In Firefox 2 Mozilla implemented a feature called Microsummaries that will let users have periodically updating bookmarks. Here at CyberNet we have a few different Microsummaries available for everyone to use to help keep track of comments and new articles. If you haven’t heard the term Microsummaries before then you may be a little more familiar with the term “Live Titles” which is essentially what they are.
Mozilla plans to continue developing the Microsummaries into something great by adding graphical capabilities. Yes, what you see in the screenshot above is an example of a few charts from some stocks that you may be interested in watching. That’s not the only kind of chart that the Microsummaries will use…here is an image with the different variations expected:
I never thought that Mozilla would try and develop these even further but it is definitely something that needs to be done. Their current list of sites that have Microsummaries available are very minimal so hopefully this will help that expand. Mozilla just hasn’t tried to promote these enough.
If you have a hard time knowing when a site has a Microsummary available just download and use the Microsummary Buddy extension. It will notify you in the address bar with a little colored box similar to the RSS icon when a Microsummary has been detected on a site. My question is why didn’t Mozilla include something like this in Firefox?
Thanks to “Jack of all Trades” for the tips (he sent the extension as well)!
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it is also ashamed that mozilla ppl don’t update this page themselves. cause it is very stupid that a site like Digg added micosummaries a few weeks ago (till then, some dude created a microsummary generator for it), and no1 seems 2 know about it (untill they installed that extension).
on the other hand, sites don’t know how 2 use it wisely - the register has couple of live titles, but they insist on including the title “latest reg hardware/headlines:…” before each live title. so you end up seeing just 2 words of the whole title, which don’t really say anything.
on the discussion about those graphic livetitle some1 said it should b easy enough for grandma 2 use it. but how will grandma use it, if she doesn’t know which site have it.
The whole concept of ‘microsummaries’ still baffels me. I mean I know what they are, but I guess I just don’t understand why…
instead of going to a site, or even to an rss service, u can see the latest headline right through the links toolbar.
b4 micros, u could use something like Sage to see rss in the sidebar, or install extensions that rolled the latest rss headline in the status bar.
but with micros, u have it all done inside the browser.
now i just wish i could have 2 Links toolbars - one for bookmarks, and one for micros.
As far as I’m concerned Microsummaries isn’t really that great a feature. Despite the popularity of Firefox it isn’t a standard and IE still rules the market. These changes may make it better, but a ‘Feed Manager’ thing like IE7 has would be a much better time investment - Live Bookmarks was cool back when RSS meant nothing to IE, but for syndication IE7 has taken a great leap over Firefox - it even provides links to the comments and allows the feed to be sorted in its internal viewer.
I agree with ffextensionguru and Inferno_str1ke. I never really thought of micros as useful, but now with the advanced ones, I’m starting to see the potential. These could end up being very useful. Now if Mozilla only tried to make these a W3C recommendation…
I think Microsummaries would be more popular if they were more common and to that end you can create your own Microsumary of a site with the extension “Microsummary Generator Builder” at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3741/
(no coding necessary). It doesn’t work if you have to log in to the page. On sites like Digg where the information just gets pushed down when a new post arrives it wont update until the information is pushed off the page. However if you have a text box that stays in one place on a site were you don’t need a password this is what you want.
Microsummaries don’t have anything to do with the W3C. It’s purely a metadata feature, built as a microformat, so don’t confuse it with the browser-wars markup issues!
Though of course, with IE visitors unable to make use the things their uptake will be limited.
I didn’t even know that Digg had microsummaries. That goes to show that it is a true problem.
I like that extension and it probably would have made the microsummaries easier to make for this site had I known about it. Definitely put that one in my bookmark list for Firefox extensions!
Well, now that FF3 is out for more than a month, do we have updates on this?
Can’t find anything relevant in the Mozilla Wiki
I don’t think this made the cut in Firefox 3.