Introducing the Firefox Taskfox Prototype

The Firefox Superbar is about to be kicked to the next level with the integration of Ubiquity. Right now all that is available from Mozilla is the Taskfox Prototype, an illustration of what Ubiquity blended into Firefox's fabric would look like to the end user. Of course, you can watch the video embedded at the bottom of this article in order to get a perspective over Taskfox for Mozilla's open-source browser. Taskfox is essentially a feature Mozilla plans for Firefox, and which was inspired by the ubiquity experiment.

“The main thing we haven’t prototyped is the interaction of the awesome bar results and the Taskfox commands. We know that this is a major remaining question so we’ll be prototyping that soon. We’ve more or less ignored that interaction for this prototype,” revealed Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla Labs. “Being able to navigate results with the keyboard is lacking in Ubiquity proper. We’ve tried to solve that in TaskFox.”

But fact is that the video doesn't actually do Taskfox justice. In this context, Mozilla has made available a demo of the feature, put together with HTML, Javascript, and jQuery. The Firefox Taskfox demo can be accessed via this link, and obviously users will need Firefox in order for it to work. Typing slowly is advised in order to get the best experience possible. Raskin applauded the success of Ubiquity (over one million downloads), an experiment from Mozilla Labs which inspired Taskfox (see the second video embedded below).

Raskin provided additional details related to Taskfox: “We’ve made 'diving into results' a fundamental part of TaskFox. Clicking the more arrow (or using the right arrow keys) slides everything over for an ultra-fast way to checkout a more detailed view of information. We haven’t concentrated on visual style, so forgive it. You can drag results and they’ll “tear off” to form their own window. In this way, any result/detailed view can become more permanent. E.g., if you want to start a youtube video playing you can pull it off and place it in a corner of your screen while you continue browsing. The torn-off window can be re-docked into your tabs.”


Taskfox Prototype from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.