Firefox 2.0 has a new little feature that they sometimes call “Live Titles” and sometimes “Microsummaries“.
Basically, the title of a bookmark can be dynamically updated from the web, so the title is actually content. Some examples are UPS package tracking data, you can have it show where you package is, right in your toolbar. Another is ebay auction tracking, where it says the current bid and time left.
I made one for Sharathon this week, that shows the current total. If you go to our calculator page, and bookmark it, at the top where it shows the page title, click it, and you’ll see the option for the total.
This is a fun little widget, but it only works in Firefox 2.0, and it’s not that easy to explain to people how to add them. Someone made a javascript widget to add them, so you can do “Click here!” to add them, but it still seems pretty fringe to me. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.
It’s only fringe at the moment. Firefox 3 will make more use of live titles, including live graphic titles (imagine seeing a continually updated bar graph or pie chart). Eventually, IE will catch on. To help people understand live titles, I created a short video tutorial.