An experiment into connecting the Web with language.
It Doesn’t Have to be This Way
You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to. You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail 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. This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task. And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.
This kind of clunky, time-consuming interaction is common on the Web. Mashups help in some cases but they are static, require Web development skills, and are largely site-centric rather than user-centric.
It’s even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.
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.
Enter Ubiquity
Today we’re 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.
The overall goals of Ubiquity are 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.
Learn more about Ubiquity and the capabilities that it could provide for users and developers.
The 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. 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.
This is the goal of what kinds of language-based services Ubiquity hopes to inspire people to create:
This is a screenshot of Ubiquity’s current map functionality:
Influences, References, and Background Resources
- The Graphical Keyboard User Interface by Alex Faaborg
- Why Verbs by Jono DiCarlo
- The Linguistic Command Line by Aza Raskin
- The UI Breakthrough-Command Line Interfaces by Don Norman
- Enso by Humanized
- Trust-based security, and Herd-based knowledge by Atul Varma
For a full list, see the credits page.
Get Involved
Mozilla Labs is a virtual lab where people come together online to create, experiment and play with Web innovations for the public benefit. The Ubiquity experiment is still in its infancy and just getting started. There are many ways to join the team and get involved:
- Download Ubiquity 0.1
- Find Ubiquity Commands
- Get Help, Make Suggestions, or Write Documentation to Help Others
- Write Commands for Ubiquity
- Report a Bug
- Discuss Ubiquity
- View Source
We’ve also started compiling a suggestion list for possible Ubiquity commands. If you have any suggestions, add them here or get inspired and develop one of them and add them to the command repository.
Tags: announcement, ubiquity
I am completely addicted to Ubiquity and I cannot wait for more updates and further integration!! THANK YOU GUYS!!
hello
You might want to get rid of those. I try to send email to an adress that isn’t in my adress book but i can t do
word. this is one of the most inventive tools i’ve seen in the last 10 years. Don’t let them stop you. this is the future.
Thanks you. This is great we need more people creating more intuitive and efficient ways to navigate the Web. Who else is doing anything nearly this good?
good idea , thanks you mozilla labs.
I’ve grown to love and rely upon Ubiquity over the past month or so, but with today’s release of 3.1 beta 3, Ubiquity now crashes Firefox instantly upon startup. I’ve enabled every other add-on I use without trouble, but the moment I enable Ubiquity, no matter how many or few other add-ons are enabled, Firefox fails on me. Any thoughts anyone?
It looks really cool. I wish there was a way I could get Firefox on my iPhone though.
Inspired me to blog about it! Great App!
This is a great tool – just discovered it. Keep working on it. Solves a very clear problem.
I try to send email to an adress that isn’t in my adress book but i can t do. I copy the page make the selection email this to
I tried the map it function and the map didn’t fill on the u page. Is there some setting I have that inhibits the functionality? Is there a forum?
i tried it for long time (on Mac and PC) both Firefox 3.0 its awesome, and never find any glitch
I know its fully functional now, but do u have a plan to set out of the labs?
Amazing idea! I like the simplicity to use and develop!
amazing, it’s quicksilver or the lesser spotlight resimler for the new computer, the browser. now we need to get this to work with flash. or rather flash to work with everything else.
Just a quick note about the download. I realize there’s a link to the download within the body copy, but how about including another link or button in a more prominent spot?
Hi,
update 0.1.7.1 failed.
Firefox could not install the file at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/latest/9527
because: Download error
-228
Best regards
this combined with voice recognition and the future symantic web is what we need
This is amazing. I don’t know how I lived without it. Great job!
m
Latest version of ubiquity (0.1.7.1) is not working with latest Firefox release (3.0.8). Even basic commands like search, imdb or anything does not work. I tried to uninstall and reinstall and subscribed to the herd as well again.
I used Opera for a long time, but Mozilla is so much better and always great idea such ^^this.
Help, please add “www.baidu.com” to serach engine.
This is sweet, thanks team! Extremely useful for web apps.
Are there any plans to make ubiquity available for the entire system, rather than just the browser? For example, say there’s a process that is hung in windows, a command like “kill [process]” would be amazing. Or “save screenshot” or “start [program]“.
Love it! Love love LOVE it! Didn’t think I would even get started, being a bit of a traditionalist who usually install new things and end up not using them anyway. But this is so smooth that I can’t avoid it!
I’d be very interested in getting involved in the project or the community some way, either in theme design or marketing (or anything, really). If there are any other fans out there thinking the same, please let me know.
不得不说这是心仪已久的东西！感谢开发人员的努力！如果这个能与Vim类似的工具结合起来或推出桌面版应该就更了不起了！
it’s not working with the latest firefox (3.0.8) sine 0.1.7 – no commands working, none!
Merci Veerle!!!
Make it simple
Very useful! Goooood!
Great job!! Support for Google Apps would be awsome!!
the first time i used it somewhere in early 2008 I noticed that there is a huge problem with ubiquity.
I (especially as a non native speaker) can’t remember all the english commands and the syntax.
SO GET RID OF the typing-crap and use DRAG&DROP with ICONS instead.
I’m still searching for a good use of all those features. I’m really satisfied with my simple “Context Search” extension.
but, anyway, congrats for the hard work.
I strongly agree with xtraa! I simply can’t remember all the English (or even if they were in Portuguese) commands and the syntax. Maybe that’s why I prefer to use simple “Context Search” extension, which I can access from a normal context menu, and which gives me the results in a new tab (the normal way of the Firefox).
This is a awesome tool with an awful usability and with features that we simply don’t need.
but that’s good, keep working.
Keep the typing, or make icons optional. On the other hand, when this is extended to, ohh let’s say, 50 commands, a bunch of small icons would be more of a disturbance then actual help. To me, typing in the commands came natural, it’s really the bast way of doing it.
The progam, consept it self, is really grat, one of the best i’ve come across in a long time. Downloading it for my fathers laptop now as I write ^^
Some things that would be nice tho, is to get this as a wider program. Not just a firefox adon. Think of this running in the background of your computer at all times, doing what you want with just pressing to buttons and typing a command?
Great job!! Support for Google Apps would be awsome
Hands down the best add-on for firefox, simply amazing and i can’t wait to see it improve for the future!
10/10
really a great thing
I used Opera for a long time, but Mozilla is so much better and always great idea such ^^this.
Just a quick note about the download. I realize there’s a link to the download within the body copy, but how about including another link or button in a more prominent spot?
Latest version of ubiquity (0.1.7.1) is not working with latest Firefox release (3.0.8). Even basic commands like search, imdb or anything does not work. I tried to uninstall and reinstall and subscribed to the herd as well again.
I’ve grown to love and rely upon Ubiquity over the past month or so, but with today’s release of 3.1 beta 3, Ubiquity now crashes Firefox instantly upon startup. I’ve enabled every other add-on I use without trouble, but the moment I enable Ubiquity, no matter how many or few other add-ons are enabled, Firefox fails on me. Any thoughts anyone?
I have been starting to rely on Ubiquity ever day. I have to say, its one of the greatest add-ons I’ve ever used. Excellent job on this! I can’t wait to see how it turns out in the future.
Well, it looks like Google Wave is taking the concept a step further. http://wave.google.com/
I’m loving this too
Lets see IE copy that…
I will try this software.
Thank you.
An absolutely stunning display of webapi’s. This makes many web services seem like native apps.
hahahaa
AKABEY, based on how long it took Microsoft to copy tabbed browsing, this should take a decade to copy.
I’ve grown to love and rely upon Ubiquity over the past month or so, but with today’s release of 3.1 beta 3, Ubiquity now crashes Firefox instantly upon startup. I’ve enabled