Mozilla Labs launches Ubiquity
p2pnet news view | Cool Stuff:- “Enter Ubiquity,” says Mozilla Labs.
Ubiquity?
The object of the exercise is to connect the Web with language, “in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily,” says Mozilla.The overall goals are, it says, to explore how best to:
- Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
- Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
- Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
- Extend the browser functionality easily.
Interesting.
Initial prototype
As part of this announcement, “we’re also releasing an early experimental prototype to demonstrate some of the concepts of Ubiquity and the possibilities that it opens up,” says Mozilla, continuing »»»
This release is meant as a illustration of a concept and mainly focuses on the platform. The next release will explore interfaces that are closer to features that might make it into Firefox.
Install the prototype and you’ll be presented with a tutorial to get you started.Ubiquity 0.1
- Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity “command list” to see them all.
- Find and install new commands to extend your browser’s vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism
- Read about Ubiquity In Depth, or see a number of the commands in action (with screenshots) in the Ubiquity Tutorial.
All of the code underlying the Ubiquity experiment is being released as open source software under the the GPL/MPL/LGPL tri-license.
Click here to see, and hear, Aza Raskin, head of Mozillan Lab’s user experience, go into detail.
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