Taskfox/Goals

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Goals

Work with existing workflows, not against them

Existing workflows should not be broken, interrupted, or compromised in any other way.

However, Taskfox can’t block the old work flow by trying to "help". That would be rude.

Tasks, rather than individual steps

At the moment, many common tasks (such as emailing a snippet of text to a friend) require you to repeat the same series of discrete steps each time. Give that these steps are already known, this workflow can be streamlined into a single step.

"It just works"

Done well, the feature doesn’t even really feel like a feature, just a lending hand: “of course it was supposed to work that way”, says the user.

Provide API for extensions

Almost everything in Firefox can be modified in some way by an extension. Taskfox should be no different.

Be more discoverable than Ubiquity

Ubiquity's popup window has major flaw: its not discoverable. You need to know about it and know how to open it in order to use it.

Zac Lym's usability studies found dicoverability to be a significant issue - not only of accessing the popup, but also using feature such as the so-called "magic words".

Be localizable

Every locale is a first-class citizen, and Firefox ships in around 60 locales. Users should not have a degraded experience because of their native language. Taskfox needs to not only display in any given locale, but also accept input in any language and present the user with information relevant and appropriate to their locale.

Feel like part of the overall Firefox experience

A large part of perceived software bloat comes from piling on new features without a unified vision — each disjoint, with their own way of doing things, and own way to invoke them. The more we can place time-saving designs in the path of current work flows, the smarter, quicker, and lighter the software feels.

Non-goals

Create a platform

While Ubiquity is a platform for quick and easy extension and command development, Taskfox is not. As such, Taskfox will not be:

• Be extendable through command feeds
• Be extendable through experimental UIs

Natural language processing

Its not realistic in the scope of Taskfox to have natural language input working perfectly in 60 different locales. And if its not perfect, then its just better to not have it at all.