the net.

      Besides, it's nothing really special, you can call it a "command line interface for the browser". It has nothing to do with natural language.

    2. Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! by Zarhan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Problem is that they stop security updates for old versions.

      I was HAPPY with firefox 2.x. Even with addon that tries to resemble the old behavior(Old Location Bar), I hate the way firefox 3 handles it. I much liked the way I could type part of the url and I'd see ordered list in my search history of matching places - ORDERED by number of visits.

      I didn't want to go 3.x, but since 2.x no longer gets security updates...I'm SOL.

  3. Map 10 Downing Street by BarryNorton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's your example of natural language? Map as a transitive verb and a fairly specific reference? How about: "show me where the prime minister's house is on a map"?

  4. Three words: Enterprise deployment tools by Darth_brooks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Enough with the super-uber-awesome search crap. Give me an MSI (that I don't have to build myself), give me a way to push settings via group policy, and most of all give me a browser that I can centrally manage even half as easily as I can manage IE. Oh, and lemme just give some space here:

    ^ That's where you run-off-to-google-up-some-snark-for-my-reply folks can put your links to tools like FirefoxADM that haven't been touched in almost four years, or to frontmotion and their "give us a 150 bucks and we'll roll your MSI for you" service. Take this example; I want to change the homepage on 50 PC's, each with two or three different users. In IE it's a one-line group policy change. Firefox? roll up your sleves, you'll be there a while. Maybe push out a new prefs.js file into each user's profile. Maybe roll up a CCK custom XPI. Or just roll your own MSI and have it re-install the entire damned browser.

    Until Chrome, Firefox, and Opera get over circle-jerking themselves about getting IE's sloppy seconds market share, there's not even enough motion to say that there's a even a "browser war" going on. I really hoped that Mozilla would take a decent swing at the enterprise market. Instead they're doing 110mph down the netscape road towards a bloated browser. Meanwhile, Chrome and Opera aren't doing much more than pulling on to the on-ramp of the same road, and touting how you'll go do the same path, only in style!

    --
    There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
    1. Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools by mmaniaci · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe he's like the rest of us and doesn't have time to spend developing for an open source project. Maybe he doesn't have nearly enough programming skill. Maybe space monkeys force him to use IE at lasergunpoint. Either way you are the stereotypical /. nerd-dick that did 2 minutes of Googling and therefore has the right post a malicious reply to a valid comment. Assholes like you make me want to be a jock instead of a geek... you make a bad name for us.

      Anyway, my 2c: No matter how hard Mozilla tries, they will not beat Google in search. To try is futile, wasteful, and frustrating (for us hopefuls). And there is a damn Google search bar BY DEFAULT in a typical Firefox install which can easily handle real-language queries! C'mon!