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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

#171

Post by Tactic »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #156
dmitriid wrote: post #142

Didn't they say not a few months ago that "the reason Firefox has fallen behind is that we focused on stuff that wasn't browser-related like MozillaOS etc."? Learning from own mistakes anyone?

Exactly. I've been waiting for working and full printing support something like https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print... for years now. Printing articles from the browser is the same pain as 10 years ago. But yes this is not as fancy as voice search or file sharing (or their single sign on, identity and all the other failed stuff). Mozilla has been a vehicle for people who play out their tech a…

The linked page seems to indicate Chrome is leading because people are browsing on their Android phones. So it would seem if Mozilla should concentrate on anything it would be improving the mobile experience.

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

#172

Post by rudedogg »

thristian wrote: post #114
rudedogg wrote: post #101

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone use a Vim plugin for Firefox? I keep trying to switch, but the scrolling of VimFX drives me crazy. Here's an issue outlining the behavior: https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/issues/830 Are there any other Vim plugins without this issue?

Vimium-FF " rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/> is the only Vim-keyboard-binding plugin I know that will work with Firefox 57 and above. I haven't noticed any scroll jankiness as you describe, but it's possible I have my key-repeat-delay set low enough that it doesn't affect me.

Gave this a try, and it works! No weird jump after the first scroll.

Also, for anyone using 1Password, they have a beta of a multiprocess compatible FireFox extension that seems to work fine.

Thanks!

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

#173

Post by yAnonymous »

Tactic wrote: post #171
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I've been waiting for working and full printing support something like https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print... for years now. Printing articles from the browser is the same pain as 10 years ago. But yes this is not as fancy as voice search or file sharing (or their single sign on, identity and all the other failed stuff). Mozilla has been a vehicle for people who play out their tech a…

The linked page seems to indicate Chrome is leading because people are browsing on their Android phones. So it would seem if Mozilla should concentrate on anything it would be improving the mobile experience.

That is actually the one area where Firefox is already better for me, because of extension support. Having an ad blocker on mobile devices is priceless.

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

#174

Post by jrs95 »

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/…

I think part of the issue here is that it just visually seems slower. In my experience it isn't actually doing things much slower, it's just a little visually clunky in comparison. And as far as resource usage goes, RAM is way down now because their multiprocess implementation is a lot less intensive than Chrome's. I switched for that reason and I'm enjoying it a lot.

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

#175

Post by yAnonymous »

syrrim wrote: post #169
yAnonymous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other. I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent. Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new co…

>due to a lack of focus. And due to their competitors ability to advertise on the majority of people's home page. For most people, chrome wasn't a firefox alternative, it was an internet explorer alternative.

I'd like to know how much of an impact that had, but nonetheless Chrome is technically in many areas the best browser today and Mozilla, being the clear market leader at one point, could have done a lot more to prevent that.

Firefox was in need of technical improvements for some time, but they only started acting when Chrome already had a noticeable market share and that's not how you stay at the top.

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

#176

Post by alex_duf »

yAnonymous wrote: post #165
dmitriid wrote: post #142

Didn't they say not a few months ago that "the reason Firefox has fallen behind is that we focused on stuff that wasn't browser-related like MozillaOS etc."? Learning from own mistakes anyone?

Seriously. They're behind in speed, security, quality of the developer tools etc. and introduce new useless toy features and one re-design after the other. I appreciate a lot of stuff Mozilla do outside the browser for the open internet, but the development of Firefox is pretty bad and it looks like the project leaders are incompetent. Firefox is a sad example of how a successful software can be overtaken by a new co…

For every 100 experiment maybe one will be fruitful.

No one is criticising Mozilla for coming up with Rust, yet if they didn't take the time to experiment Rust wouldn't be around.

So yeah, good on them, I'm happy for them to try voice recognition and other endeavours, who knows what they might discover?

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

#177

Post by toweringgoat »

Tactic wrote: post #171
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I've been waiting for working and full printing support something like https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print... for years now. Printing articles from the browser is the same pain as 10 years ago. But yes this is not as fancy as voice search or file sharing (or their single sign on, identity and all the other failed stuff). Mozilla has been a vehicle for people who play out their tech a…

The linked page seems to indicate Chrome is leading because people are browsing on their Android phones. So it would seem if Mozilla should concentrate on anything it would be improving the mobile experience.

Sadly Mozilla seem to be trying to kill off development of Firefox on Android...

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

#178

Post by addicted »

dmitriid wrote: post #166
newscracker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting from the article: "These are obviously experimental tools and there’s no guarantee they will ever make it into a release version of Firefox. Indeed, the idea behind Test Pilot is to allow the Firefox team to test new concepts." The efforts on making Firefox faster and more responsive have been going on for a few years (e10s/electrolysis being one of them) and are appearing in the releases as fast as the team…

It doesn't matter if they are experimental or not. It doesn't matter if they will make it into the release or not. There is one very certain thing: these experiments divert resources and people. "Fast and more responsive" is just one aspect. Because "we're getting faster" and "these are just experiments" lead to a situation when "Browse against the machine" [1] uses FF for work and Chrome for play, and pretends it's…

This is how they are adding features to the browser. This is a smart way of doing it. Make it experimental, gauge the feedback, and integrate it if the feedback makes it seem useful.

As an example, they tried vertical tabs, and it appears it didn't work as well as they needed it to be so it has been left out. On the flip side, the empty tab page was also an experiment, and that worked well and made it to the default browser.

These experiments are work on the browser. But instead of adding them as features, introducing them as experiments and then adding the polished, stable, feedback adjusted version as a true feature that can be marketed effectively.

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

#179

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

yAnonymous wrote: post #173
Tactic wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked page seems to indicate Chrome is leading because people are browsing on their Android phones. So it would seem if Mozilla should concentrate on anything it would be improving the mobile experience.

That is actually the one area where Firefox is already better for me, because of extension support. Having an ad blocker on mobile devices is priceless.

I use FF only because of extensions right now.

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

#180

Post by SwellJoe »

fasquoika wrote: post #133
SwellJoe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird take. Mozilla has a wide variety of developers, working on all sorts of things. One of those things is experiments to figure out what the browser "foundation" should actually include. I like that they're experimenting to figure out what good usability looks like and what the next generation of "browser" should deliver. Some things should just be there when you want them...not an app you install separat…

>large file sharing maybe? From what I can tell their new file sharing feature is actually just a mozilla hosted web app. see: https://send.firefox.com/

There was a complaint in this thread that it isn't peer-to-peer, which is...kinda weird. Requiring that your recipient have the device they want to receive it on running at this very moment is kinda a non-starter for a file sharing tool, IMHO. Doing that without it being a Mozilla-hosted app isn't really a thing I'd care about. P2P is neat, but it's not a very good user experience, especially for non-technical users.
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