Comments on: Ubiquity: turning us all into power users

By: Stormy

Stormy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:43:39 +0000

If the functionality exists, we should make Ubiquity commands for it so that Ubiquity users can use it as well. I think it’ll be easier to get Ubiquity users hooked on desktop functionality and then want to use it in other apps, than it will be to just convince them to use Deskbar-Applet without knowing what all it does for them.

By: Sebastian Pölsterl

Sebastian Pölsterl — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:42:58 +0000

As deskbar’s top “bug contributor” Mikkel already mentioned you can do most of this stuff with Deskbar-Applet which is part of GNOME already.

By: Jussi Kukkonen

Jussi Kukkonen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:27:17 +0000

> Can we integrate those desktop tasks into Ubiquity?
Why not, but I think this is backwards. It’s natural that Mozilla wants the browser to do things like this, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea from a desktop perspective.
Firefox should export the details (like things needed to define ‘this’) via an API and Gnome Do should include the web based tasks that ubiquity does so well now. That would be “doing one thing and doing it well”.

By: Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:06:04 +0000

Talk about a Freudian slip… By “bug contributors” I meant “top contributors”

By: Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:04:43 +0000

Deskbar Applet is infact included in the Gnome Desktop module. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/deskbar-applet/.
It can do everything you mention and more. It was the first of the search/command-interfaces in the Linux world to my knowledge and is still lighting the way for many related projects IMHO (me – being one of the bug contributors – caveat emptor! )
Gnome Do is also excellent, but not exactly my type of UI.
But is it really necessary to type ‘calc’ before your expression? Surely the application knows if ’17*23′ is a mathematical expression or not. Deskbar does at least

By: ethana2

ethana2 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:15:13 +0000

Finally! We have discovered that the trick to making the command line not suck is making it usable in our native language! Bravo!
I alias commands all over the place. I’ve got my ‘install’, which is actually ‘sudo apt-get install’.. I’ve got my ‘uninstall’, which is actually ‘sudo apt-get remove’, I’ve got my ‘frigging’, which is actually ‘sudo’…
Command line is amazing if it’s done right.

By: jorge

jorge — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:57:41 +0000

I was thinking along these lines while I was using ubiquity. I started to find myself trying to use it while I was not in my browser, and then realizing that normally I use GNOME Do for that part, but for some reason I find the “natural language” part of ubiquity easier to think out than the “commandargumentargument”.
Maybe someone can bridge ubiquity< ->gnome do together and/or enable ubiquity to do more things out of the browser. For example it’d be nice to get that “insert map” feature to run inside evolution.