Microsummaries feature of Firefox 2 which is at alpha 3

Firefox 2 will have a new feature in it called Microsummaries.

Firefox 2.0 recently issued an alpha 3 release. [Note the Microsummaries feature was already in it before this release. They are asking their alpha testers for continued help in testing this feature.]

The fact that Microsummaries are already implemented, and the nature of the feature - straight forward XML syntax, incorporating the already-implemented standards-based XSLT stylesheet mechanism - gives me a whale of a lot of confidence that this feature will not be cut before Firefox 2 ships.

Microsummaries in Firefox will almost certainly cause a spike in demand for and interest in XSLT stylesheet development.

One application will be to read all the documents that have been annotated with Microformats.

The Microformats will call attention to things like addresses, dates, product/service reviews (e.g. for movies, books, websites, etc.). For example, they will clue in the Technorati weblog social blog tagging/indexing/searching service that they are there.



Then, Firefox 2 Microsummaries can make those very things stand out on a page. In fact, they can cull them from a number of pages, winnow out the other content/verbage, and just present the information from the Microformats.



Along the way, they can sort the information, count it, and even sum up numbers in it. Pretty heady stuff.

People who have written XSLT pages already know something about them that most other people do not. XSLT can be used for a lot of things that have nothing to do with styling a web page.

They are a powerful tool for processing information that is in XML format. Thanks to Microsummaries, they will have more information on which to do their thing.

Web surfers will spend less time searching for information and have more time & ways to use the information.

The closest thing to Microsummaries in web browsers right now, is the optional Grease Monkey extension for Firefox 1.0 or 1.5. It sounds pretty neat but it works with Javascript. I do not think it works with XSLT.

Personally, I would rather write a simple stylesheet and wrap it in a Microsummary, than install a Grease Monkey script from the Grease Monkey script repository (Userscripts.org).

I think writing the XSLT to put in a new Microsummary would go faster than checking the leneage and pedigree of the Javascript. At least in some cases, it would. Time will tell.