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Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

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Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#31

Post by [deleted] »

robfreudenreich wrote: post #29
problems wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many such tools available, RiseUp runs one called Up1. See https://share.riseup.net/ It's quite nice, has integrated image and video viewers as well as a pastebin all end-to-end encrypted.

Up1 looks nice, but is internally using SJCL which is slow and does not support bigger files ("This is not a problem with sub-10MB images"). Send - and Whisply - are built on the new WebCrypto APIs which are faster and allow bigger files, up to 1 GB in both cases.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#32

Post by buovjaga »

mrspeaker wrote: post #28

I feel like I must be reaching the "get off my lawn" phase of my life, because I can't even comprehend a situation where I'd ever want to talk at my browser... maybe when I'm at home alone and, couldn't type for some reason? Certainly not in the office. Am I missing a use case, or am I just old now?

"Firefox! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#33

Post by lewisl9029 »

bad_user wrote: post #11

I wonder what happens to the previous Test Pilot experiments. I loved the experimental home page and the Tab Center [1]. I really hope it continues to live. [1] https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter

Tab Center Redux is the official successor to Tab Center: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-re...

It's now a WebExtension, which means it will work in Firefox 57+ (and possibly eventually Chrome, if they end up supporting the same APIs), and uses the new Sidebar APIs that the new Notes experiment also makes use of.

If that doesn't fit your use cases, there are also quite a few new tab sidebar WebExtensions popping up that aim to replicate existing more sophisticated tab management extensions like Tree Styles Tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/), and others that try to innovate on their own terms, such as Sea Containers (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sea-container...), which makes use of the new Containers experiment.

Overall there is a huge amount of very promising new development in the WebExtensions space, and this is exactly the kind of innovation I had hoped WebExtensions would encourage.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#34

Post by sp332 »

eridius wrote: post #23

send.firefox.com says that my browser (Safari) is unsupported. Anyone know what particular "web technology" the site uses that Safari doesn't support?

This is the only one I can think of, not sure why that site would require it though. https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-file-directory

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#35

Post by pcwalton »

artursapek wrote: post #6
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

I just wish it was .. faster. Lately I've been moving away from Google everywhere I can. I moved everything but Google Voice. Yes, even Google Search - I've moved to DuckDuckGo. On windows however, I had to fall back to Chrome, because I was just shocked at how slow Firefox was. Opening pages like Twitch.tv proved to be shockingly slow. Furthermore, my habit of opening many tabs in the background like I do in Chrome/…

It doesn't help that they keep cramming features into Firefox. Chrome feels pretty bare in comparison.

Chrome has consisted of significantly (i.e. millions of lines) more code than Firefox has for quite a while now.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#36

Post by rodolphoarruda »

sp332 wrote: post #30
mrspeaker wrote: post #28

I feel like I must be reaching the "get off my lawn" phase of my life, because I can't even comprehend a situation where I'd ever want to talk at my browser... maybe when I'm at home alone and, couldn't type for some reason? Certainly not in the office. Am I missing a use case, or am I just old now?

Lots of people are faster at speaking than typing. Or maybe you're reading from a document (or pill bottle) and don't want to type with one hand or whatever. But what I usually use it for is if I'm having a conversation with someone and we want to look something up. It feels more anti-social to type silently for a while than to make the computer part of the conversation.

I work in the online learning industry, mainly with higher education institutions. One of the top features required by instructors is the ability to provide audio feedback to students. And this is really a huge benefit for them because most instructors are not fast typists and they have hundreds of assignments to review every once in a while.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#37

Post by eridius »

sp332 wrote: post #34
eridius wrote: post #23

send.firefox.com says that my browser (Safari) is unsupported. Anyone know what particular "web technology" the site uses that Safari doesn't support?

This is the only one I can think of, not sure why that site would require it though. https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-file-directory

Found it. It's checking for window.crypto.subtle. Looks like Safari TP supports this. I believe the problem with Safari 10 is that it implemented an older version of the web cryptography standard.

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#38

Post by mrspeaker »

sp332 wrote: post #30
mrspeaker wrote: post #28

I feel like I must be reaching the "get off my lawn" phase of my life, because I can't even comprehend a situation where I'd ever want to talk at my browser... maybe when I'm at home alone and, couldn't type for some reason? Certainly not in the office. Am I missing a use case, or am I just old now?

Lots of people are faster at speaking than typing. Or maybe you're reading from a document (or pill bottle) and don't want to type with one hand or whatever. But what I usually use it for is if I'm having a conversation with someone and we want to look something up. It feels more anti-social to type silently for a while than to make the computer part of the conversation.

But it's only for searching after you've already navigated to a search engine, right? You'd have to be extremely slow at peck-and-hunting for it to save you much time (especially as search strings are so short) - and in the video you have to click "submit" to even do the search (and then presumably navigate normally with mouse). I can't see many instances where this could be worth it. Maybe I'm actually too young to see why it's useful!

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#39

Post by rdiddly »

sp332 wrote: post #30
mrspeaker wrote: post #28

I feel like I must be reaching the "get off my lawn" phase of my life, because I can't even comprehend a situation where I'd ever want to talk at my browser... maybe when I'm at home alone and, couldn't type for some reason? Certainly not in the office. Am I missing a use case, or am I just old now?

Lots of people are faster at speaking than typing. Or maybe you're reading from a document (or pill bottle) and don't want to type with one hand or whatever. But what I usually use it for is if I'm having a conversation with someone and we want to look something up. It feels more anti-social to type silently for a while than to make the computer part of the conversation.

Faster than typing would be great. What's not so great (or so fast) is trying 3 or 4 times by voice and having to go type it anyway because the accuracy's not there. Sooo, like my old-aged ancient geriatric friend in the parent, I too still preferentially go to the keyboard, since I figure I'll probably end up there anyway. If it's a social situation I usually preface the typing with some variation of "All right let's see here..." which sounds like I'm trying to figure out something hard or ask something of the Great Oracle, but really it just means "I'm about to type."

Maybe once speech recognition advances a bit more...

Re: Mozilla launches voice search, file-sharing and note-taking tools for Firefox

#40

Post by CommanderData »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

I just wish it was .. faster. Lately I've been moving away from Google everywhere I can. I moved everything but Google Voice. Yes, even Google Search - I've moved to DuckDuckGo. On windows however, I had to fall back to Chrome, because I was just shocked at how slow Firefox was. Opening pages like Twitch.tv proved to be shockingly slow. Furthermore, my habit of opening many tabs in the background like I do in Chrome/…

Google does not want you to move from their services and APIs.

Chrome/Chromium, as a recent example allowed serviceURI in Web Speech APIs for third party recognition to be plugged in. Here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechRecog...

It was dropped in Chrome 49 and we're now all stuck with using Google. There has been little coverage on this, some speculated it was hardly implemented, or was dropped because lack of a standard API format.

Whatever the case. Google / Chrome choose not to fully develop that feature and its now gone. Which ultimately works in Googles favor.

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