tab grouping
Sure, okay.
vertical tabs
To each their own.
profile management
Whatever, it’s fine.
and local AI features
HOLLUP
We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models – i.e., more private – to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities. The alt text is then processed on your device and saved locally instead of cloud services, ensuring that enhancements like these are done with your privacy in mind.
IMO if everything’s going to have AI ham fisted into it, this is probably the least shitty way to do so. With Firefox being open source, the code can also be audited to ensure they’re actually keeping their word about it being local-only.
Don’t you need specific CPUs for these AI features? If so, how is this going to work on the machines that don’t support it?
With it being local it’s probably a small and limited model. I took a couple courses on machine learning years ago (before it got rebranded as “AI”), and you’d be surprised at how well a basic image recognition model can run on the lowest-spec macbook from 2012.
While I dislike corporate ai as much as the next guy I am quite interested in open source, local models. If i can run it on my machine, with the absolute certainty that it is my llm, working for my benefit, that’s pretty cool. And not feeding every miniscule detail about me to corporate.
I mean that’s that thing. They’re kind of black boxes so it can be hard to tell what they’re doing, but yeah local hardware is the absolute minimum. I guess places like huggingface are at least working to try and apply some sort of standard measures to the LLM space at least through testing…
I mean, as long as you can tell it’s not opening up any network connections (e.g. by not giving the process network permission), it’s fine.
'Course, being built into a web browser might not make that easy…
If you’re here because of the AI headline, this is important to read.
We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models – i.e., more private – to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.
They are implementing AI how it should be. Don’t let all the shitty companies blind you to the fact what we call AI has positive sides.
They are implementing AI how it should be.
The term is so overused and abused that I’m not clear what they’re even promising. Are they localizing a LLM? Are they providing some kind of very fancy macroing? Are they linking up with ChatGPT somehow or integrating with Co-pilot? There’s no way to tell from the verbage.
And that’s not even really Mozilla’s fault. It’s just how the term AI can mean anything from “overhyped javascript” to “multi-billion dollar datacenter full of fake Scarlett Johansson voice patterns”.
there are language models that are quite feasible to run locally for easier tasks like this. “local” rules out both ChatGPT and Co-pilot since those models are enormous. AI generally means machine learned neural networks these days, even if a pile of if-else used to pass in the past.
not sure how they’re going to handle low-resource machines, but as far as AI integrations go this one is rather tame
AI generally means machine learned neural networks these days
Right, but a neural network traditionally rules out using a single local machine. Hell, we have entire chip architecture that revolves around neural net optimization. I can’t imagine needing that kind of configuration for my internet browser.
not sure how they’re going to handle low-resource machines
One of the perks of Firefox is its relative thinness. Chrome was a shameless resource hog even in its best days, and IE wasn’t any better. Do I really want Firefox chewing hundreds of MB of memory so it can… what? Simulate a 600 processor cluster doing weird finger art?
There are a lot of knee jerk reactions in the comments. I hope few of those commenters have read the article or, at the least, your comment.
People that wanted vertical tabs must be really excited
Anything to fill all that absolute wasted space from every website formatting things to fit phones and not desktops. Ultra wide really sucks ass for a lot of things.
IMO that’s mostly a window-management problem, not an app layout problem. The point of an ultra wide monitor setup (other than flight sims or something) is to be able to view a bunch of different things side-by-side.
Edit: speaking of which, now that we’ve come almost full-circle from no tab support, to multiple tabs in the same process, to one process per tab, it seems to me that tabs themselves ought to be part of the window decoration, not the app. I mean, they’re useful for almost everything you might want to have multiples of (editors, file managers, terminals, etc.) so why force every app maker to implement them over and over again?
tabs themselves ought to be part of the window decoration, not the app
Well, Windows did try that. It sounds cool as an idea, but it also severely limits what the tabs can do, as most programs don’t need tabs that are as advanced as browsers’, and even browsers’ implementations of tabs vary widely.
Exactly. I have an ultrawide at work, and I just have three things open side-by-side. I have a dual-monitor setup at home, and I have two things on the larger one (27") one and one on the other (24"). My workflow is nearly equivalent between them, the main difference is bezels.
To be honest, it’s not just for phones. The wider the monitor, the more I’d need to move my head if a website uses the whole space, instead of keeping it centered. Obviously it shouldn’t be too slim but you can’t really just fill an entire monitor or align your content to the left of the screen anymore nowadays.
Its honestly the only reason i use brave and edge over Firefox. Can fully commit to FF now.
The TreeStyleTab extension for Firefox has added vertical tabs for a decade
The way tree style tabs worked after they broke it was never very good. Floorp is what to use if you wanted side tabs on Firefox.
That said I still went back to Vivaldi after trying to use Floorp because of stupid little ux issues like pinned tabs not being protected from closing, and broken session saving.
Yes, but you have to have a custom user.js file or whatever to remove the tabs on top.
Anyone who really cared was already using an extension that did these things.
That’s unnecessarily dismissive. Unfortunately, even the best extensions have their downsides. Some used a browser that suited their preferences better instead, which is a shame for both Firefox and the user, in my opinion.
Mozilla recognizes this and is finally taking action to integrate highly requested features into Firefox. Many “who really care” are glad for this, because it is a good thing.
This is what Mozilla should have done a LONG time ago - focussed on browser features, ease of use, compatibility and speed. Make a better browser if you want to win a browser war.
Maybe they should, but focusing on adding new features endlessly is how we ended up with this state of internet browsers. The most complex app running on a desktop are too big, it’s basically impossible to create a new one. (Yes you can fork but that’s just adding toppings to ice cream). The browser war ends only one way.
If we break up the do-everything application into significant parts then a healthy “war” can exist. Why does a browser need to play video, you already have an app for that.
Forcing useless features or features that are useless to most users is more or less what windows is doing. Why the double standars?
Especially when Firefox could have included those features as optional modules (even as preinstalled extensions) that we could simply remove if we dont want them?
They are adding them as features to the browser, making it heavier and slower, instead of adding them as optional extensions so that they are only there for the ones who wish them.
I definitely don’t believe Mozilla should continue to add features. But I like them focussing on the ones they’ve got.
Edit: Changed this comment to better reflect what I actually meant.
It might be me and in that case i apologize
…focussed on browser features, ease of use …
It just sounds like you think its good that they added all these featueas
One of these things is not like the other
I do not know why browser makers like Opera or Brave(and now apparently Firefox) is going hey ho over AI. I don’t see a proper benefit of integration of local AI for most people as of now.
As for vertical tabs, Waterfox got it just now. It is basically a fork of Tree Style Tabs and very basically implemented. I am honestly happy with TST on Firefox and while a native integration might be a bit faster(my browser takes just that few extra seconds to load the right TST panel on my slow laptop), it’ll likely be feature incomplete when compared to TST.
It depends. I really liked Mozillas initiative for local translation - much better for data privacy than remote services. But conversational/generative AI, no thank you.
AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs
Sounds more like classification so far. Things like summarising web-pages would be properly generative, LLMs in general could be useful to interrogate your browsing history. Doing feature extraction on it, sorting it into a graph of categories not by links, but concepts could be useful. And heck if a conversational interface falls out of that I’m not exactly opposed, unlike the stuff you see on the net it’s bound to quote its sources, it’s going to tell you right-away that “a cat licking you is trying to see whether you’re fit for consumption” doesn’t come from the gazillion of cat behaviour sites you’ve visited, but reddit. Firefox doesn’t have an incentive to keep you in the AI interface and out of some random webpage.
