Ubiquity 0.2: Goal Setting

[Aza]

It's time to buckle down and figure out the quarter four goals (i.e., by the end of 2008) for Ubiquity. That's two months. Figuring these out is a community process, so what I'll do here is lay out a general outline as a framework for talking about specifics.

Major Goals for Ubiquity 0.2

* Streamable UI
 - At least one new and experimental UI
* Streamable Skins
 - Including a revised default Ubiquity skin, revisiting some of the original design decisions
* UI Improvements
 - A better context menu
 - Experimental integration with the Awesome Bar
* Better command scaling and removal of hyphens in command names
 - Using "container" verbs (http://labs.toolness.com/trac/ticket/134)
* A revised and updated API for Ubiquity commands
 - A more finalized version of the "all-in-one" command plus templates,
 - A unified method of adding and interacting with nouns, commands, and data detectors.

Ancillary Goals:

* A version of the Herd with a well-documented public API
* A home site for Ubiquity with a Ubiquity "planet"
* Both Herd, and Ubiquity homepage to be hosted at ubiquity.mozilla.com

Over the course of the next couple of days, let's try to come to a rough consensus over what needs to be added to the goals, what needs to be removed, and what's doable. I'll try to sum our decisions up in a blog post in around a weeks time. We'll then turn the large goals into smaller milestones and tickets

-- aza | ɐzɐ --

[Abimanyu Raja]

I agree with the major goals. We should probably also add improving performance to that list.

There are a few other smaller issues that should perhaps be discussed when we are picking which tickets go into which milestones (like adding keyboard navigation for preview pane).

Btw, what's the Ubiquity planet for?

- Abi

2008/11/3 Aza <a...@mozilla.com>

[Fernando Takai]

Ubiquity planet is like an addon.firefox.com for commands (if im not mistaken).

--
Fernando "Takai"
http://flickr.com/photos/supeertakai
http://fernandotakai.wordpress.com
http://fernandotakai.jaiku.com

[Dean Landolt]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Fernando Takai <fernand...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ubiquity planet is like an addon.firefox.com for commands (if im not mistaken).

Wouldn't that be the Herd?

Typically planets are just aggregators for specific communities of interest [1] -- so of people that often blog about Ubiquity, it's just one central place that pulls in those posts. Unless you mean something else, Aza?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)

[Fernando Takai]

Yes, but herd needs to be improved. For example, we need to add social features like rating, commenting -- and we need to have a place to host commands, like gist, but ours.

[Gary Hodgson]

Hi guys,

Whilst some of the goals for 0.2 sound fun, in my opinion there are some fundamentals that perhaps should be addressed beforehand.  For example, reintroducing functionality that was lost with 0.1.2 (e.g. tickets #358, #359 & #394 are some I raised about this :-), stabilising the codebase, and addressing performance. Something else that really needs addressing is the trust-network and the way commands are subscribed to. I've read a few blog posts, and received a couple of emails, saying that the major factor that is stopping people from adopting Ubiquity is the security risk of subscribing to new commands.

Perhaps these are planned for a prior release, but considering 0.1.2 was about 6 weeks late, and 0.1.3 still has 28 active tickets, planning 0.2 for the end of 2008 seems a little over-ambitious. I don't want to rain on the parade - I love hacking away at new stuff with the best of them - but without some core stability I think the user base will lose interest and we'll be left with an interesting toy for a handful of people, but no wide-spread adoption.

Of course this is only my take on things, and perhaps not seeing the bigger picture :-)  I hope these comments are taken in a positive way.

Cheers

Gary

[Abimanyu Raja]

Yep, the social aspects like on addons.mozilla.com should also be part of The Herd, imo.

I agree with Gary. That's why I wanted to include improving performance as a major goal. Specifically, the tickets he mentioned, adding back old features and replacing the annotation service. Regarding planning for 0.2, I think it's just about setting the long term goals. In the end, they have to be broken to smaller milestones as Aza said. So, I think that performance issues, a goal for 0.2, should probably be the focus for 0.1.4 (assuming 0.1.3 is focused on skinning). Or we should swap the focuses. 0.1.3 should be for performance issues. I would really like the context menu and noun-first suggestions back. And of course, we should really try not to break people's current behavior (esp. noun-first suggestions).

I feel like we need to delegate work (at least for a few key issues) to make faster progress.

- Abi

2008/11/4 Gary Hodgson <gary.s....@gmail.com>

[msk...@gmail.com]

Why not get Ubiquity on addons.mozilla.com in the first place?

--
Mayuresh

[Abimanyu Raja]

Haha..yes. We should do that.

2008/11/4 <msk...@gmail.com>

[indolering]

Can we call it something with better connotations than "The Herd?"

I mean, the democrats lost, badly, for the past 8 years because they
failed to correctly frame (http://tiny.cc/frame448) their viewpoints
and evoke the right emotions, until Barak got them all excited with
his rhetoric.

It's hard to get excited about being a cow : (


Oh, and now we should get back on topic : )
-Zak

On Nov 4, 6:39 am, "Abimanyu Raja" <abimanyur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Haha..yes. We should do that.
>
> 2008/11/4 <msk...@gmail.com>
>
> > Why not get Ubiquity on addons.mozilla.com in the first place?
>

> > On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Abimanyu Raja <abimanyur...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Yep, the social aspects like on addons.mozilla.com should also be part of
> >> The Herd, imo.
>
> >> I agree with Gary. That's why I wanted to include improving performance as
> >> a major goal. Specifically, the tickets he mentioned, adding back old
> >> features and replacing the annotation service. Regarding planning for 0.2, I
> >> think it's just about setting the long term goals. In the end, they have to
> >> be broken to smaller milestones as Aza said. So, I think that performance
> >> issues, a goal for 0.2, should probably be the focus for 0.1.4 (assuming
> >> 0.1.3 is focused on skinning). Or we should swap the focuses. 0.1.3 should
> >> be for performance issues. I would really like the context menu and
> >> noun-first suggestions back. And of course, we should really try not to
> >> break people's current behavior (esp. noun-first suggestions).
>
> >> I feel like we need to delegate work (at least for a few key issues) to
> >> make faster progress.
>
> >> - Abi
>

> >> 2008/11/4 Gary Hodgson <gary.s.hodg...@gmail.com>

>
> >> Hi guys,
>
> >>> Whilst some of the goals for 0.2 sound fun, in my opinion there are some
> >>> fundamentals that perhaps should be addressed beforehand.  For example,
> >>> reintroducing functionality that was lost with 0.1.2 (e.g. tickets #358,
> >>> #359 & #394 are some I raised about this :-), stabilising the codebase, and
> >>> addressing performance. Something else that really needs addressing is the
> >>> trust-network and the way commands are subscribed to. I've read a few blog
> >>> posts, and received a couple of emails, saying that the major factor that is
> >>> stopping people from adopting Ubiquity is the security risk of subscribing
> >>> to new commands.
>
> >>> Perhaps these are planned for a prior release, but considering 0.1.2 was
> >>> about 6 weeks late, and 0.1.3 still has 28 active tickets, planning 0.2 for
> >>> the end of 2008 seems a little over-ambitious. I don't want to rain on the
> >>> parade - I love hacking away at new stuff with the best of them - but
> >>> without some core stability I think the user base will lose interest and
> >>> we'll be left with an interesting toy for a handful of people, but no
> >>> wide-spread adoption.
>
> >>> Of course this is only my take on things, and perhaps not seeing the
> >>> bigger picture :-)  I hope these comments are taken in a positive way.
>
> >>> Cheers
>
> >>> Gary
>

> >>> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Fernando Takai <fernando.ta...@gmail.com

> >>> > wrote:
>
> >>>> Yes, but herd needs to be improved. For example, we need to add social
> >>>> features like rating, commenting -- and we need to have a place to host
> >>>> commands, like gist, but ours.
>

> >>>> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Dean Landolt <d...@deanlandolt.com>wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Fernando Takai <
> >>>>> fernando.ta...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>>> Ubiquity planet is like an addon.firefox.com for commands (if im not
> >>>>>> mistaken).
>
> >>>>> Wouldn't that be the Herd?
>
> >>>>> Typically planets are just aggregators for specific communities of
> >>>>> interest [1] -- so of people that often blog about Ubiquity, it's just one
> >>>>> central place that pulls in those posts. Unless you mean something else,
> >>>>> Aza?
>

> >>>>> [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_%28software%29>

[msk...@gmail.com]

hehe (can't resist) - "the pride" then ;-)

--
Mayuresh

[Abimanyu Raja]

The reason it's called The Herd: http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=144

2008/11/6 indolering <indol...@gmail.com>

[Atul Varma]

Hey guys,

It's clear that there's a lot of really awesome directions Ubiquity can go, but it looks like we need to focus in on what particular directions we want to take it over the next two months.  As Aza has proposed, we can innovate the user interface and mechanisms for allowing the community to contribute to UI innovation; we could also work on the herd, like fern suggested; and Gary makes a very good argument for stabilizing our current feature set.

I've created a work-in-progress 0.2 roadmap on the wiki here:

  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/0.2_Roadmap_Proposals

I've tried adding what people have mentioned here so far.  If you guys don't mind, could you please take  a look at it and add anything that you feel is necessary?  Once we've got all our ideas down, we can start figuring out how to pare things down based on Ubiquity's vision.  Please also feel free to justify your rationale for features that you're particularly interested in.

- Atul

[Gary Hodgson]

Atul - for me, that wiki page sums up the proposals very well!  Sufficiently detailed to understand what motivates each goal, a good range of targets, without sounding like a wishy-washy 'mission statement'.

If I think of more, I will certainly throw them on there for discussion.

Regards,

Gary

[msk...@gmail.com]

Just curious as to (still) why there are no plans to make Ubiquity available on FF addons site - addons.mozilla.org (even if as a experimental addon)?

--
Mayuresh

[Atul Varma]

Thanks Gary!

mskadu, there's an item on the Roadmap Proposals wiki page under "Stabilization of Current Feature Set" for getting Ubiquity on AMO as a non-experimental addon.  That's a good point about at least getting it into the experimental sandbox though, if we put it on there with the stated intention that it shouldn't be let out of the sandbox because of known security issues.  Does anyone want to look into doing this?

- Atul

[Blair McBride]

I also want to get documentation for Utils and CmdUtils auto-generated
via the build system - which means finally deciding on which tool to use
(see http://labs.toolness.com/trac/ticket/108).

And there's bunch of profiling that still needs to be done to sort out
performance/scaling issues. For instance, there's a lot of code that's
executed on popup/new window when it shouldn't need to.

The rest of the plan looks good. Look forward to seeing a Ubiquity
planet up and running.

- Blair

On 4/11/2008 3:49 AM, Aza wrote:
> It's time to buckle down and figure out the quarter four goals (i.e., by
> the end of 2008) for Ubiquity. That's two months. Figuring these out is
> a community process, so what I'll do here is lay out a general outline
> as a framework for talking about specifics.
>

> *Major Goals for Ubiquity 0.2*

>
> * Streamable UI
> - At least one new and experimental UI
> * Streamable Skins
> - Including a revised default Ubiquity skin, revisiting some of the
> original design decisions
> * UI Improvements
> - A better context menu
> - Experimental integration with the Awesome Bar
> * Better command scaling and removal of hyphens in command names
> - Using "container" verbs (http://labs.toolness.com/trac/ticket/134)
> * A revised and updated API for Ubiquity commands
> - A more finalized version of the "all-in-one" command plus templates,
> - A unified method of adding and interacting with nouns, commands, and
> data detectors.
>

> *Ancillary Goals:*

>
> * A version of the Herd with a well-documented public API
> * A home site for Ubiquity with a Ubiquity "planet"
> * Both Herd, and Ubiquity homepage to be hosted at ubiquity.mozilla.com

> <http://ubiquity.mozilla.com>

[Jono]

I agree that The Herd should be renamed.

I understand the reasons Atul had for choosing that name, but it's
difficult to explain to new users.

What do we expect people to mostly be using The Herd for? To discover
new commands to subscribe to, right? It seems that ranking commands
for safety, commenting on them, and looking up statistics about them
are all secondary to the main purpose of discovering new commands that
you might want. Therefore, I think it should have a name that
reflects that. The page could simply be called "Command Finder" or
"Command Library" or "Discover Commands" or something like that, and
people would understand what it was for much more than "The Herd".

--Jono

[Blair McBride]

I like the idea of referring to it as a library.

- Blair

[msk...@gmail.com]

I'd be happy to help with this. All it needs is the last XPI and an icon. So to begin with, here's what we can expect:

(extract)

Thanks for your interest in submitting your add-on to Mozilla Add-ons. Hosting your add-on on Mozilla Add-ons is the easiest way to handle distribution of your add-on. Here's what you'll get:

• Each add-on will have a public display page with information you provide, such as a brief summary of the add-on's functionality, an optional longer description, and a showcase of preview screenshots of your add-on.
• Your add-on will appear in search and browse listings across the site, and even in the Add-ons Manager of Firefox 3.
• We'll take care of hosting all of your downloads and providing automatic updates to users when you upload a new version.
• You'll have access to a statistics dashboard with detailed information about your user base.

Add-ons hosted on the site must be reviewed by a Mozilla Add-ons Editor before they will have all of the features listed above.

(extract ends)

So do I just simply upload v0.1.2?

--
Mayuresh

[Atul Varma]

That would be great, mskadu.  Only thing that might interfere with this is the fact that Ubiquity's install.rdf currently points at ubiquity.mozilla.com for updates; I assume that AMO would change this.

Go ahead and upload 0.1.2 and let us know how it goes!

- Atul

[Atul Varma]

I agree with Zak and Jono that we may want to rename the Herd, or at least make it a section of whatever the new site will be called, since it's really much bigger in scope from what the Herd was originally intended for.

I like "The Library".  I'm a bit hesitant to actually use the word "command" in there just because it sounds a bit technical... what ever happened to our use of the word "verb", anyhow? :)

- Atul

[Fernando Takai]

I really prefer verb than command. =D
We need to rename herd, because common users wouldn't know (sorry for the bad word) wtf Herd is. The Library is good, but what about a simpler name? (i don't have any suggestions know, but we need something that shows that it is a verb aggregation)  

Another thing we need is an index page to ubiquity.firefox.com. Even if it's simple, we need one.

[Atul Varma]

Hmmm, well, ideally this library won't just contain verbs, right?  It'll contain noun types too?  In which case maybe we should call it ... THE DICTIONARY!

[Fernando Takai]

I JUST TOUGH ABOUT THE DICTONARY!

I think it's a great name. =D =D =D

[Blair McBride]

Heh... it has a nice ring to it, but will it still confuse people?
Dictionaries aren't generally associated with getting things.

- Blair

On 9/11/2008 7:54 AM, Fernando Takai wrote:
> I JUST TOUGH ABOUT THE DICTONARY!
>
> I think it's a great name. =D =D =D
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Atul Varma <var...@gmail.com
> <mailto:var...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hmmm, well, ideally this library won't just contain verbs, right?
> It'll contain noun types too? In which case maybe we should call it
> ... THE DICTIONARY!
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Fernando Takai
> <fernand...@gmail.com <mailto:fernand...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I really prefer verb than command. =D
> We need to rename herd, because common users wouldn't know
> (sorry for the bad word) wtf Herd is. The Library is good, but
> what about a simpler name? (i don't have any suggestions know,
> but we need something that shows that it is a verb aggregation)
>
> Another thing we need is an index page to ubiquity.firefox.com

> <http://ubiquity.firefox.com>. Even if it's simple, we need one.

[indolering]

So I was thinking, how our vocabulary is giving users the wrong idea,
commands make it seem like a super AI, CLI's make it 80's DOS scary,
and how unattractive Dictionary sounds. While I had a participant
wowing at all the things the Ub intro video showed off: Ub has
Tricks. We can teach FF new Tricks, and so can they.

There is an important evolutionary psychological study/accident of
breading foxes to be more docile for the fur industry. After 50 years
they now sell the Silver Fox as incredibly cute domesticated pets
(just skip to the video):
http://blog.videosift.com/lucky760/Turning-Foxes-Into-House-Pets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox

-Zak

p.s. No we can't get them in the US. Dammit.

On Nov 8, 10:54 am, "Fernando Takai" <fernando.ta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I JUST TOUGH ABOUT THE DICTONARY!
>
> I think it's a great name. =D =D =D
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Atul Varma <var...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hmmm, well, ideally this library won't just contain verbs, right?  It'll
> > contain noun types too?  In which case maybe we should call it ... THE
> > DICTIONARY!
>

> > On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Fernando Takai <fernando.ta...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> I really prefer verb than command. =D
> >> We need to rename herd, because common users wouldn't know (sorry for the
> >> bad word) wtf Herd is. The Library is good, but what about a simpler name?
> >> (i don't have any suggestions know, but we need something that shows that it
> >> is a verb aggregation)
>
> >> Another thing we need is an index page to ubiquity.firefox.com. Even if
> >> it's simple, we need one.
>
> >> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Atul Varma <var...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> I agree with Zak and Jono that we may want to rename the Herd, or at
> >>> least make it a section of whatever the new site will be called, since it's
> >>> really much bigger in scope from what the Herd was originally intended for.
>
> >>> I like "The Library".  I'm a bit hesitant to actually use the word
> >>> "command" in there just because it sounds a bit technical... what ever
> >>> happened to our use of the word "verb", anyhow? :)
>
> >>> - Atul
>

[Atul Varma]

Hmm, interesting.  So are you suggesting that we call the Herd "Silver Fox"?  It has a nice ring to it.  Only possible confusion that could occur is that some techies may think that it's some kind of version of Firefox packaged with Silverlight, but whatever. :P

- Atul

[Gray Norton]

Or was the idea to call Ubiquity itself "Silver Fox," and the Herd something more like "Tricktionary" or "Bag of Tricks"?

[indolering]

Instead of commands I think we should call them tricks. I like the
bag of tricks reference.

I didn't mean to suggest we change the name, I just think these foxes
are f*ing cute as all hell. But it might be useful when we merge into
FF mainline or the battle for mindshare in general.

-Zac

On Nov 10, 11:25 am, "Gray Norton" <gno...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Or was the idea to call Ubiquity itself "Silver Fox," and the Herd something
> more like "Tricktionary" or "Bag of Tricks"?
>
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Atul Varma <var...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hmm, interesting.  So are you suggesting that we call the Herd "Silver
> > Fox"?  It has a nice ring to it.  Only possible confusion that could occur
> > is that some techies may think that it's some kind of version of Firefox
> > packaged with Silverlight, but whatever. :P
>
> > - Atul
>

> >>http://flickr.com/photos/supeertakaihttp://fernandotakai.wordpress.co...

[Fernando Takai]

I don't know. I really like the terms verbs and nouns and etc. Feels natural for me...

[indolering]

Combined with the streaming UI, statistical data gathering would allow
us to quickly and cheaply test changes on large samples, Understand
feature usage, errors, and stickiness of users. This data would
significantly change the course of innumerable future development
decisions doing it now would save a massive amount of effort.

For example, everyone seems to think the contextual menu is the best
way to get "normal" people using Ub, but only one of the test subjects
knew of it's existence, and even then it was a last resort for him to
use it. I would bet money that it's usage rates would be near zero.
Or am I wrong, and should we, as Jono proposes, "[Take] the Ubiquity
context menu from tech-demo quality to production quality. For the
majority users who didn't grow up on command lines, the context menu
is likely to be the more widely used interface, but development on it
has lagged far behind..." then going on to suggest a list of features
to be added on.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquit/Usability/Statistical#Proposals_for_statistical_data_gathering

Humbly,
-Zach : )

On Nov 3, 6:49 am, Aza <a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> It's time to buckle down and figure out the quarter four goals (i.e., by the
> end of 2008) for Ubiquity. That's two months. Figuring these out is a
> community process, so what I'll do here is lay out a general outline as a
> framework for talking about specifics.
>
> *Major Goals for Ubiquity 0.2*
>
> * Streamable UI
>  - At least one new and experimental UI
> * Streamable Skins
>  - Including a revised default Ubiquity skin, revisiting some of the
> original design decisions
> * UI Improvements
>  - A better context menu
>  - Experimental integration with the Awesome Bar
> * Better command scaling and removal of hyphens in command names
>  - Using "container" verbs (http://labs.toolness.com/trac/ticket/134)
> * A revised and updated API for Ubiquity commands
>  - A more finalized version of the "all-in-one" command plus templates,
>  - A unified method of adding and interacting with nouns, commands, and data
> detectors.
>
> *Ancillary Goals:*
>
> * A version of the Herd with a well-documented public API
> * A home site for Ubiquity with a Ubiquity "planet"
> * Both Herd, and Ubiquity homepage to be hosted at ubiquity.mozilla.com
>

[Blair McBride]

The relevant ticket for this is: http://labs.toolness.com/trac/ticket/409

I'm just heading out for the day, but later tonight I'll see about
committing the code I have so far. As I said in the meeting, most of my
work on it has been to develop a framework to make gathering data easy
(and for automated reporting to a server), rather than actually getting
the data or processing it.

So at the moment, there's two different lists of what data can/should be
gathered - one on the wiki, one on Trac.

- Blair