Ubiquity For Firefox

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

On Tuesday Mozilla quietly released an experimental plug-in for Firefox that connects the web with language, enabling users to perform common tasks more easily, CNET reports.

Called Ubiquity, the tool is the brainchild of Aza Raskin, whose father helped pioneer the Apple Mac, and has its origins in Firefox’s “smart bar” which offers suggestions for filling out partially-typed entries.

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However, Ubiquity used a command-line interface so users can manipulate many basic web tasks, like mapping, shopping, or getting entries from certain sites. It’s accessed by typing Cntrl-Space for PCs and Command-Space on a Mac.

In a post, Mozilla said that Ubiquity has a lot to offer:

"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."

In a blog posting Raskin explained the advantages of Ubiquity:

"Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between websites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time… Ubiquity’s interface goal is to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do."

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