Mozilla Labs on Tuesday launched an experimental, prototype Firefox add-on called Ubiquity. The language-based plug-in promises to make it easier the way Web users combine data into e-mails or browse the Web without switching back and forth between multiple windows thus carrying out web tasks more easily and productively.
“Ubiquity enables Web users to make mash-ups using typed expressions. In fact, it is, in other words, a Web 2.0 command line.”
Ubiquity, created by Aza Raskin — inherits the brains from his father — Apple Mac pioneer Jef Raskin — claims it to be a command-line interface that allows users to use plain language to manipulate Web tasks, such as mapping, translation, shopping, or retrieving entries from Wikipedia, Yelp, or Twitter.
“In the Beginning… was the Command Line,” a Neal Stephenson essay famously declared. The command line faded for a time, as graphic interfaces became more functional, but now the command line is back.
Ubiquity 0.1 is “the proof-of-concept prototype experiment into connecting the Web with language,” Mozilla Lab’s plug-in’s developer, Aza Raskin wrote in a blog post.
Rather than cutting and pasting into multiple Web sites in Firefox, Ubiquity does the work with simple commands. Ubiquity is both an interface and a development platform that Web developers can use to create custom commands for sites.
“Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser,” Raskin said.
This new open-source platform could enable non-technical users to create mash-ups. The goal is to make it easier to merge data in the Web browser and allow users to define their own commands, like macros than span applications.
The free Firefox plug-in allows the creation of “user-generated mash-ups with existing open Web APIs,” according to a post on Mozilla’s site Tuesday. “In other words, allowing everyone — not just Web developers — to rearrange the Web according to their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.”
The main objective of Ubiquity is to shorten the time-consuming interactions that Web surfers typically perform on the Internet today, Raskin said. “It is even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible,” he added.
In the past, mash-ups could only be developed by programmers and application developers, but with this new project Mozilla is intending to put control back into the hands-of the end users, enabling them to perform tasks such as on-screen translation and searching sites like Google and Amazon.
“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 web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time,” said Raskin, in a blog posting.
“We are announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting 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.”
In its current form, Ubiquity offers several features, including a separate command-line box that opens in the upper left-hand corner of any Web page whenever a user presses the “Control + Spacebar” keys simultaneously -– or whatever hot key you select -– will open a pop-up box.
The command line, Raskin said, empowers users to control browsers with language-based instructions.
“Let us say you are writing an e-mail inviting a friend to meet you for dinner at a restaurant and you typed the address or name of the restaurant into the pop-up box, and you want to include a map in the e-mail, Ubiquity will produce a Google map of the area,” Rankin said.
Zoom in or out to your desired view, click “insert map into page” and the map will appear in the body of the e-mail.
Wish to include some more information about the restaurant? Open the Ubiquity window, type “Yelp restaurant name” and it will produce reviews written on Yelp.com. Hit return and the entry will be inserted into the e-mail.
Ubiquity will also add the event to your calendar.
“Until now, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a Webmail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed.”
The command-line box gives users a way to transform all that clicking, typing, searching, copying and pasting into very simple tasks, Raskin said.
The same technique can be applied to start a wide range of other commands, such as defining an unfamiliar word or technical term, access weather information, or even Twitter friends with the latest news. Moreover, Web developers eventually will be able to build customized Ubiquity commands to which online visitors can subscribe.
Together with the announcement, Mozilla Labs also brought an experimental prototype not only meant to demonstrate the concepts of Ubiquity, but also to show the extent of possibilities that it opens up.
Ubiquity 0.1 is available for download immediately and the code for the Ubiquity experiment is being released as open-source software under the GPL/MPL/LGPL tri-license.
The prototype application is available for download now on the blog post.
“There is a long way to go with this interface, though,” Raskin noted. “It still needs thought and a lot of refinement.”
“This release is meant as an illustration of a concept and mainly focuses on the platform,” Raskin wrote. “The subsequent release will explore interfaces that are closer to features that might make it into Firefox.”
The Mozilla blog also includes a link to an author tutorial that will allow developers to write commands for Ubiquity.