I second this. I'm so happy I switched to LibreWolf a few years ago. I get all of the benefits of the arkenfox user script, plus even more without having to install or maintain it myself, and in addition to that I get Pocket and various hardcoded telemetry, etc, being stripped out — I can trust them to turn Firefox into an actually good focused browser no matter what Mozilla does upstream.
Plus it doesn't go as far as Mulvad, which explicitly states that they intend down the road to start ignoring user's configuration settings in an effort to prevent users from making their browser more fingerprintable, instead of letting users decide what balance of usability and privacy they want (for instance, I still use Firefox Sync). That's fine for them to do, and I wish them the best to block, because they're not really taking away user freedom since someone can just use an alternative browser, but that's not something I want to use personally. LibreWolf lets me choose.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but it sounds like they're doing this the right way.
I want to be able to run a local model using something like VLLM or FastChat, then be able to call it from a context menu. No obnoxious toolbar taking up the UI like Edge, just access to use the tools I'm running when I need them.
That's what this appears to be - not a case of a specific AI service being shoved in anyone's face.
AI models however are pretty big so its going to make the browser installation a lot bigger even if its only pulled down when you first go to use the feature.
AI has come to firefox. In the very sensible form of integrated local translation.
If this chatgpt's website embedded into firefox's UI comes to firefox I might just have to find a different browser though. It's just an obscene giant embedded ad for a company.
How is embedding a third party webpage in your product not an ad. Advertising multiple competing products doesn't make it any less of an ad. That's normal. Most places with advertising spots advertise multiple different things.
They way to make this not an ad would be to
1. Remove any and all branding, chatgpt should not be mentioned, hugging face should not be mentioned, openai should not be mentioned, etc.
2. Make there be no way to pay for it.
That's what they did with translation, where they embedded something actually useful and not just a webpage into the UI in a way that a browser extension easily could if people actually wanted this "feature".
Public promotion of a product or service. It could be one. It could be four.
It's no different than when Mozilla began promoting certain websites, e.g., via "tiles". Around 2015, it formed a "Content Services" team to develop ideas around promotion and advertisement.^1 This included hiring an "advertising expert". IMHO it is strange for a web browser to be promoting specific content on the web but others might find it normal. The text-only browser I use does not do it, command line TCP/HTTP clients do not do it. Early graphical browsers did not do it. Regardless of whether it is appropriate or not, to deny that this is advertising is, to borrow the term from AI-speak, hallucination.
I have been using mozilla browsers pretty much since they started. Hell, I used them before mozilla started if you count netscape.
I have been quick to forgive all the bad moves they have made in the last decade, but it’s clear that they have been chasing what they think average people want. while making the overall experience worse.
I know people are saying it’s opt-in, but if it’s going to be opt-in anyway, why not just make it be a plugin?
Except for a brief stint with konqeror in 2004, this is the first time I am seriously considering switching away for my daily driver. I just have no idea what the current browser landscape looks like.
> if it’s going to be opt-in anyway, why not just make it be a plugin?
Because Firefox neutered the plugin system too much for that to be viable.
It's such a shame, too. They have added all sorts of things to the mainline browser that really should be plugins. They have abandoned the idea that the browser itself should be lean, and users should be able to add whatever bells and whistles they prefer in the form of plugins.
What part of this exactly do you think is not possible with a standard firefox extension? I don't see anything.
Even if I'm missing something, firefox has a history of creating new APIs to allow extensions to do things that they want done, for instance with the container tabs extension. That, frankly, is the only remotely acceptable way to incorporate branded third party AIs into the browser.
> What part of this exactly do you think is not possible with a standard firefox extension?
I don't know, because I don't know exactly what that functionality does. My comment was really more general: since the plugin system changed, there are quite a lot of things that are no longer possible or are no longer possible in a non-clunky way.
My assumption is that if it could have been done as an extension, it would have been. That the reason they build all these things into the mainline browser is because it's not possible to do them (or do them well enough) as extensions.
> firefox has a history of creating new APIs to allow extensions to do things that they want done
Kinda, but that's a very high friction path that can't be relied on. If the extension system doesn't currently have functionality that is needed to accomplish a thing, there's no point in starting to develop the thing until that functionality is added. That functionality won't be added unless there is a great deal of demand for it to begin with. That leads to a chicken-and-egg situation where there can't be provable demand without an implementation showing people want it, but you can't have an implementation without proving demand enough that Mozilla will bother to support it.
The chicken and egg problem doesn't apply when it's mozilla developing the extension, they can add support for it because they want to add support for it with no proven demand...
Perhaps the problem is that they no longer think that a slim, modular browser is a desirable thing, then. I don't know. All I know is what it looks like from the outside.
Yeah, things have been downhill since they killed the old plugin system. Though I think this should be possible with the current plugins.
I understand the security problems with the old way, but they could have spent all these years working on a sandbox with granular permissions.
But for something like this they could make a system that only works with their own official plugins. tie the plugin versions to browser versions, and include the hashes of every plugin. people could install whichever ones they want, and malicious plugins wouldn’t be able to just drop in without also editing the browser binary.
Im sure there are a million other ways too, but designing a secure plugin system for first party software is so much easier than one for third party software.
We’ve all got enough history here to know that “opt-in” is a short step away from “opt-out”, which is a short step away from “we removed the toggle to simplify the user experience.” At this point any new “opt-in” feature in any piece of software or service is Chekhov's gun - all that announcement means is that at some point in the future I’m going to have to figure out how to remove this thing or replace this software or service.
To me it is just usual Firefox behaviour chasing some trend or other. Adding features for sake of adding features. I wonder what is the over-under when this feature will be deprecated...
If this was them bringing over window.ai from Chrome I'd say it would be good. I love the offline translation they added, and wouldn't mind something similar for LLM. But having a separate panel that's just basically chatgpt & co isn't impressive.
I'd much prefer an offline capable, leaner LLM that lets web devs do cool stuff.
Does anyone remember how Netscape tried to expand the browser by adding email, news, an html editor, a calendar and other stuff?
This reminds me of that strategy.
And does anyone remember how Chrome killed Internet Explorer? By making a slim, fast and standard compliant browser without any bells and whistles.
I wish Firefox would focus on making the browser a great basis for software that runs in it. And leave the development of applications and tools to websites and plugins.
That Firefox does not support the file system access API makes Firefox users have a really clunky load+save experience in web apps for example. This is the reason I use Chrome and suggest using Chrome to the users of my software. Not because Firefox has to few bells and whistles.
I get that a lot of people on HN won't like this, but I don't think FF really has a choice here. If they want to compete with mainstream browsers, they'll need to integrate the features they will support to avoid losing existing users and keep attracting new ones. If they weren't losing the browser war already, they'd have more leeway I think.
Firefox has 0% chance in competing with Google/Microsoft/Apple on their terms. The only chance of Firefox gaining market share is focusing on offering something unique, ideally something the big three are unwilling to offer: something that empowers the user instead of third-parties.
There's also plenty of applications for local models integrated with a browser - such as language translations without needing to send the text off to google.
proper service worker, PWAs and file system API support would be much better to attract and keep users, imo. And just get back to implement modern web APIs in general.
I am not against AI in software per se (I like the ChatGPT desktop app), but I prefer not to have AI in tools where the primary use case is not related to AI. Specifically, I don't want to have to consider how the AI is being developed and integrated (e.g., whether my data is being used for training an LLM), and, in general, I prefer for my software to be a bit conservative in relation to new trends (being it anything from crypto to AI).
Probably because it integrates with cloud AI providers, and the kind of person who uses Firefox probably has strong opinions about their browser integrating with a proprietary 3rd-party service and sending personal data to it.
yeah, but it is opt-in. and even if it was defaulted to enabled, firefox already has a "search google for" in the right click menu which also sends selected text to a third party... were people upset with that button?
I absolutely hate that it comes with search integration by default. Especially that it is in the URL bar instead of a separate text box.
I'm also not a fan of DNS over HTTPs, malware protection, and telemetry. I don't want my web browser sending any extra traffic anywhere I'm not expecting.
> and even if it was defaulted to enabled, firefox already has a "search google for" in the right click menu which also sends selected text to a third party... were people upset with that button?
Yes, I am absolutely annoyed that Firefox defaults to searching with Google, and much more so that it defaults to sending text from the search+URL bar before executing the search. Though I suppose on the basis that Mozilla does need to fund Firefox development, I would be more willing to give them a tiny bit of slack if Hugging Face or whoever is paying to be the default AI.
How is that a useful feature when you have to read the summary and the text to ensure there wasn't a hallucination. It has net increased how long it takes.
Chrome Dev Channel comes with a Gemini Nano model too.[1]
A text model will certainly be useful, but where it really gets crazy is when you imagine something like:
<img model="moz-img-v6" temperature="0" src="An old man with a beard and a funny hat."/>
If everyone has the same model and the temperature is zero everyone should get the same image.
You could even imagine a source set to display the generated image only on devices with low bandwidth connections or as a preview until the real image is loaded.
srcset="An old man with a beard and a funny hat., /img/old-man.jpg 2x"
I think it would be cool, and I am sure some will disagree, to integrate this in the old img tag and reuse the mandatory src attribute for the prompt, but it will probably end up as an overcomplicated API with a gazillion of ifs and buts.
I think we're at least a decade away from generating images being cheap enough that it makes sense to generate them on end users device them instead of generating them once and sending the bits over the wire.
"testing AI integration with its development build"
Keyword "testing" and "development build". Maybe before uninstalling consider the possibility that it doesn't make it into the production build or only behind some opt-in. One of the perks of open source development is that you can see things progressing before they are finalized.
Ah yes, another article examining an experimental feature as if it's in its final release UI already. Very... helpful?
I'm not happy about the concept, but as long as I can turn it all off (or just not turn it on) I'm not tooooooo upset about it. I just think implementing it is a waste of time when I've yet to see a thing done by an LLM that seemed worth the effort.
Unless a local model can do website translation with decent accuracy. That could be cool.
A lot of products are "semantic sugar" for saving a click or two. It's a big difference if something is included in an OS or app vs having to know about it, switch context to it and using it every time. Would you use reader mode if you always had to switch to another app and paste the content? Would you use bookmarks as often if you have to click 4 times instead of dragging it into the menu bar?
This applies for this AI feature, but also for any other feature in general.
> Would you use reader mode if you always had to switch to another app and paste the content?
I don't use reader mode to begin with.
> Would you use bookmarks as often if you have to click 4 times instead of dragging it into the menu bar?
Absolutely -- that's what I currently do. I don't keep my bookmarks in the browser, because I want to be able to access them from any browser from anywhere. So I use an independent bookmark server instead. Adding a new bookmark takes three clicks (four if I have to manually browse to my server first).
It's a minor inconvenience that the benefits more than compensate for.
The point is not that nobody ever would reach to other workflows but that the majority of people will stick the defaults (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-power-of-defaults/) and also don't install a lot of third party apps.
HN is of course a very different bubble and very different to how regular people use computers or the internet.
> They also point out that it follows the principles of user choice, agency, and privacy, by being optional,
Yeah, no. FF doesn’t believe in those principles; anyone savvy installing FF knows they have to dig through settings to turn off a bunch of shit, and delete Google as the default. It’s optional now whilst they test it and then it’ll be on by default.
Yea, I do think it’s the best browser and use it every day, but I don’t really love it, mostly it is just for lack of good options.
Browsers are in a bad spot nowadays. The web has been turned into this half-baked app platform, and as a result nobody makes a web browser to just, like, download and view documents.
- https://librewolf.net (Firefox but with good defaults and bloat stripped out)