labs.mozilla.com — This is a series of mockups, done by Mozilla UI designer Alex Faaborg, showing what a quick-command interface could look like in Firefox (jumping between tabs, searching, tagging); heavily inspired by the OS X app. Quicksilver.
Jul 6, 2007 View in Crawl 4
kapowazJul 7, 2007
That would offer a very nice interface to the examples shown, but realistically it shouldn't be the job of individual applications to try and provide this sort of functionality. It's also somewhat missing the main strength of Quicksilver: chainability. With QS, you aren't just performing a single Application-context command, trigged by a keystroke; you're able to use typeahead find to select from a number of steps and then chain the actions together. This is where its real power comes from, as in most cases the only way to duplicate this chaining would be through unwieldy click and drag operations. A better idea would be for Mozilla to co-operate with Blacktree on enhancing the built-in functionality of Quicksilver with Firefox. Admittedly this leaves Windows and Linux users out there in the lurch, but surely somebody will create a QS-clone for these operating systems before long?
Closed AccountJul 7, 2007
Surely quicksilver could be made to hook into any osx browser
stalefriesJul 7, 2007
Why does it seem like I've seen that exact comment and response before?
blackphantomJul 7, 2007
Holy Crap! Launch is awesome! Thanks for the heads-up!
firehedJul 7, 2007
There's probably no reason that it couldn't be created as an extension that ties in with QS, or a QS plugin that'll activate existing keyboard shortcuts. I can already search quite quickly since I've done the keystrokes so often (Cmd+T, Cmd+L, "go/wiki searchterm", enter) and adding in a QS-esque interface for that would probably be slower, but adding in a graphical Ctrl+Tab interface with the live previews and things of that nature would be very helpful as compared to getting a favicon and six letters of the title ("Digg - ..." isn't too informative).
firehedJul 7, 2007
Likewise. But the big difference here is that there aren't global keyboard shortcuts that can copy text between different apps or a super-fast way to Cmd+Tab into address book, find a name, choose their email address and compose a message to that person, with the attachment that you've selected in a different finder window. Firefox's useful keyboard shortcuts are fairly few and don't need a major interaction with other 'parts' of the app, which is where QS really shines. And those things I can already do with QS.
Closed AccountJul 7, 2007
Safari, Firefox, Konqueror, and most other browsers support the searches also, and it is a very cool feature.
mozzepJul 7, 2007
which is ironic considering the whole reason behind firefox was to make an unbloated browser from the mozilla suite.
Closed AccountJul 7, 2007
No it wasn't. Katapult was inspired by Quicksilver.
Closed AccountJul 7, 2007
That depends wholly on the user now doesn't it? It'd certainly be a handy tool to have for those of us who are more keyboard centric.