Amos mailed me today telling me about a new Mozilla Labs prototype Ubiquity which he called phenomenal. I was skeptical at first but this could be the killer app for Firefox. Yes that might be hard to believe but this prototype introduces a whole new level of interaction. Natural interaction that is, something that integrates itself perfectly in the work routine.
Ubiquity is a Firefox prototype add-on that is similar to Launchy but located in the browser. Launchy is a Windows launcher that makes things much easier. Ubiquity takes that concept to the web. The interface is loaded with CTRL SPace. A black transparent block is opened just below the header bars of Firefox waiting for input.
Now the interesting aspect of this is that everything happens in that black area. A basic example would be if you want to write a message about something that you discovered to Twitter. With Ubiquity you press CTRL Space and enter Twitter This is a cool thing that I discovered. Enter sends the mail to Twitter. That’s it. No more leaving a page, no widgets in the background that you need to open.
Lots of commands are available by default. I would say about 50 are available. This reaches from normal web searches, map searches, translations, adding events to the calendar, emailing, calculating or digging. Lots of stuff to explore and it is pretty exciting that users can create their own commands.
This requires some programming skills but I’m confident that we will see many user created commands that can be integrated into the own version of Ubiquity easily.
A wonderful feature is the Google Maps integration. If you got a list of addresses Ubiquity can map all of them on a Google Map and it is possible to add the map to the current page, for example an email or web form.
There is so much possibility. What can I say. Go get it right now, it is a killer app. Thanks again Amos, your tip was wonderful.
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18 Responses to “Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Is A Firefox Killer Application!”
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[...] Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Is A Firefox Killer Application! [...]
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[...] Ubiquity is an interesting add-on for the Firefox web browser that was covered before here at Ghacks. Here is a short explanation of what Ubiquity adds to the Firefox browser. It basically provides access to a command line in Firefox that comes preinstalled with dozens of commands to make life easier for the Firefox user. It takes for examples only a few seconds to look up an address in a map, perform a search in a search engine, submit a page to social media sites, send a message to Twitter, look something up in a dictionary or start writing an email. [...]
I didn’t see the link in your post, so…
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity
Thanks Scott, I’m to excited ;)
I notice they’ve set up something in the way of a wiki for user-created commands:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Commands_In_The_Wild
big thanks to both of you!
Sorry, just like LH talking up all those shortcuts, keywords, blah, blah, blah, I have no interest in memorizing another group so I’ll just pass. And no, it’s no killer app for me.
sounds like the first step on the road to the demos from the web of the future they sent recently
oooooh i like the look of this! now i have something to do at work today :)
thanks!
Seems like custom search engine on steroids to me… “Type command and request” is exactly how custom search engines work and you can use them for much more than just search engines. :)
Wow this is actually pretty great.. I’ve been testing it out a bit before actually commenting here but this is a good find. I’ve been keeping tabs on the Mozilla labs ideas for a while now, but I wasn’t aware that they had actually released a prototype to the public!
I fail to see the excitement in this. How is it simpler to switch to Firefox and execute these commands to launch stuff? Why not use a windows-level launcher like FARR or Executor or Launchy with the advantage of getting its input box irrespective of which application you are in?
I watched the video tutorial, installed it and gave it some time. It is not a replacement for desktop launchers but nicely complements them.
Really impressive add-on.
I’ve been trying it for a while (minutes), and I found that if you have the FastDial add-on, it will stop displaying your links.
Sure I’ll change to another links-showcase-app.
(or wait until they fix this)
@Tony S.
To fix the Fast Dial display issue just upgrade to the newest X build (2.x) http://userlogos.org/extensions/fastdial. I had the same problem (has to do with the use of about:blank in Fast Dial) but this fixed it.
OMG!! Ubiquity extension is pants-peeing awesome.!!
thx for the hedz up
im a bit late but this is great!!