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Command Lines and the Future of Firefox
Barence writes "Mozilla has revealed how it plans to integrate plain text commands directly into future versions of Firefox. Dubbed Taskfox, the move sees Mozilla's Ubiquity project become part of the browser itself, allowing users to type commands directly into the address bar. You can, for example, type 'map cleveland street london' to bring up a Google Map of that location, or 'amazon-search the great gatsby' to find that book on Amazon, without visiting the website directly. 'The basic idea behind Taskfox is simple: take the time-saving ideas behind Ubiquity, and put them into Firefox,' the Taskfox wiki claims. 'That means allowing users to quickly access information and perform tasks that would normally take several steps to complete.'"
I've typed "imdb back to the future" in the address bar and had the page I wanted come up right away. Same with "wikipedia donkey punch". What's new?
Whale
You joke, but the interface is all that's new here. You can already do what the summary suggests using bookmark keywords - it is a useful feature, actually. I don't know how well-know it is, but basically you make a bookmark with a keyword for the address bar and a wildcard in the URL.
For example, if you make a bookmark with the keyword 'map' and the address 'http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=%s' (note the '%s' wildcard) you can then type 'map cleveland street london' straight into the address bar just as the summary suggests. All that they seem to be suggesting is having it come up in a 'floating' context box like the AwesomeBar rather than actually open in the tab.
Uhhh... how is this news? I've been doing that with Firefox for ages using bookmark keywords. So I have w foo to look up foo on Wikipedia and p foo to look for python documentation about foo for example. That could easily be expanded to do imdb searches, etc if I wanted to. It's reasonable to claim the interface for setting up these searches could be improved, but the functionality is already 99% there.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Opera has had this for ages. It is truly sweet to be able to type "g Argle Fargle" into the address-bar to do a google-search for "Argle Fargle" without ever touching my mouse. There is also 'z' for Amazon search, 'a' for Ask.com, 'b' for bittorrent, 'y' for Yahoo, etc. etc. And you can add your own.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Many browsers have keyword searches, and most of them handle these much more robustly than Firefox with their ridiculous "bookmark keywords" (argh). Check Konquerors search manager to see how it should be done :)
However Ubiquity is much more than keyword search. An ubiquity script can take input from several variables, and in several steps.
You joke, but the interface is all that's new here. You can already do what the summary suggests using bookmark keywords
Not exactly. With Ubquity you get instant feedback during typing, so you don't have to wait for the page to load with all the bells and whistles, you see only the relevant part of it.
So it's quicker and more convenient than keyword bookmarks.
For me if the address doesn't resolve I get a "Page Load Error".. It must be a problem on your end (and I don't see what it has to do with the address bar anyway).
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Every browser has had them for ages. I distinctly remember setting them up in IE back when I used it. Before I switched to Firefox. And by Firefox, I mean Phoenix 0.4.
Ubiquity is a bit fancier than that, allowing multiple arguments (including, say, the currently selected text) and returning just the answer to a query as opposed to a whole new browser window for a single dictionary definition.
Firefox is gonna be like the Emacs Operating System ... only bigger
Yep, Emacs already has this.
Like vimperator?
I typed both these into the search box and got the results.
I am not convinced this gains anything.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
i typed those phrases into the chrome address bar and the first result that appeared in both cases was exactly what i wanted. all the chrome address bar does is pass them along to google.
so is firefox re-implementing google, except every possible search entry has to be hard-coded in? i don't get it. google has already solved this problem much more efficiently...
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And.... Your neighbor must have some weird setting, or you just weren't typing it in properly (with the http and all).
.com, but never google search it....
I've done tons on intranet and modem/router troubleshooting with firefox, and I never, ever had it take a properly valid address and shove it into google search. Sometimes if I mis-type, it will try to append a
it is nowhere near as cool as ubiquity.
you don't have to even type full commands.
you highlight an address, press shift-space, and type map
it gives you a list as you type of the possible variables.
press enter opens a google map with that address mapped. way more cool than simple one letter shortcuts.
They're using their grammar skills there.
No, it's oh so much more than that.
Watch the video, it explains everything, and looks like a very cool feature with a LOT of potential.
http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/ubiquity/
However Ubiquity also gives you a natural language interface for command line pipes, "do this and then do that" for example things along the line of "Find cheapest flight from London to Las Vegas first 2 weeks in June and add to my calendar"
Was that a mushroom period?
The Mozilla suite was the replacement for Netscape, Firefox was a project started later on by a group who decided that the focus and methodology of the Mozilla suite was broken.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No. As their example video shows, you don't even need to open a new tab.
For example:
Select the text "Mozilla is just trying to reproduce Google";
Shift-Space (open Ubiquity);
type "twit can you believe how dumb this slashdotter is: this"
Ubiquity tweets the message and puts your selected text as "this"
Go to the address bar and type 'amazon-search the great gatsby'
Have you tried Ubiquity at all? It has completion on the commands too.
E.g. for accessing wikipedia I don't have to write "wikipedia". "wi" is enough.
But you cannot select an image on a random web page and say "email this to $contact", and have it compose a mail in Gmail for you.
If Ubiquity did nothing but that, it would be worth installing. And the more of it gets integrated in Firefox, the better.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Okay, so it's taking some getting used to but the Vimperator plug-in is pretty awesome. They implement Search-Replace better than Firefox, though it'll take some getting used to before I get C-i C-o instead of searching for the mouse and clicking on the Back and Forward buttons.
I love what they do with bookmarks, though. Instead of mousing over the bookmark buttons that I usually have taking up real estate on my taskbar I just type ":bmarks! xkcd" and it automatically opens my favorite web comic. Plus, I can easily envision renaming my webcomic bookmarks as "comic " so that I can open them with one sweeping ":bmarks! comic" and then just C-n with "d" through them until I've consumed them all.
Good stuff. Mod parent up. Vimperator is an excellent tool.
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