Mozilla Labs launches F1 link sharing add-on

The Mozilla Labs developers have announced the release of a new browser extension experiment called "F1" that is designed to help users share links across a variety of social networks and services. According to Mozilla Messaging User Experience Designer Bryan Clark, the latest Mozilla experiment hopes to makes sharing both "easy and clutter free" by simplifying the process and removing as many steps as possible.

The developers have initially implemented support for Facebook, Twitter and GMail because they are popular services and have "good API support for authorisation using OAuth, and in the case of GMail, provide APIs to contacts, which makes for a good auto-complete experience". The developers say that although they built prototype support for Yahoo’s email service they decided not to include it because it required an additional CAPTCHA authentication during each send, making sharing "harder and slower". Support for more services will be added in future versions.

With the F1 add-on, users can share links with messages to a variety of services and social networks.
Source: Mozilla Once installed, the F1 add-on adds a button to the Firefox toolbar that lets users specify which accounts they want to use for sharing. After its initial set-up, users click the toolbar button, select how they want to share the link, add a message and hit share – all without having to sign into and out of their various accounts each time. The Mozilla Messaging team ask users testing the release to provide feedback and to join the experiment's mailing list.

More details about F1, including a short introduction video, can be found in a post on the Mozilla Messaging Add-ons blog and on the Mozilla F1 home page. Version 0.7.1 of F1 is available to download from the Add-ons for Firefox page and supports Firefox 3.6 or later. Source code for both the add-on and the service are hosted on GitHub and licensed under the Mozilla Public License.

See also:

• RockMelt: Chromium meets social, a report from The H.
• Mozilla Labs launches browser add-on for A / V recording, a report from The H.
• Mozilla Labs launches browser-based gaming project, a report from The H.

(crve)