Check out the user-friendly Firefox share button: F1

Mozilla released a new add-on today called F1 for its popular Firefox browser that makes sharing Web content easy.

F1 creates a button on the top-right of your browser. Click on that button, and up pops a prompt line on the top of your browser that that lets you share your page via your Gmail account, Facebook or Twitter. Users can install and start using the add-on beginning today.

Share buttons have become a popular way for publishers to help visitors easily spread their content. However, they require users hunting for them on a page and trusting a third party with their login details. Also, not every user may use the plethora of services offered by an all-in-one sharing widget like ShareThis, making the options redundant and the experience cluttered.

Taking lessons from this, the Mozilla team has made the F1 experience elegant. Accounts can be connected within seconds, and sharing is as easy as a couple clicks. If Mozilla were to integrate this into Firefox as a default (rather than as an optional add-on), I could see this potentially become a proper standard for sharing. And if other browsers, like Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari, follow suit, this could potentially lead to the demise of publisher-integrated share buttons.

The add-on only supports sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail in its initial release, but Mozilla said in its blog post announcing the feature that it plans to add additional services in time. Meanwhile, publishers can also experiment with the addon through the API provided on its wiki.

Embedded below is a video demo of F1 by developer Andy Chung.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=16548313&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0