5 ms·

Mozilla Ubiquity: a ridiculously useful Firefox extension

52 points by acangiano 18y ago

0xdefec8 18y ago
Very cool. I love how some software is approaching the point of almost transcending the UI. If you combined something like Ubiquity with voice recognition I think you'd basically have a real version of 60s campy sci-fi tech: "computer, cross reference joker's last known whereabouts with..."
- ambition 18y ago
  There's a project at the University of Toronto working on voice recognition for Ubiquity.
brandonkm 18y ago
Projects like this make me love Mozilla even more. This type of extension is beyond useful and is outright intuitive. Can't wait to try this out!
- juanpablo 18y ago
  So then don't wait: https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest.xpi https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest.xpi
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
iamwil 18y ago
I've been using it for a couple months, and I've had some problems with it, as it's still alpha software. As ubiquity gets updates, the ubi scripts get out of step. The command to email a page to someone is pretty handy--if it worked most of the time. Also, the algorithm to do real-time narrowing down of commands that you might mean gets slower and slower (seemingly exponentially) the more you type. After a while, I find it gets bogged down and unusable. The only use I've had for it was to make it easier to twitter something, only because I don't have twitter clients installed. That said, it's still early. I think the concept is good. And even better when you can have context specific commands for each web app that you visit. That way you don't need to download each ubi script as you want them. They dynamically load and unload with the web application.
jgfoot 18y ago
But watch out for the many security problems associated with Ubiquity's system for installing and updating plugins. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10053044-46.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10053044-46.html
- misuba 18y ago
  The bulk of the work on Ubiquity 0.2 has been to address these sorts of problems.
katamole 18y ago
Why not link to a more useful page? http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- andreyf 18y ago
  Because I already submitted it, just over 100 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310045 Glad people finally saw it - the submitter was smart to point out it's a FF extension in the title.
  - katamole 18y ago
    I see. Is it not possible to submit the same URL twice? (serious question, I've never tried).
    - inglorian 18y ago
      It's not. HN will automatically link you to the previous submission.
gnoupi 18y ago
In my humble opinion, this is simply a command line with defined shortcuts. It may look all great when he uses it, normal, he designed it, with his words, his sentences. But honestrly, after trying this ubiquity for a while, i have difficulties finding it "user-friendly". It's like calling a unix-shell "user-friendly" because with all commands, and pipes, and possibilities to combine them you can do everything. It's possible, sure, but who really can, besides like 1-2% of computer users ? I get the same feeling from this thing. It's supposed to make you feel like you only ask your computer for something and it comes naturally, but basically, it's only typing a command to make an action. And the main flaw of it, is that words that are obvious to one person, are not to another. And last point, I know, it's still alpha software, but not everyone does everything with their keyboard. I do, i'm quite a big fan of utilities like Launchy, for example, but most of people prefer to use a mouse for their actions, they want a flow of action, they want drag and drop. Basically, this ubiquity, it's just a unix command line adapted to a browser, but i can't see that becoming very useful to most people.
- fsilva 18y ago
  I think you have a good point that most people prefer to use the mouse, and commands that may seem obvious for some people may not be immediate for another. A clickety pointy UI would make it's affordances more immediate for the user, and I bet that they will look into that in the future. (In the lastest version, you can call ubiquity actions with a right click on the text. That's a start) Given that, I do find ubiquity much more user-friendly and useful than commands in the terminal, for the tasks it was designed to use. For example, you can select a whole page, just alt-space, write 'translate to chinese' and it substitutes the text in place, fast. In your email, you can select an address, write 'map' and insert it in the email almost instantly. You can save many seconds and mindshare with this tool.
- halo 18y ago
  It depends how you define "user-friendly", which is not as obvious as it seems. The question is who is the 'user' that it's friendly to? The power-user who uses an application every day where the initial learning curve will consist of a relatively small amount of time compared to the speed and frequency of doing tasks, or the new user who is likely to do something only once and as such will never get past any 'learning curve' and only the initial understanding matters? Is it "flawed" to intentionally develop something to focus on the prior but not the latter? Is it a fair trade-off to deliberately increase the learning curve for long-term flexibility and power? If the Unix terminal isn't to some degree "user-friendly" why is it rediscovered by successive generations who notice its speed, power and flexibility over the alternative GUI interfaces? When given a /free choice/, why does a certain subset of users /choose/ the terminal over the GUI interface?
azharcs 18y ago
There is something very similar to Ubiquity by a startup called Wundrbar. Here is a comparison of Ubiquity and Wundrbar. http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our-thoughts.html http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our-th...
jballanc 18y ago
I tried Ubiquity, but I found the requirement that you be in Firefox to use it a little to restrictive to make it truly useful. I still only spend ~30% of the time on a computer inside a browser. On the other hand, Google's Quick Search Box (http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/) is looking a lot like Ubiquity without the browser!
- misuba 18y ago
  Quick Search's launching capacity is getting there, but the real place to be if you want maximum flexibility is the open-source version of Enso (the original linguistic-CLI project from the people behind Ubiquity). It's all in Python, so it's very accessible.
gojomo 18y ago
If you like Ubiquity, you should also look at Inky, "a sloppy command-line interface for the web": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky-preprint.pdf http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky-preprint....
sam_in_nyc 18y ago
I'm so glad I switched from commenting to this. In about a month, Ubiquity will be the Linux, and I'll be the Windows.

52 points by acangiano 18y ago

Very cool. I love how some software is approaching the point of almost transcending the UI. If you combined something like Ubiquity with voice recognition I think you'd basically have a real version of 60s campy sci-fi tech: "computer, cross reference joker's last known whereabouts with..."

ambition 18y ago
There's a project at the University of Toronto working on voice recognition for Ubiquity.

brandonkm 18y ago

Projects like this make me love Mozilla even more. This type of extension is beyond useful and is outright intuitive. Can't wait to try this out!

juanpablo 18y ago
So then don't wait: https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest.xpi https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest.xpi
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

iamwil 18y ago

I've been using it for a couple months, and I've had some problems with it, as it's still alpha software. As ubiquity gets updates, the ubi scripts get out of step. The command to email a page to someone is pretty handy--if it worked most of the time. Also, the algorithm to do real-time narrowing down of commands that you might mean gets slower and slower (seemingly exponentially) the more you type. After a while, I find it gets bogged down and unusable. The only use I've had for it was to make it easier to twitter something, only because I don't have twitter clients installed. That said, it's still early. I think the concept is good. And even better when you can have context specific commands for each web app that you visit. That way you don't need to download each ubi script as you want them. They dynamically load and unload with the web application.

jgfoot 18y ago

But watch out for the many security problems associated with Ubiquity's system for installing and updating plugins. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10053044-46.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10053044-46.html

misuba 18y ago
The bulk of the work on Ubiquity 0.2 has been to address these sorts of problems.

katamole 18y ago

Why not link to a more useful page? http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
andreyf 18y ago
Because I already submitted it, just over 100 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310045 Glad people finally saw it - the submitter was smart to point out it's a FF extension in the title.
- katamole 18y ago
  I see. Is it not possible to submit the same URL twice? (serious question, I've never tried).
  - inglorian 18y ago
    It's not. HN will automatically link you to the previous submission.

gnoupi 18y ago

In my humble opinion, this is simply a command line with defined shortcuts. It may look all great when he uses it, normal, he designed it, with his words, his sentences. But honestrly, after trying this ubiquity for a while, i have difficulties finding it "user-friendly". It's like calling a unix-shell "user-friendly" because with all commands, and pipes, and possibilities to combine them you can do everything. It's possible, sure, but who really can, besides like 1-2% of computer users ? I get the same feeling from this thing. It's supposed to make you feel like you only ask your computer for something and it comes naturally, but basically, it's only typing a command to make an action. And the main flaw of it, is that words that are obvious to one person, are not to another. And last point, I know, it's still alpha software, but not everyone does everything with their keyboard. I do, i'm quite a big fan of utilities like Launchy, for example, but most of people prefer to use a mouse for their actions, they want a flow of action, they want drag and drop. Basically, this ubiquity, it's just a unix command line adapted to a browser, but i can't see that becoming very useful to most people.

fsilva 18y ago
I think you have a good point that most people prefer to use the mouse, and commands that may seem obvious for some people may not be immediate for another. A clickety pointy UI would make it's affordances more immediate for the user, and I bet that they will look into that in the future. (In the lastest version, you can call ubiquity actions with a right click on the text. That's a start) Given that, I do find ubiquity much more user-friendly and useful than commands in the terminal, for the tasks it was designed to use. For example, you can select a whole page, just alt-space, write 'translate to chinese' and it substitutes the text in place, fast. In your email, you can select an address, write 'map' and insert it in the email almost instantly. You can save many seconds and mindshare with this tool.
halo 18y ago
It depends how you define "user-friendly", which is not as obvious as it seems. The question is who is the 'user' that it's friendly to? The power-user who uses an application every day where the initial learning curve will consist of a relatively small amount of time compared to the speed and frequency of doing tasks, or the new user who is likely to do something only once and as such will never get past any 'learning curve' and only the initial understanding matters? Is it "flawed" to intentionally develop something to focus on the prior but not the latter? Is it a fair trade-off to deliberately increase the learning curve for long-term flexibility and power? If the Unix terminal isn't to some degree "user-friendly" why is it rediscovered by successive generations who notice its speed, power and flexibility over the alternative GUI interfaces? When given a /free choice/, why does a certain subset of users /choose/ the terminal over the GUI interface?

azharcs 18y ago

There is something very similar to Ubiquity by a startup called Wundrbar. Here is a comparison of Ubiquity and Wundrbar. http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our-thoughts.html http://blog.wundrbar.com/2008/08/wundrbar-vs-ubiquity-our-th...

jballanc 18y ago

I tried Ubiquity, but I found the requirement that you be in Firefox to use it a little to restrictive to make it truly useful. I still only spend ~30% of the time on a computer inside a browser. On the other hand, Google's Quick Search Box (http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/ http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/) is looking a lot like Ubiquity without the browser!

misuba 18y ago
Quick Search's launching capacity is getting there, but the real place to be if you want maximum flexibility is the open-source version of Enso (the original linguistic-CLI project from the people behind Ubiquity). It's all in Python, so it's very accessible.

gojomo 18y ago

If you like Ubiquity, you should also look at Inky, "a sloppy command-line interface for the web": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky-preprint.pdf http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16861/1/uist08-inky-preprint....

sam_in_nyc 18y ago

I'm so glad I switched from commenting to this. In about a month, Ubiquity will be the Linux, and I'll be the Windows.