We’re currently working on Ubiquity 0.1.3, a release that improves Ubiquity’s responsiveness and adds skinning support. In preparation for this, I’ve just released the first Ubiquity 0.1.3 Release Candidate. Please feel free to download it—you’ll automatically be upgraded to each new release candidate as it becomes available, as well as the final 0.1.3 release. Any bugs that you can report either to our bug database or our mailing list would be much appreciated.
The new default Ubiquity skin, created by Yatrik Solanaki and called Simpliquity, looks beautiful:
Abimanyu Raja’s new skin support makes it possible for artists to create new skins using just a bit of CSS. We don’t yet have a central listing of skins, but if you make one, please let us know on the mailing list—we’re looking forward to seeing your designs!
There’s been some major changes to the way that Ubiquity works internally. When I started Ubiquity earlier this year, it was my first Firefox addon and I made quite a few common mistakes. One of these was putting all my JavaScript code in the same context as the browser window—which was fine with me, because I personally only use one browser window with lots of tabs. But problems occurred when a user tried opening a new browser window:
As you can see from the above image, having two browser windows open actually created two copies of Ubiquity—one for each browser window. This created a host of problems, the most immediate of which made the user’s browser less responsive and more bloated. So I’ve recently refactored things so that they look like they ought to:
Along with a host of other optimizations and bugfixes, Ubiquity is now significantly more lightweight than it was before, but the restructuring also required some changes to the command feed API that may break Ubiquity’s compatibility with some feeds. I’ll be documenting this soon, but for the time being, I’ve tried to add warning messages to the JS console that explain deprecated/abandoned features when they’re called upon.
I’ve also added a binary XPCOM component for some platforms and versions of Firefox that will make the debugging of command feeds much easier, because correct file name and line numbers are reported when errors occur. Hopefully I’ll be able to integrate the same functionality into the platform before Firefox 3.1 is out so we don’t have to recompile this component separately for every new version of Firefox (see bug #445873).
Aside from that, Jono has just re-added support for noun-first suggestions and the context menu. There’s also been a host of bugfixes and enhancements by Blair McBride, Fernando Takai, and other contributors.
We should be rolling out the final 0.1.3 release in the next few days; once we’re done with that, it’ll be time to focus on security and UI extensibility as discussed in our planning meeting. More thoughts on that soon—but for now, please check out the 0.1.3 release candidate and let us know what you think!
My name is Atul Varma, and I'm the co-founder of a small Chicago company called 
No way, that looks sick! Can’t wait
A very much needed facelift. Thanks
Wow. Looks great!
Also, what happened to the herd (of commands)?
On installing this version of ubiquity, both Fx 3.1b2 and Minefield 3.2a1pre crash when starting.
@ChrisJS the herd had to be disabled for now - but it’s going to be back as soon as possible (we were having some performance problems with it) within the new ubiquity site [https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/]
i wish my day had 36h so i had more time to focus on ubiquity development…
Atul, I’ve been trying to access your blog through an online accessibility service. When I tried to have an article read to me, it only tells me gibberish about a certain pill that you often find mentioned on spam sites. What’s this?
Atul, I checked again and now my online reading service correctly reads your articles. What a strange phenomenon that was. Did you change something on your blog software? Now I can listen your blog without eyestrain (and while on the road, too!). Thanks!
Andreas: Yeah, sorry about that… My blog keeps getting hacked by spammers. I hope that my latest round of hardening things will prevent another attack, but I have no idea how they’re doing it, sadly. Feel free to let me know if you start getting the spam in your audio again.
I talked about ubiquity in class the other day and was tooling around with it today and ran into the toolness. Nice to see you’ve gone so far in such an excellent direction.
Thanks for the credit!
Also, if you’re running 0.1.3 RC, you might want to take a look at this:
http://www.yatriksolanki.com/?page_id=10
For some reason, it hasn’t worked for 2 people, but a solution is to copy the contents of:
http://www.yatriksolanki.com/skins/simpliquity02.css
into the custom skin area. Just to try it out.
Thanks again for the credit, Atul!
Great improves
And also, I live in the city of the first image, thanks for the homenage, hehe
I just installed the Ubiquity 1.3 update and the visual look is very busted. everything is white and it also overlays firebug if that panel is open…
I’m using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5 Ubiquity/0.1.3