Microsummaries

Introduction

Microsummaries are regularly-updated succinct compilations of the most important information on web pages. They are compact enough to fit in the space available to a bookmark label, provide more useful information about pages than static page titles, are regularly updated as new information becomes available, and are linked to the pages they summarize.

For more information, see the rest of this proposal and this walkthrough with screenshots showing major elements.

Examples

Examples of pages for which microsummaries would be useful, along with the information they might contain, include:

• auction items: the item name, the current highest bid, and the time remaining;
• products for sale: the product name, the current price, and whether or not the product is in stock;
• news sites: the latest headline;
• "[thing] of the day" pages: today's [thing];
• stock quotes: the current price of the stock and its direction of movement in the market;
• stock portfolios: your current net worth;
• search results: the number of results and if there are new relevant results;
• weather pages: the current forecast;
• tinderbox: the status of the tree.

Specification

There are no existing standards for specifying microsummaries. Appropriate bodies for standardization may include the microformats group and the WHATWG. In general, we'll want to provide ways for both sites and users to specify microsummaries for pages.

Microsummary specifications should include the summary itself (or a way to derive it), its content type, and how frequently it should be updated. It should be possible to update the update frequency itself in addition to the summary for pages whose frequency of change differs over time (f.e. auctions whose highest bid changes more frequently as the auctions draw to an end and stock quotes that don't change at all while the markets are closed).

Options for specifying microsummaries include:

• meta-data elements embedded within pages;
• <link rel="microsummary"> elements embedded within pages which point to other resources that provide the actual microsummaries (à la RSS/Atom feeds, for lighter-weight access to summary updates without having to load the complete HTML page);
• built-in specifications within client applications which include a set of regular expressions matching the URIs to which the specification applies.

Content

Microsummaries should support not only plain text but also rich text (HTML, XML) and graphical content. If a microsummary-aware application cannot display a particular content type in a given part of its interface due to technical limitations or security considerations, it should gracefully downgrade to a version of the microsummary it can support; or, if it cannot support any version, it should fall back to the page's title or user-supplied description, as it does for pages without microsummaries.

Implementation in Firefox

Firefox's implementation of microsummaries should include the following features:

Autodisplay

When Firefox loads a page with an available microsummary, the browser should detect the microsummary and display it in lieu of the page's title in the window titlebar and page tab. If multiple microsummaries are available for the page, the browser should use the preferred, default, or first available microsummary.

Bookmarks

When a user bookmarks a page with an available microsummary, the user should be able to direct Firefox to show the microsummary instead of the page's title wherever the bookmark is displayed. If multiple microsummaries are available for the page, the user should be shown the rendered forms of each microsummary and be able to choose between them.

Rich Text and Graphics

Firefox should display rich text and graphic microsummaries wherever it displays microsummaries (modulo toolkit limitations and security considerations).

Built-In/Installable Specifications

Firefox should support built-in microsummary specifications that support popular sites with suitable content. Users should be able to install new microsummary specifications into Firefox to support additional sites as easily as they currently install extra search engines.

User-Generated Summaries

Users should be able to generate their own microsummaries for pages. For example, when a user selects content on a page and then context-clicks on that content, Firefox should include a Watch this Selection item in the context menu which, when selected, causes Firefox to build a microsummary with an XPath expression pointing to that content and then prompt the user to save it as a bookmark.