Holey moley! Things are changing – almost to the point of being scary. We’re going to have a lot of catching up to do in the next several years, as we move toward the “browser OS”. Enter Ubiquity – a new Firefox extension that will change the way you communicate with the web. Though we’ve known about it for many months now, the lab has recently released a major update. Be sure to review this screencast, by Aza Raskin, that details exactly what Mozilla’s Ubiquity project is.
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By Jeffrey Way
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New to me Jeffrey – thanks for posting.
Just goes to show how important semantic markup will be!
Wow!
Yes, I have been using Ubiquity and I love it so far!
I think this is a great addition to the current technology. This will definitely change the web. Thanks for this post.
i am using it since it has been released… it’s amazing … Guys use it … it really save the time …. and lot many feature …
Nice addition !!
My head just exploded…. This is just too much awesome to handle.
Could you please give a direct link to download the screencast? Our connection speed doesn’t allow us to watch it.
Thanks.
this is really awesome , testing it right now
Wow… this is really neat! Never heard of it until now..
This isn’t anything like a browser OS.
Here’s some, for example:
http://g.ho.st/
http://eyeos.org/
http://www.cornelios.org/
ubiquity is simply a plugin. It doesn’t even follow the definition of an OS.
yayks wt went over here?? this seems almost futuristic :) hafta try that out!
great! thx all!
What!? What!? What!? Incredible.
@Timothy – I obviously wasn’t implying that this was an OS. Surely, you can understand that.
I was merely stating that we’re moving in that direction.
Ill try it now :)
Mozilla does it again with an update that will change everything.
Wonderful presentation! Anyone tells me what software do they use to produce the presentation? Many thanks.
Wow future, here we come.
Next step: voice commands.
Our jobs are diminishing right before our very eyes.
There are some massive security issues if Ubiquity allows you to subscribe to other people’s commands. Those code snippets should be saved locally instead of linking to them from someone else’s page.
As cool as the service is, there is a huge security hole.
So, to avoid having to go to and use various services, you have to go to and use a service (ubiq)? What’s the point of typing it into ubiq when I can type it all into my firefox address bar? One input is as good as the next. Why would I spend time embedding a map when pasting a URL is a two second procedure? Why would I want an extra plugin?
None of the features in the video jump out as a quantum leap. In fact, they appear to take more time than doing it the current way. Tossing someone a link in email isn’t exactly a time killer that ruins may days.
This thing is very good. I saw this a while back.
The only thing is, is that most of us who know code and such will be able to figure this out and use this feature.
The normal web user who knows little to no coding will not want to sift through a bunch of documentation to figure out how to use Ubiquity. Granted this thing is awesome! But if they want a mass audience they will have to do one heck of a media blitz and some user centric tutorials for basic users.
All I can say is… WOW haha
eh…I use prism currently from the Mozilla labs and like it a lot. I think the idea of application specific browsers makes a whole more sense.
It seems the link is overflow :(
Looks cool, but it doesn’t seem like something a standard web user is going to utilize. Your every day computer user, ie my mom, her friends, etc, don’t even understand ctrl-c/v as an alternative to the right click menu.
It looks great for speeding things up IF you want to put the time in to getting comfortable with it.
For now, if I want to see something in wikipedia, I can just double click the word to highlight it and drag it into the wiki-search box in FF. I don’t know, as cool as that is, I don’t see it as anything close to epic.
These are pretty nice feature sets for Firefox but the turning point for me with Firefox is it’s memory usage. Of course with all these plugins it is understandable that it will bloat the memory footprint but if Mozilla can spend some effort to come up with a clever way of handling the memory footprint with all those add-ons enabled that would make Firefox a killer.
Briteclick.com is a browser plugin at Techcrunch50 that does similar stuff. Still no idea when it’ll be available to the public though.
I love it!… makes my life much easier!
Why write in a bunch of words when you can just use a few clicks of the mouse?
It seems like a good idea for people that like keyboard shortcuts and love typing things.
Not everyone can type very well, but everyone can use a mouse.
I must say I’ve just Twittered this myself as soon as I saw it. Can’t wait to have this in a stable release.
titel
i have to say that I love seeing these types of things starting to pop up in browsers. It seems kind of the the accelerators you can create for IE8. One thing about the accelerators id that you don’t need to type out the commands (makes it more user friendly) just right click and pick the one you want.
Ubiquity, is a good experiment, but i just don’t see it as mainstream in its current operation. I can’t see the average user wanting to type in all those commands.
I must try this one.
Im sold.
wow , this is some amazing stuff for the true nerd:). You guys at nettuts.com rock. I visit this is site everyday. You guys provide extremely relevant material…..keep it coming
I’ve been using it for a while and it’s great. Twitter updates, quick wiki searches, and dictionary look up just to name a few.
The other cool feature is the “add-to-calendar” function. I have Google’s Cal. and iCal synced which then allows me to quickly transfer everything to my iphone : )
Well, I think the time when Internet should change has come :) Nice stuff.
Maybe I’m just an idiot, but on OS X 10.4 with Firefox 3.* and Growl installed to the OS, I can’t get this to work. Firefox isn’t registering with Growl and all the Growl plug-ins are for Fx 2.*
Can anyone toss out how to fix this?
Also, for the nay-sayers. For every leap forward there is a crowd of people who just will not get it. Unfortunately it seems some of you are there. If you can’t see the potential here or why it is a good idea, I’m afraid you’ve missed the wave.
Ha… nevermind. Needed the latest latest version of Fx.
Wow this is seriously awesome, bringing the future a lot closer to today!
Holy crap!
Yeah no.
Maybe before we had tabbed browsing or multiple monitor displays, this would’ve been a big deal. As it is, this does nothing that my Firefox extensions don’t already do. So I have to *gasp* open a new tab, or *wince* click on a link! How have I lived this whole time using such primitive tools? It’s like we’ve all been banging sticks together in the woods!
Also now I´m already a converted user! Love it
@Rob, lets look at the *gasp* click on a link horror for a minute. It seems like that is what most of the people who haven’t caught what this means are harping on.
Why is sending a map better than sending a link?
1. Eliminates an intermediary step for the recipient.
2. Eliminates the need for a stable internet connection on a portable device, you have the map there is no need to go get it.
3. The recipient doesn’t need to interrupt their reading to go and find the relative information your link sends them to.
“So I have to *gasp* open a new tab, or *wince* click on a link! How have I lived this whole time using such primitive tools? It’s like we’ve all been banging sticks together in the woods!”
It’s funny you put it that way. If that attitude had prevailed, we would still be banging sticks together in the woods. Who needs stone arrowheads, I’ve got a pointy stick! Who needs the motor car, I’ve got a horse buggy! Who needs the internet, I’ve got FedEX!
really impressive!!
I like 0:37. I used Ubiquity before this, and it is pretty cool!
@Jason: Good point. Plus, if you are email someone on a phone, then it is REALLY SLOW.
Wow and really useful tools
Soooo nice… i’m loving it!
I think it’s good in theory, but will require a lot of relearning for the average internet browser. Most people don’t understand the shortcut keys that are available to them. So what makes the mozilla team so sure this will be a success? I’m not dogging on the extension itself, I may even try it out. But it seems to me like the normal computer user won’t understand. I hope I’m wrong though.
incredible