Localize, Localise

The extension is rigidly American. I, as a UK citizen, could only look on in horror as my Google results pointed at results which have no relevance to me and my Amazon results came up in dollars! I went scouring through the localization page, which came up with one amusing command: amazonuk. What the hell is the point? Ubiquity’s main philosophy is the ability to use natural language—but here I am, using a weird command just to get results which are useful to ~61 million people? Hm, that seems a bit off, to me.

A better solution would be to put a simple radio button choice when you download it. All the change between US and UK people would be is a switch between .com and .co.uk. This way, you could completely modify the available commands for each country, and save people giving up when they see the hoops they have to jump through in order to get utility.

We Do Not All Run OS X

Another casuality of Mozilla’s apparent one-mindedness is the user interface of Ubiquity. It’s hard to miss the brushed-metal and engraved-text styles which are signatures of Apple—except really, really badly implemented. Yes, Apple designs beautifully. But I’m on Windows. I’m not going to change any time soon. What are you trying to tell me, Mozilla? Even Apple themselves have given up the vaguely traumatic UI of Safari in Safari 4 for Windows. Take the hint.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the other available theme, Simplicity, didn’t show so little information, though I do see that it’s pretty.

So please, Mozilla, écoutez-moi. We’re not all American Mac users. Open your minds.