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Firefox Friday Four (yes, it's a slow week)
Happy Friday! If you're American: enjoy your crashing market. If you're British: Change! Change! Oh wait... I guess 'change!' is kind of American too.Anyway...
I had hoped to have some interview responses from an important bigwig at Mozilla, but it looks like I'll be deferring that until next week. Instead,you get some fitting, slow-going news to peruse as your Friday waxes gently into weekend.
There hasn't been a single new release from Mozilla this week, so I warn you... the following four items are hardly earth-shattering.
1. Solving the Alt-Tab Problem
While not directly related to Firefox, this musing by Aza Raskin (Firefox's new Creative Lead) is surely indicative of what to expect in upcoming Firefox user interfaces.
We've all been there: you Alt-Tab and get the window you weren't expecting. You Alt-Tab again and you STILL don't get the window you want! It's a well-known problem and Raskin tackles it with aplomb. The solution -- or a solution -- is a heuristic approach. The software learns which apps (or browser tabs!) you often switch between. It then re-arranges the switching menu. If you often Alt-Tab between Chrome and Dreamweaver for example, they become 'associated', always being next to each other when you Alt-Tab.
After reading his post, you're all going to say the same thing: when can we get our hands on it?!
Over the past week Mozilla's internal team has sifted through hundreds of potential t-shirt designs to bring us their top 5. It's now down to us -- Firefox users with their renowned rarefied tastes -- to pick a winner.
You only have a week to make your vote count, so get to it! Adopt Mozilla -- an adorable little lizard thing -- is currently winning, but I like Monkey and Mouse. (Bonus points if you vote for it!)
3. The Firefox context menu and microformats
Don't worry, I had no idea what microformats were either. They are, quite simply, a way to embed published data in standard HTML Web pages. The obvious example is contact details (hCard), but the example used on the Mozilla Labs page uses the 'geo' microformat to show how you can easily integrate your site with an app like Google Maps.
As for the 'context menu' part, you might recall that Jetpack (Firefox's new add-on framework) now has context menu integration.
Bringing these two together: imagine a standard HTML page that has both contact details and geolocation coordinates embedded. Using a Jetpack add-on you could right click and simply 'save contact details to Gmail', or bring up the site's physical-world location.
You can do some even-funkier things with such functionality -- check out the Mozilla Labs page for more info.
Mitch over at Firefox Facts discovered this neat add-on a few days ago that goes by the moronic, no-shit-really? name of 'Duplicate This Tab'. You can probably guess what it does.
As for why you want to duplicate your tabs, I leave that to you. I'm sure there are educational or commercial reasons why duplicate tabs might come in handy, but all I can think of is, er, LiveJasmin.
Comments
9
Subscribe to commentsF-ZeroMay 7th 2010 3:17PM
haha. LiveJasmin. you should've linked it for those who don't know
Adopt Mozilla is awesome
Sebastian AnthonyMay 7th 2010 7:17PM
Anyone surfing without a pop-up blocker will surely know LiveJasmin :P
Kenn.keeperMay 7th 2010 5:28PM
Regarding item #2,,,,are those really the finalist to choose from. Going thru the first 15 pages I found several that were a heck of a lot better. I know that programmers are intelligent to a point but now I find that their artistic tastes leave a bad taste.
Free is good, kenn.....
Sebastian AnthonyMay 7th 2010 7:17PM
Yeah, I wasn't sure about a couple of the picks. I think Mozilla has a fairly accomplished PR department, so it would be a surprise if they hadn't chosen the 'best' :)
TimmyTustepMay 7th 2010 7:15PM
I can't think of an educational or commercial reason, but I always thought my reasons for duplicating tabs were logical?
I always duplicate my current tab. Often I want to go back to a page I was viewing earlier in the new tab, but want to stay where I'm at in the old one. I figure the page I'm already on (with all my back button history) is as good as any for a new tab.
Sebastian AnthonyMay 7th 2010 7:18PM
I'm exactly the same :)
And now it's even easier with Duplicate This Tab!
Bryan PriceMay 8th 2010 12:03AM
Tab Mix Plus (which I never do without) duplicates tabs too. It can move tabs to windows, merge windows. I can even rename tabs. You'll have to go through the settings to set the right click menu, although, once you learn the keystrokes, you can just use those.
Sebastian AnthonyMay 8th 2010 6:47AM
Ah! I thought I'd seen the Duplicate thing before, I just wasn't sure where :) Thanks for the tip!
archerMay 8th 2010 3:17PM
if you were to install individual extensions for each of the functions built in to tabmixplus and mr tech toolkit i'm guessing they would number at least thirty.