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Mozilla Ubiquity dies an incredibly quiet death
Let me start off by saying I personally think Aza Raskin is a genius. Really. When Windows Phone 7 Series just came out, everyone was all amazed about how "the data is the UI", and how everything is so semantic and clean. Well, it's been done. Raskin did it quite a while back with the incredible (and sadly deserted) Enso Humanized launcher. This launcher was mind-blowingly cool. Really. It's still way ahead of Launchy and other Windows launchers, if you ask me. The guy is a true visionary.
Okay, but Raskin moved on to become head of User Experience in Mozilla Labs. He continued working his magic there too, and came up with Ubiquity. Ubiquity is basically THE coolest add-on ever created for Firefox. Nobody else has anything like it. It's a command-line for the browser (kind of like Quix, which came after it) but it's semantic and smart, and it shows you real-time results.
And now, it's basically dead. It's such a quiet death, that they won't even say it's "dead". Nobody even bothered updating the main Ubiquity page with this information -- I had to really dig to find it. It's kind of pathetic, really. The main Ubiquity page (which is very beautiful) says "Welcome to the new ubiquity blog!". This is from Aug 17, 2009. Has never been updated since.
I think that (a) it is a huge mistake to desert such an innovative project. No other browser has this, and it's literally way ahead of its time. And (b) if you go ahead and decide to ditch it (or "put it on the back burner" or whatever lame PR euphemism you come up with), at least be responsible about it, and let the world know properly! Update the main project page, for crying out loud!
This is the second groundbreaking project Raskin has had to desert. I have no idea why that is, and I guess he has his reasons (he's working on Firefox for Mobile, which is a much higher-profile product). I just have to say that for me, it's kind of sad to see such a product left to die. I thought I'd let the world know, in case there are other Ubiquity users around here who are wondering why things have been so quiet.
Comments
26
Subscribe to commentsYvaFeb 22nd 2010 4:36AM
So sad! Ubiquity is really awesome (but more commands had to be developed).
WebDevHoboFeb 22nd 2010 2:13PM
The fact that the Project page hasn't been updated doesn't mean anything.
Go to the code repositories and look at the commits. THAT will tell you if the project is being worked on.
LouCypherFeb 22nd 2010 2:20PM
Mozilla Labs' response
http://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/2010/02/22/current-status-of-ubiquity/
Alex FaaborgFeb 22nd 2010 6:01PM
Dead is a pretty strong term. I think it would be more accurate to say that Ubiquity is now in transition from being a labs project to being considered for inclusion in a future version of Firefox. Of course shipping polished features takes a lot of time, and unlike extensions you have to wait until there is a major update to the browser itself before they can launch. While nothing has been finalized, there are a number of really powerful ideas in Ubiquity, and many of us expect the project to impact the future design of Firefox.
LouCypherFeb 25th 2010 11:45PM
from Aza Raskin:
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/where-is-mozilla-ubiquity/
Harsh AthalyeMar 12th 2010 2:07PM
What? Really? I thought ubiquity was the coolest feature to be launched for Firefox. I loved it from the day I installed it. It is a great feature and I planned on writing a post about it. But, alas! nobody recognized it's true value. It's really sad.