Now when you hear mashing or mashups of services, you think of wacky combinations like Yahoogle or Microdigg. A web site or service that awkwardly brings two or more services together. Ubiquity, a new Firefox add-on from Mozilla wants to turn mashing on it’s head. How? They are going to take a more natural approach to it.
Ubiquity takes language based instructions and turns them into action, right where you need them to be. This video goes a great job at explaining the add-on and showing it in action:
The initial prototype is a little rough, and not ready for prime time yet. It does show a lot of promise though, and with a little creativity this type of tool could go a long way. Ubiquity looks to be another amazing tool to add to the many that have come out of Mozilla Labs.
The Tab Sidebar add-on for Firefox does a simple change, but after I can promise you you’ll get a whole new perspective for the way Firefox works. It acts more like a replacement for the tab bar and includes an always visible thumbnail preview of all the tabs you may have loaded up.
Here are some of the other Tab Sidebar features:
Provides navigation options for each tab including history, stop and reload
Allows you to move tabs around with drag and drop
You can drop links, local files and bookmarks anywhere you like
Displays the security status of tabs
Automatically refreshes the tab preview whenever the page changes
To activate the extension, just go to View and then Tab Sidebar to see it. On the down side, some have complained that CPU usage goes way up when using this addition. On the good side though, hey - you get pretty thumbnails for all of your tabs! In the “what would I like to see” I would like to see if work flawlessly with the scroll wheel on your mouse.
There is a lot of promise and a lot to already love, so give Tab Sidebar a download either via the Firefox Add-ons site or the official web page for the extension.
According to Mozilla Links, the new line of Firefox 3 themes all have their own names now: Tango!, Strata, and Firelight.
Personally, I think I might like the Tango one the best. The other day played with Strata some but still not a big fan of it. I am sure it will also be only a matter of time before people release “classic” versions to make the theme look more like Firefox 2.
I shared a preview of it with you a few weeks back, and it looks like the Mozilla team has flipped the switch on the new Firefox add-ons web site. All your old favorite features are still there, the categories the search and the recommended extensions. They are all just displayed in an updated and prettier fashion.
At first glance, it didn’t really give me any shock and awe feeling or emotion but after navigating around it for a while it is an improvement over the older styled web site.
So What is New to Love?
They have made the "review and rate" box easier to reach when checking out add-ons one by one, which will encourage more feedback to be given. Also there are a few more related links on each add-on’s web page to give you that, "Well, if you like this then go check out that!" sort of feeling.
The larger search box at the top of all the pages is a welcome addition too. Not only does it give it that Web 2.0 feeling but it is handy to have it bold and in my face when looking where to search for more extensions.
Also when you are doing a search, you now have the option to "Add to Firefox" right from the search results. You no longer have to search, pull up the addon’s profile, and then add it to your browser. There are a lot of little things that just make this a really welcomed update I think for many Firefox users out there.
To get some more inside information about the back end of things be sure to check out Basil’s Bodacious Blog.
Thanks to Percy over at Mozilla Links, we now have a Firefox 3 Vista preview worth gawking at (theme-wise anyways):
My first thoughts were “oh, it’s shinny and blue” but it does the job it sets out to do. It does fit into the Windows Vista look and feel pretty well, don’t you think?
Along with Firefox 3 , it looks like Mozilla will be giving a refresh to the Add-ons web site as well. Out of a one to ten score, I would give it myself a 8.5.
I like it - but the middle seems unorganized some. Not sure if I am in love with it 100%. The far right column I think needs some color too.
For the single review pages, I do like they added the comment and review box a little higher so it is more noticeable. I don’t know, still rubs me as a little “vanilla” though. Vanilla isn’t a bad thing though. What do you think, good change or bad? Get the preview here!
Nice to see that the development of the mobile Firefox browser is really starting to gain some steam. From the look of things, they are branching this project into two directions - one for touch screens and one for what I guess you would call “not” touch screens.
It shares some of the look and feel of Firefox 3 so you have to believe that with that being said that the gui-feeling they are delivering with the new browser will be used maybe for a few more versions down the road.
As long as they can keep it simple - and functional Mozilla will have yet another winner on their hands. I am curious to see though what will be that one feature that really draws mobile surfers in. The one thing that nobody else does right that Mozilla does do.
Now when you hear mashing or mashups of services, you think of wacky combinations like Yahoogle or Microdigg. A web site or service that awkwardly brings two or more services together. Ubiquity, a new Firefox add-on from Mozilla wants to turn mashing on it’s head. How? They are going to take a more natural approach to it.
The 
They have made the "review and rate" box easier to reach when checking out add-ons one by one, which will encourage more feedback to be given. Also there are a few more related links on each add-on’s web page to give you that, "Well, if you like this then go check out that!" sort of feeling.
Nice to see that the development of the 
