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If you’ve ever subscribed to a new Ubiquity command before, you know the red screen of doom. Ubiquity currently takes users to this page every time they wish to subscribe to a new command. The current design is meant to encourage users to be aware of the possible security implications of enabling and executing a command, to avoid getting a trojan horse.

The current screen, however, does not make subscribing to commands foolproof. I personally know I’ve subscribed to a number of commands without reading through the code, defeating the purpose of the anti-trojan horse display. Moreover, the page doesn’t give you any information on how you can use this new command. Especially given the inherent limited discoverability of a natural language interface, taking a moment to help the user actually learn the command becomes key.

Today I did a quick mockup of what a friendlier command feed subscription page might look like. Take a look at this screenshot with some of the features marked:

You can also check out the page itself. If you’d like to visualize it without the “trust” warning, you can also view the trusted version.

This mockup here is but a first iteration. What do you think about this subscription page? What is missing? What should be changed?

One of the eventual goals of the Ubiquity project is to bring some of its functionality and ideas to Firefox proper. To this end, Aza has been exploring some possible options for what that would look like (round 1, round 2). All of his mockups, however, use English examples. I’m going to start exploring what Ubiquity in Firefox might look like in different kinds of languages. Let’s kick this off with my mother tongue, Japanese.¹

今後多様な言語に対応したFirefox内のUbiquityを検討していきますが、その中でも今日は日本語をとりあげます。後日日本語で同じ内容を投稿するつもりです。^^ 日本語でのコメントも大歓迎です！

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