The address bar is dead. What, did you miss the invitation to the funeral? It was a nice service thrown by the folks at RubNub.org. What killed the address bar? The folks at RubNub.org did. Now how is that for a murder mystery? Angela Lansbury, eat your heart out.

So what is all this RubNub business all about? Here is what the creators have to say about it:

RubNub for YubNub is a (social) command bar for the web. This Firefox toolbar truly does allow you to do it all. Take advantage of the growing, community-based, set of commands or type in new and create your own commands. Using this in place of your Address Bar works because it will accept normal URLs with/without ‘http://’ or ‘www.’ just like you normally enter a URL.

You know, anytime they toss in the word “social” it has to be good. Of course by “good” I mean trying to slip in the backdoor of the Web 2.0 movement. Some of the URL commands include:

g future progress - Does a search on Google for future progress
y future progress - Does a search on Yahoo! for future progress
gimyim los angeles - Does a search for los angeles in Google and Yahoo! images
gearth los angeles - launches Google Earth and takes you to Los Angeles
echo Future Progress - Will return a link to Future Progress (think of the possibilities)
simpsons - Will return a random Simpson’s quote (quite funny)

RubNub does look interesting, I can give them that much. I am just not too sure I am ready to give up on my address bar just yet. We have had so many wonderful years together. We have done so many things. I give RubNub a golden star for effort though, and I can’t wait to see where this goes in the future.

This Firefox extension is for versions 1.0 and up of the browser. If you want to download it and try it out for yourself, you can do so at the Mozilla Update Web site.

Tags: firefox, extensions, rubnub, social