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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.'"
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Wow, they have actual screenshots of the commandline interface. Who would have thought that was possible.
So, basically, a bunch of officially-included bookmark shortcuts.
With keyword search, there's dozens of websites I don't have to "visit" to use. This just seems like a more intelligent version.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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
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.
How long will it be before they start selling "placement" services? Mozilla is non-profit but they could use the money to fund development.
... for Mozilla to keep their filthy commands out of the address bar. They could easily add that to the search plugin bar without any problems. I had enough trouble last night when I was trying to troubleshoot a neighbor's internet connection issues and Firefox would repeatedly send the perfectly valid address (http://192.168.1.1) I was inputting off to a google search, which of course would return a blank page, since the ultimate trouble was the cable modem, not the router nor the connection to the router.
There needs to be a gigantic "FUCK YOU, LEAVE ME ALONE, LET ME SURF THE WEB AS THE FLYING SPAGHETTI WEASEL INTENDED" button in the settings.
Screenshot from article
The idea is interesting, but wouldn't this be better served as an add-on? That would keep Firefox true to it's add-on roots, IMO.
ok but when it comes back with "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" I'm out of here...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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.
Firefox is gonna be like the Emacs Operating System ... only bigger
over the past 20 years I've been amazed at how the IT world first started scorning command lines (IE the rise of Mac, Windows and GUIs in general) only to come back to them (IE Mac OS X / spotlight / Quicksilver, Windows / launchy, smart address bars, and the increasing amount of people who started using Linux with Ubuntu and are nwo flocking to the command line).
This just proves what i'd known all along: command lines are more efficient, and although the learning curve might be a bit steeper, they just kick ass for things you have to do repeatedly. You of course learn the commands and then whiz by all those people whose motor skills barely allow them to use the mouse, yet they insist in their clickety-clickety ways.
Many operations are easier with a GUI but getting rid of the command line altogether (mac OS 1.x-9.x, I'm looking at you) is/was never a good idea.
Because new == bad
We know.
No, seriously, at least give it a chance to be useful. Your prejudgment seems unwarranted, unfounded, and unnecessary. I know I'll at least try it out before either ignoring it or destroying it.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
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
Users can already do that with the search text field. Example1. Example2. This new feature doesn't appear to bring any new value to the user over what is already provided.
I'd really like to see Mozilla spend one release where they stop working on new features and focus solely on fixing bugs. The results of such an effort would be more valuable to the end user.
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If I wanted bloat I would use IE.
You are eaten by a grue.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It would be nice, but not as "let me guess half way what you want as you type in the address bar" kind of thing. Much of that is there already. If you want to add a real command line, then create an add-on with multi-line commands, some logic built-in, perhaps piping. In other words, do a "bashy" thing.
While we're at it, why not allow execution of scripts written in this new language? Now, that would be cool.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Does anyone else see this as a BIG (like ActiveX-sized) security hole???
Oops, I deleted the Internet. Sorry.
When Firefox was created, it was a spinoff of the Mozilla project for people who wanted 'just a browser' with extensions to fill in the rest.
Part of me wonders if it's time to do that again: spin something new off of the Firefox project for people who want 'just a browser' with extensions to fill in the rest. Firefox has done a lot of good, just like Mozilla before it, but it seems to me like it's starting to suffer from the same bloat-over-standards problem that made the original project necessary in the first place.
Maybe this is a cyclic thing; I don't know. Perhaps it's just plain going to be necessary to do this every few years: when a Mozilla browser gets too large, a lean child project emerges, eventually takes over, bloats up, and another lean child project emerges, and so the cycle continues.
Any feature added to computers since 1978 is bad. Anything that allows normal humans who haven't dedicated their lives to understanding the machine to use a computer is evil. The interface was perfected when it was arcane and required years of study to use effectively. Everything since then is simply a conspiracy between Intel and Microsoft to make money.
I hope it stops suggesting porn when my friends and family use my computer.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
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?
Well Firefox is doing it, therefore it is innovative and cool and must be newsworthy. No one cares about us Opera users. We're such a minority.
But this does appear to be more robust than that. I use the hell out of it in Opera. It's really nice that you can set up custom ones, too.
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let's call it phoenix, so it can rise from the ashes of firefox?
Like vimperator?
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.
ummmm...what happened to firefox being a bare bones base that you'd add your own addons to?
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
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
Why not just BUNDLE SOME FUCKING PLUGINS, rather than ignoring the whole plugin-based architecture you've set up?
If you could do it just fine as a plugin, bundle the thing instead of removing the feature of not having it
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Take opera into address bar type g hello world search google for hello work. type w WW2 Search wikipedia for WW2 go to anything that has a search function, right click and Create search. Find a "keyword" that makes sense. New command added. Has been like that for years.
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
I'm really liking the uninformed bullshit about this being bookmark keywords with a GUI. Do you have a keyword to go back? Home? Forward? Stop? Restart firefox? Act as a calculator? Check next Tuesday's schedule in google calandar instantly? There is a tonne of things ubiquity can do and while it's true some of it's functionality can be mirrored by keywords I would like to see a keyword bookmark that allows you to do "add lunch with jim tomorrow" to your google calandar.
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"
I assume you're joking, but that elitist bullshit attitude is what I've spent most of my career defeating. My side will win in the end because we have the popular support.
There were no GUI's when I started playing with PC's. I had to learn how to do everything from the command line. Then, they created GUI's which I learned to use. Then, they created Windows, thereby making all those cool GUI's obsolete. Then, I finally learned Linux, making Windows obsolete - still with GUI's. Now, they are returning to the command line, except, I have to learn how THEY WANT IT DONE. Balls. I don't need this crap. It's not so much that you can't teach an old dog new tricks - but the damned dog's days are numbered. He isn't going to waste them learning yet a new way of doing stuff.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br