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.'"

Comments

Hasn't this been in there for ages?

[Benjo]

Search keywords have been in firefox for ages. I.e. right clicking on a search box in an arbitrary web page and turning it into a address bar command. I've used it to do all the examples in the summary.

In the beginning

[sakdoctor]

In the beginning operating systems only had command lines.
Then the GUI replaced the command line.
Then the browser replaced the operating system.
Then the browser got a command line.

I was so excited, for like ten seconds

[holophrastic]

I was excited, thinking that the command-line was back, and I could ditch this horrible mouse interface. But then I read that it's only for skipping common search interfaces. Big deal.

What I wanted, what I want, what wolud actually get me to switch from IE to FF, what I need is to be able to control the browser from a command-line interface. I want to type something like "add favourite 'my favourite recipes' in 'food links'" and "go back" and "favourite 'my favourite recipes'" and "new tab 'live.ca'" and "close all other tabs".

I don't care about search. There's already as many serach bars as I want, and smart address bars, and ISP searches. Already if I serached for "amazon magic beans" I'd get a listing with the expented book about jack from amazon. I don't need fancier searching. I don't have trouble searching. I have trouble with slow interfaces to vast feature sets within browsers.

"stop loading images"
"javascript off"
"deny cookies"
"accept cookies"
"read privacy policy"
"view certificate"
"disable flash"
"maximize"

Hell, what I want is the windows key to pull up a generalized command-line interface, either to the OS or to the current application. I'm sick of long drop-downs, fly-outs, ribbons, menus, and checkboxes. I can type faster than I can click -- and who's ever heard of clicking without looking?

Re:I was so excited, for like ten seconds

[Chad Birch]

Have a look at Vimperator. It's slow to get started (much like vim itself), but very efficient once you get it. Make sure you read the help/manual so you realize all the commands possible.