Cheap laugh. When you look at the actual example they provide, it seems like a useful feature, and not at all on the AI hype train:
> AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.
Also, they made a point of talking about privacy and saying it was processed on-device.
It seems very much like a nuclear bomb used to go hunting for deer. I'm sure it will be useful to some, but it's the sort of specialized activity that is better left to extensions, particularly when they carry heavy infrastructural burdens that are then paid by everyone.
Chances that someone went "how can I justify playing with the new shiny?" are very, very high. Responsible leadership should take away the toys before they do something stupid.
Haha. Everyone is working on AI now. It's the latest Blockchain, NFT etc.
Many of these "products" are just hot air. Time will weed out the crap. It's not like we're stuck with nonsense Blockchain features now from the last hype (even though signal and others did work to implement that BS, it's not in the way or even remotely relevant)
Andre Natal and I did the Firefox translation feature. It started as a research project with Mozilla and some EU schools and was called Bergamot. We adapted that for Firefox starting a couple years ago and shipped last year. The technology was a perfect fit for the user feature.
I think the same holds for summarization (a Reader View feature maybe?) and as someone what was on Firefox's A11Y team for almost 5 years, I think there's some work Mozilla could do with image alt text and perhaps fixing up some common quirks that trip up screen readers so they don't have to do that fixing themselves.
There are several places I believe this relatively new tech fits perfectly with web browser use cases. Those mostly aren't monetize-able though, so they're "for users" not "for money" and users don't really seem to be up for grabs these days, too locked into their routines, and so those features may not even be competitive advantages.
Still, doing good for your existing user base by incorporating new tech that fits their use cases well, even if it doesn't make you more money or win you more uses is a good thing and the fact that Mozilla's not chasing growth like FANG and others means they can do more of that unprofitable "good stuff."
I worked on Mozilla for 25 years. It was an amazing ride and knowing what I know about Mozilla I feel confident they'll behave not just responsibly with AI, but as paragons of virtue and a north star for the industry (and perhaps even for governments as the Mozilla Foundation has been working on responsible AI for half a decade and is in regular contact with the US and EU governments on just these kinds of issues.)
Andre Natal and I built the first real AI into Firefox starting a couple years ago with Firefox translations. The models are fully local, downloaded on demand, and pivot around English so you only need a few to get pretty good coverage. It's an excellent use of the technology.
15 years ago, machine learning started making its way into Firefox in a big way with the Awesomebar's learning algorithms that get the sites you visit frequently auto-completing easier. That work was mostly Ed Lee in the early days and makes Firefox's addressbar far superior to Chromes (and back then Chrome said it was a superior algo but they couldn't take the 10 ms hit to the Omnibox popup performance so users could just type a lot more to get where they wanted to go).
Yes, I am looking forward to more userChrome.css changes to un-streamline the damn URL bar back above the tabs once again, as well as to undo whatever other obnoxious UI changes they decide to inflict on us. It's become a regular ritual, performed with much cursing and gnashing of teeth.
Come on.. "hey Firefox, can you give me a summary of what's being said on my FB groups ont the side panel, and keep that updated every morning? Ho, and can you show me a boorkmak to start the coffee machine when I browse before 11am?"
A couple percent of Firefox's user base turn off telemetry. That is a target group, but they're hardly representative.
(I'm not bullshitting. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years, including in the Netscape era. Brendan Eich and I built the Mozilla 1.0 roadmap. I was a co-creator of Firefox along with Blake and Ben. I was Firefox's PM at Mozilla when we deployed telemetry and I was a Firefox and A11Y PM when me and Andre Natal introduced local LLM-based language translation to Firefox a couple years ago (Nightly only, release came last year after I left.) If those credentials aren't enough to make my claim believable, then I don't know what else to say.)
Yeah, though telemetry wouldn't help since this level of attention to UI design doesn't (practically ) exist, and it's unrealistic to expect it from FF, so the next best thing is allow user configuration.
Also you can even have a dynamic sorting section part within some menu based on how often you use a given menu item or depending on which profile you're using etc.
Great news. FFs UI has been falling behind the other browsers lately and vertical tabs is something I really like.
Good that they also want to include tab groups so there’s hope this will work like Tree Style Tabs. That extension is probably the gold standard when it comes to tab organization.
I’ve always thought the long running “Multi-Account Containers” in Firefox was a better implementation of this idea than having to switch profiles and open a whole new window, when often what I need is a tab or two for a profile other than the one I’m in. You can even configure proxies to run on a per-container basis if that’s useful. But I can certainly understand wanting to better separate what your working on then just tabs with colored indicators to remind you which is which at a glance.
Those are useful but they lack the ability to have profile-specific history and bookmarks. I have a completely different set of bookmarks for Home and Work use and would never dream of mixing the two. Profiles are the only way to deal with that, but profiles are themselves difficult to work with.
Containers is not a replacement for profiles, they are completely separate use cases. Those who use multi-profile do so because they want separate bookmarks, settings, etc (e.g. personal profile vs work profile)... which containers cannot do.
In Firefox you can go to about:profiles to easily open new windows using other profiles. I bookmark that page with a keyword for quick access. (Also see about:about for a list of other handy 'about' pages)
A more classic-style profile switcher is available via the '-P' (or '-ProfileManager') command-line switch. If FF is in your $PATH you can run:
firefox -P
The '-P' switch can also take an argument of a profile name to open it directly.
But yes, it would be nice if at least one of these options were exposed in the UI so it was more discoverable by users.
That's not user friendly or works on all OS (eg: firefox -P). There are also other issues with Firefox profiles. For example, on macOS, using different profiles mess up Firefox's icons on the dock and profiles always open behind the current Firefox window.
There's no way around this. Profile support on Firefox is bad and it's a shame because they've had them for years.
How about making Firefox compatible with Tab Mix Plus again? As in, open up the API again?
I consider TBP to be the second most important extension that I could possibly install, right after uBlock, but getting it to work correctly is a bit of a slog due to how tabs have been isolated and restricted from the API.
It’s not hyperbole that my entire usage of FF rests upon the functionality of TBP.
Firefox has a way of organizing bookmarks on its Android version known as Collections. It works really well and I wish they would bring it to their iOS and desktop versions. Bookmark management needs to evolve.
Readit News
> We are approaching the use of AI in Firefox...
Dammit
> AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.
Also, they made a point of talking about privacy and saying it was processed on-device.
Chances that someone went "how can I justify playing with the new shiny?" are very, very high. Responsible leadership should take away the toys before they do something stupid.
Many of these "products" are just hot air. Time will weed out the crap. It's not like we're stuck with nonsense Blockchain features now from the last hype (even though signal and others did work to implement that BS, it's not in the way or even remotely relevant)
They recently added a fully local translation feature and I love it.
I think the same holds for summarization (a Reader View feature maybe?) and as someone what was on Firefox's A11Y team for almost 5 years, I think there's some work Mozilla could do with image alt text and perhaps fixing up some common quirks that trip up screen readers so they don't have to do that fixing themselves.
There are several places I believe this relatively new tech fits perfectly with web browser use cases. Those mostly aren't monetize-able though, so they're "for users" not "for money" and users don't really seem to be up for grabs these days, too locked into their routines, and so those features may not even be competitive advantages.
Still, doing good for your existing user base by incorporating new tech that fits their use cases well, even if it doesn't make you more money or win you more uses is a good thing and the fact that Mozilla's not chasing growth like FANG and others means they can do more of that unprofitable "good stuff."
I worked on Mozilla for 25 years. It was an amazing ride and knowing what I know about Mozilla I feel confident they'll behave not just responsibly with AI, but as paragons of virtue and a north star for the industry (and perhaps even for governments as the Mozilla Foundation has been working on responsible AI for half a decade and is in regular contact with the US and EU governments on just these kinds of issues.)
15 years ago, machine learning started making its way into Firefox in a big way with the Awesomebar's learning algorithms that get the sites you visit frequently auto-completing easier. That work was mostly Ed Lee in the early days and makes Firefox's addressbar far superior to Chromes (and back then Chrome said it was a superior algo but they couldn't take the 10 ms hit to the Omnibox popup performance so users could just type a lot more to get where they wanted to go).
Deleted Comment
Why not just copy and improve Vivaldi and allow users to easily rename/move/delete the menus? You wouldn't know what a specific user's top actions are
(I'm not bullshitting. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years, including in the Netscape era. Brendan Eich and I built the Mozilla 1.0 roadmap. I was a co-creator of Firefox along with Blake and Ben. I was Firefox's PM at Mozilla when we deployed telemetry and I was a Firefox and A11Y PM when me and Andre Natal introduced local LLM-based language translation to Firefox a couple years ago (Nightly only, release came last year after I left.) If those credentials aren't enough to make my claim believable, then I don't know what else to say.)
Also you can even have a dynamic sorting section part within some menu based on how often you use a given menu item or depending on which profile you're using etc.
1. Configure which shortcuts override web page shortcuts. (Ex: Can't open history on Google Docs)
2. Customize shortcuts arbitrarily (add/remove/remap defaults). Bonus points for vim-style shortcuts being possible.
3. Shortcuts for JS/bookmarkets.
Good that they also want to include tab groups so there’s hope this will work like Tree Style Tabs. That extension is probably the gold standard when it comes to tab organization.
In what way is the UI falling behind? How advanced can it be? The most advanced thing was probably XUL that they disabled
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
Containers do one thing very well and are very useful, but they don't let you have different bookmarks, add-ons, themes, settings, sync, etc.
A more classic-style profile switcher is available via the '-P' (or '-ProfileManager') command-line switch. If FF is in your $PATH you can run:
The '-P' switch can also take an argument of a profile name to open it directly.But yes, it would be nice if at least one of these options were exposed in the UI so it was more discoverable by users.
There's no way around this. Profile support on Firefox is bad and it's a shame because they've had them for years.
I consider TBP to be the second most important extension that I could possibly install, right after uBlock, but getting it to work correctly is a bit of a slog due to how tabs have been isolated and restricted from the API.
It’s not hyperbole that my entire usage of FF rests upon the functionality of TBP.
I also very much miss Tab Mix Plus...