Mozilla Contacts Releases Facebook-Integrated Version with New "Person URLs"

Mozilla Contacts, the experimental project from the organization behind the Firefox web browser, has released a new version of their Contacts add-on which introduces Facebook integration. Previously, Mozilla Contacts allowed you to import your various address books spread out across the web (think: multiple email accounts, Twitter friends, LinkedIn colleagues, Plaxo contacts, Mac OS X address book, etc.) into the web browser itself - in this case, obviously, Firefox. Once there, the combined address book information could be used in form autocompletion everywhere across the web and more.

Now, an updated version of Mozilla Contacts (download link) introduces a number of new features, most notably integration with Facebook Contacts and something called a "person URL."

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Import Facebook Contacts into Firefox

Mozilla Contacts' ability to sync with your Facebook Contacts come via the brand-new Facebook Graph API (application programming interface), which allows the Firefox add-on to import all your Facebook friends into the web browser itself as it does with the other services supported.

However, this integration is still a little iffy, warns Michael Hansson, an engineer in Mozilla Labs, on a blog post about the release. "You may need to Refresh your connection to Facebook on occasion to make it work properly," he says.

Person URLs

Also new in Mozilla Contacts 0.3 is experimental support for "person:" URLs. This intriguing feature lets you look up anyone in your various contact lists or anyone on the web just by typing a URL in your address bar. After doing so, Firefox will combine the locally-stored information in the web browser with web-based information retrieved from the Internet to return a profile page about that person.

You can try it now by typing person:mhanson@gmail.com or person:http://ping.fm/mbVkT, for example, into your Firefox browser that has the updated Contacts add-on installed.

Also New in 0.3

Other additions in version 0.3 include support for Yahoo! contacts, autocompletion of HTML5 input fields (with "email" and "tel"), enhanced search capabilities (including new discovery modules for Webfinger, HCard import, Google Social Graph, Facebook, Gravatar, Yelp, Amazon and Flickr), automatic combination of data discovered on sites that support standard automatic discovery mechanisms like HCard, RSS and ActivityStreams and finally, support for non-contact people in the AwesomeBar.

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