Firefox 3.2 Plans Include Natural Language, Themes 285
Shrike82 writes "Mozilla have described plans for the next version of their popular web browser, Firefox. Mozilla's "Ubiquity project" is set to become a standard feature, allowing "users to type natural language phrases into the browser to perform certain tasks, such as typing 'map 10 Downing Street' to instantly see a Google map of that address, or 'share-on-delicious' to bookmark the site you're currently visiting on the social news site."
Also of interest is so-called "lightweight theming" allowing users to customise the browsers design more easily. The launch date is still somewhat unclear, and Mozilla are apparently unsure if version 3.2 will be released at all, apparently considering going straight to Firefox 4."
NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds... shit.
Come on, Firefox was meant to be a lightweight extensible browser. I don't want more features. If they want to ship these features, they should be making extensions.
Map 10 Downing Street (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, don't upgrade. Seriously, what is wrong with you people? Software adds on features over time. Thats how it works. What makes something bloated is if the features they add outstrip the progression of the average man's cpu/memory capacity. This is not the case with Ubiquity. I have used it. You will never notice its there.
Re:Map 10 Downing Street (Score:3, Insightful)
agreed.
this way it's almost indistinguishable from using the (very useful) bookmark keywords [mozilla.org].
Re:Map 10 Downing Street (Score:5, Insightful)
The other this is, it's pointless! Even with current versions of Firefox, if you type in [map 10 Downing Street] to the address bar, you'll get a map of 10 Downing Street.
That's because words entered into the address bar tapes you to google's top result.
Google is already pretty good at working out what you want. Why would I want Firefox to override this?
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is that they stop security updates for old versions.
I was HAPPY with firefox 2.x. Even with addon that tries to resemble the old behavior(Old Location Bar), I hate the way firefox 3 handles it. I much liked the way I could type part of the url and I'd see ordered list in my search history of matching places - ORDERED by number of visits.
I didn't want to go 3.x, but since 2.x no longer gets security updates...I'm SOL.
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that Phoenix (the original version of Firefox) was originally seperated away from the main Mozilla suite because the other had become bloated and over-laden with features. It was supposed to built on the philosophy of providing a BARE MINIMUM feature set.
That means giving me what I need to browse a modern website, and leaving any other functionality up to extensions. If you just stick with an old version, then the first part doesn't remain true forever. Browsers need updates. They need to support newer versions of certain standards, or newer technology such as XHTML and CSS when such things come out. That's pretty much a requirement to continuing to browse the web. You also need updates for security fixes and the like.
The fact though that such updates are necessary doesn't mean that the developers of what is supposed to be a lightweight product should have open season on adding any and everything they can think of. PARTICULARLY in an open source product. Commercial software gets trapped into doing it because they have to make the user feel like they just have to throw down money for the new version. Freely distributed software has no such need.
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
In the light of Chrome's development, I'd see the Mozilla developers time be better spent on developing multi-threading for Firefox. This being the biggest problem with the browser as it is.
I want multi-threading, but I can't use Chrome on a Mac, and I won't use chrome due to the lack of adblock / flashblock anyway.
I don't want to upgrade Firefox to this new version when it comes out -- but in order to keep up to date with security I'm forced too.
I think Mozilla has really lost its way. I switched to Firefox because it was fast, secure and matched how I wanted to browse. It's decreasingly so.
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Problem is that they stop security updates for old versions.
It's open source. You can maintain it if you want to or you can find/pay people who do it for it you.
Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough with the super-uber-awesome search crap. Give me an MSI (that I don't have to build myself), give me a way to push settings via group policy, and most of all give me a browser that I can centrally manage even half as easily as I can manage IE. Oh, and lemme just give some space here:
^ That's where you run-off-to-google-up-some-snark-for-my-reply folks can put your links to tools like FirefoxADM that haven't been touched in almost four years, or to frontmotion and their "give us a 150 bucks and we'll roll your MSI for you" service. Take this example; I want to change the homepage on 50 PC's, each with two or three different users. In IE it's a one-line group policy change. Firefox? roll up your sleves, you'll be there a while. Maybe push out a new prefs.js file into each user's profile. Maybe roll up a CCK custom XPI. Or just roll your own MSI and have it re-install the entire damned browser.
Until Chrome, Firefox, and Opera get over circle-jerking themselves about getting IE's sloppy seconds market share, there's not even enough motion to say that there's a even a "browser war" going on. I really hoped that Mozilla would take a decent swing at the enterprise market. Instead they're doing 110mph down the netscape road towards a bloated browser. Meanwhile, Chrome and Opera aren't doing much more than pulling on to the on-ramp of the same road, and touting how you'll go do the same path, only in style!
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:2, Insightful)
What? Ctrl-Space? I prefer Option-Space.
Re:More bloat... (Score:2, Insightful)
My local electronics store just had a sale - 2GB DIMMs or SODIMMs for $14.99. My processor's average utilization during its ontime sits somewhere between 0.1% and 0.0%.
The lame "bloat" complaints grow tired, and are generally the fallback of people who just want to hate on Firefox and it's their standard talking point. Firefox easily holds its own against Chrome and Safari, brutalizes Internet Explorer, with the only really "winner" of the bloat competition being Opera (but really, who uses Opera? Joking...I started my departure from IE with Opera, and loved the mouse gestures, but then Firefox won me over).
Which proves exactly what I said above. Internet Explorer is the piggiest pig pig of the bunch, not only consuming the most storage and memory resources, but dramatically more CPU resources for modern browsing.
Firefox is a great browser, and they should continue making it better, albeit perhaps having functionality "loadable" and optional so Luddites computing on their 486/33 (DX!) can save the tired whines.
Dear Mozilla Foundation.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Map 10 Downing Street (Score:3, Insightful)
To be clear: the end goal of Ubiquity is to have a natural-language command-entry system, so that you can say "Book me a trip from Washington DC to Seattle for next Tuesday" and it will figure out all the details (show you ticket prices, maps, etc.).
Obviously the current version of Ubiquity is a long way from achieving that goal. You must still enter your commands in a way that it will understand.
However, Ubiquity is making progress in that direction by having it recognize more natural command structures (e.g. you can say "weather Washington DC" to get the weather, or say "weather Washington DC in C" to get it in celcius (no it won't search for a location called "Washington DC in C")), and providing enough variants that the interface feels natural (e.g. you can type "weather Washington" or "weather 98941" etc.).
Another thing that it does is provide continual feedback, so the user can see what commands are available. The result of a command is also presented immediately and refreshed as they edit their query. This fast interaction makes it easier to compose the desired command.
Again, the system is far from perfect. It is not a natural-language system yet (and won't be perfectly so until we've perfected AI). But it doesn't have to be. As Google has shown us, you don't need the system to be perfect to be useful. Google recognizes calculations, addresses, fedex numbers, and a bunch of other things, and it tries to guess what you mean. If it can't figure it out, it defaults to a web-search. Overall this is very useful. Similarly the end-goal for Ubiquity is that you just type what you want and it will do a decent job of figuring it out. In the meantime the user will have to bend somewhat (and learn a few commands), but the cool part is that such a system is useful immediately, even as it is iterated towards being more robust and comprehensive.
Re:Will happen, eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
Will be stored in an information cache?
You can already download a snapshot of wikipedia (which we all know is the end-all source of infinite, accurate information on all things worth knowing.) GPS units can hand you maps and routes for pretty much anywhere a typical person needs to go with a single DVD update. I don't know of a handy, portable dictionary/jargon download but given its size relative to the maps/wikipedia, there must be some out there. All we need is some more advanced diff-tools and we've got it all local all the time.
Really, the Internet is just needed for updates, interaction with other humans (or at least their avatars/slashdot personalities), shopping, and porn.
Re:NOOOOOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hate it when the standard answer for everything is "it's open source - just fix it yourself". Do people really think that every single person on this site is an expert C/C++ developer with 80 free hours each month to spend fixing problems in the software they use?
Re:Are you kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the key difference here minimality of UI vs minimality of feature set?
Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:2, Insightful)
Keywords (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, I'd rather keep Firefox lightweight and just use keywords.
When I type "map 10 Downing St" it already goes to a google map. Same with "fromhome 10 Downing St", it will give me directions from my house.
Natural language could work, but I'd rather have other, more search-focused companies do all the natural-speech algorithms, then just use Firefox as a sort-of-API via Keywords.
Features features features... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it with Firefox. They have (had) the goal of producing a lean and fast browser with additional functionality being provided by plugins which I think they have pretty much achieved. Personally, I think they have left out a whole host of features (such as ad blocking and quick dial for example) which should be in the core but I'll let them off because they are easy enough to add in. But including this sort of browser bling in the core is just nuts.
It's the age old problem though - you have to be seen to be doing something even if what you have is really good already. I'd actually rather they put their efforts into working harder with other browser manufacturers to make sure that pages rendered the same on every platform. While none of the alternative browsers on their own is much competition to IE if there was essentially zero cost in moving from one alternative to another there is real competition.
Re:Command Line Interface (Score:3, Insightful)
it's just a glorified command prompt
I think that's sorta the point.
A commandline isn't inherently user-unfriendly. A commandline confuses the average user for a variety of reasons, which Ubiquity is trying to address. So I would say the point is to make a glorified command prompt. So glorified, in fact, that the average person can benefit from it.
For instance one of the things that makes a command prompt difficult for novice users is that they don't know what commands are available. As you type in Ubiquity, it shows you a preview of commands that might match. So you type 'email' and it lists that there is an 'email this person' command and a 'get last email' command and so on. Another thing that is scary about command prompts is that people worry about making mistakes. Ubiquity fixes this in a couple of ways. First of all, you can't do that much damage in a web browser. Secondly, Ubiquity shows you a realtime result of your typing. So if you type 'map washington' it shows a map of Washington DC... if you keep typing 'map washington seattle' it switches to show seattle. Ubiquity also tries to use actual words or phrases for the command syntax. So rather than remembering what the command to translate text is... you just type 'translate.'
There are a bunch of things that the Ubiquity team is trying to do to make the commandline more accessible. The interesting thing is that many of these changes are also a huge advantage for those of us who are already familiar with commandlines.
So, yes, Ubiquity is a glorified command prompt. And it's about time that someone put honest effort into bringing the power of text-command UI to the masses.
Re:Dangerous path (Score:4, Insightful)
Natural language? Natural for who?
Will we have to have versions for the West Coast, East Coast, down South...Ebonics?
Wait, wasn't there some kind of rumour that a number of people worldwide didn't actually speak English ?
What's the status of that real language thingy in German, French, Italian, Croatian, Hindi... How does it work with characters from the depth of Unicode ?
Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, my 2c: No matter how hard Mozilla tries, they will not beat Google in search. To try is futile, wasteful, and frustrating (for us hopefuls). And there is a damn Google search bar BY DEFAULT in a typical Firefox install which can easily handle real-language queries! C'mon!
Re:More bloat... (Score:3, Insightful)
Strangely, my browsing consists of more than sitting on the Google homepage.
Open four tabs in each - digg, slashdot, thestar.com and cnn.com. Firefox comes into a pretty significant lead already, but now trying actually doing anything.
But you keep on benchmarking sitting in an essentially empty browser if that makes you feel special.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ironic thing is that Firefox started as a stripped down fork of the existing Mozilla browser, because the latter was too bloated and feature-creeped.
Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Posting a link to a half-dead project run out of somebody's basement (a project that's a glorified clone of one of the dead projects I mentioned in the parent post, no less) proves my point. I want these tools *FROM MOZILLA.* You know, the people that actually developed the browser in the first place? Do you have any idea how hard it is to sell Mozilla as being better than IE when this shit is what passes for enterprise support? No, of course you don't. You know what IE settings I push via group policy? Home Page, ignore proxy for local domain, and proxy of 127.0.0.1. I don't let IE off my local network unless there's a damn good reason. Every user in my shop gets FF, and the IE icons get blown away, and it's been the same policy for four years now. Spyware? Barely heard of it. Firefox is the better browser in every last respect, except one.
This is Mozilla's problem. Not the guys that spend days hacking together fixes to make firefox almost sorta kinda work as good as IE, so long as you don't dink with it too much. If they want market share, why are they concerned with getting me to use their browser on the couple of PC's I use, instead of the hundreds I manage? If they want to be a seen as the better browser, why not step up to the plate and actually fight where it counts? Nope, they're apparently more interested in getting on grandma's PC than they are in getting on the Domain.
You wanna know where my head is? It's in the real world, watching IE get used in business because the guys who are making a better browser are more concerned with revolutionizing the way I use google fucking maps. Here, lemme contribute: F6 maps.google.com. There, I knocked out that whole search problem for ya. I've revolutionized searching. Now how about working on some better profile management tools?
But hey, you go ahead be happy with Awesome bar.
Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:3, Insightful)
That'd work out ok if Mozilla didn't create a profile folder with the structure of (gibberish).default within the profile location. Then there's also the problem of having more than one user to a machine, multiple (gibberish).default folders for a single user and no good way to tell which of those folders is the 'good' default (which I think has something to do with the upgrade process? I've seen this on machines that have been running for a while. Maybe one profile gets corrupted? Not really sure).
I can script out a way to push a user.js after some regex fidgeting, but again, it goes back to the point of...why? You guys made the browser, how hard is it to make a management tool? I'll take a snap-in, anything. I'm begging you. Give me a way to easily maintain your browser for a decent sized environment. I *WANT* firefox in the enterprise, I just don't want to get hung out to dry trying to support it myself.
Re:Three words: Enterprise deployment tools (Score:3, Insightful)
So what if the deployment or management tool is windows only? Big deal. I'm not looking for a total redevelopment of the browser engine to suit the needs of a single operating system. What I do want is an easy way to manage what's already there. But instead development is centering around improving address bar search functions and other spurious "improvements" that are ignoring the elephant in the room?
Look, Firefox does a great job of being a stand alone browser. But in a work environment, trying to manage it sucks across the board. They're not getting their asses kicked in the "integrated search" market, but that's what they keep focusing. Stability and deployment are real problems, but we keep getting low-hanging fruit 'improvements.'