One Firefox plugin to end them all
I’ve been a Firefox user for many years now. Main reason I love this browser so much is because of it’s excellent plugin structure. This is the reason for why I can’t migrate over to Google Chrome, Safari or other’s I like a lot. Now there is another plugin that makes this even harder. It’s called Ubiquity.
How it works
One plugin I have recently found has been a god send, it goes by the name of Ubiquity. It is a lot like quicksilver for the Mac, however being used for the world wide web. A great example of the power this plugin has is it’s translating feature. I’ll be on a website in Spanish, there is a part of the webpage that I really want to read, however I have no idea what it says.

I simply hit my shortcut for Ubiquity, start typing in translate, don’t really have to finish writing it.

Hit enter, and the same section that had the Spanish words, has now been translated and I can go on my way.

Now there are endless things that can be done, like looking up weather by typing weather and the zip code. We can type map and an address to get it mapped out for us, and if in Gmail, we can then paste the image with directions directly into our mail.

I am used to having a lot of tabs open. Lets say I have many twitter profiles open and I want to close them all. Simply hit the Ubiquity shortcut, type in close-related-tabs and twitter. All tabs with Twitter in the title are gone. You can also chose which once you want to close with just close-tab. If you have google calendar, you can add appointments by just typing add-to-calendar I’m meeting Paul tomorrow at 3. It actually understands that and adds it to your calendar.
Click here to check out their tutorial.
Click here to download the plugin.
Check out this video for a better idea how it works:
Plugin the Plugin
What makes it so powerful is that you can actually write your own commands for it. One that I’ve found to be very useful is TinyURL. It converts links that I highlight into a TinyURL that I can the post into Twitter. Another plugin a user has written is a link to twitter. So now when I’m browsing and I need to send a quick tweet. Simply type twitter “and my message”. It’s gone straight to my twitter account.
15 Uniquity commands to enhance your web experience – Here you can get the tiny URL command and Twitter command.
Here is a video that teaches you how to make a command for Ubiquity:
Conculsion
It’s easy to see how massively powerful this plugin is. If you have been using it, please write about your favored addon commands in the comments. If you haven’t, write some ideas for useful commands that I could actually write and share with you guys here on my blog.
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Tagged as firefox, Howto, Plugin, tiny url, tutorial, Twitter, Ubiquity + Categorized as Howto, Web
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Liz
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Amit
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Harsh Agrawal