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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

#181

Post by addicted »

noisem4ker wrote: post #162
482794793792894 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are trying to move away from the old extension API (because maintaining that ate up a crap ton of resources, so don't come up with that move being a waste of resources) and Tree-Style Tabs is not yet compatible with this new API. The Vertical Tabs test pilot thing was them demonstrating that it could be done (including to themselves, they need to test these APIs) and giving the community something to work with,…

>The Vertical Tabs test pilot thing was [...] to test these APIs Except that Tab Center wasn't a way for them to test the new WebExt APIs, as it was still based on XUL. See here: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/whats-all-this-abo... >maintaining [the old extension API] ate up a crap ton of resources, so don't come up with that move being a waste of resources Arguably not a waste if that meant preserving the…

The old extensions were not compatible with e10s.

If the Firefox team wanted to improve speed/security/modularity, etc. they had to ditch the old extension model.

It sucks, but necessary.

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

#182

Post by addicted »

adito wrote: post #76
notheguyouthink wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I'm definitely going to try switching to Nightly based on the comments here. As well as adjusting some of the configuration. Thanks!

Would you comment back here and gives your first impression on it? How fast is it compared to stable.

I switched to Nightly based on comments on this thread and it's great.

Much more streamlined UI, and much faster. I already preferred Firefox because of better handling of large numbers of tabs, but Nightly beats Chrome even at smaller number of tabs so far (I synced my FF account so my extensions, etc got reproduced, and I manually replaced legacy ones with newer ones). I still have to see how it holds up over a period of use, but so far with my data synced it looks great.

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

#183

Post by ctw »

SwellJoe wrote: post #97

Somehow, I assumed "Notes" would be "notes for this page". But, it's just a notepad...no awareness of where I am. That's much less interesting/useful than I thought it would be. Is there a browser plugin out there that provides a notes sidebar for the page you're currently on, and allows flipping through the notes with a link to the pages they relate to? Because that'd be awesome. Googling only reveals some kitschy "…

Doesn't Edge have this built in?

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

#185

Post by jameskegel »

jacquesm wrote: post #92
_frog wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I wanted voice search, file sharing and/or note taking I would find the appropriate piece of software for that task and install it separately. The good thing is that these are all separate browser extensions, none of which are bundled by default. So that's exactly the case.

For now. And then because not enough people install them they will be bundled by default. This has happened over and over, for instance with sync, pocket and so on. The whole idea behind test pilot stuff is to trial stuff intended for future inclusion in the main distribution, getting it force-fed to be able to claim a large installed base is the logical next step.

EXACTLY. This is just like that little IM Client 'ello' or whatever that came bundled in the last version. I used it for a few days and said exactly what you did as I uninstalled and went back to a different browser.

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

#186

Post by ece »

thristian wrote: post #115
randie63 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because its webview which is just chromium. They don't use the gecko engine like in desktop firefox

I believe Firefox Focus (on Android and iOS) uses the OS native web view (effectively, Chrome or Safari), but the actual Firefox for Android uses Gecko.

^ This seems right from my quick googling, there is this project for a gecko webview, which needs work: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView and mentions firefox focus' gecko build option.

Firefox on android is too slow to use a lot of times. Something mozilla should be able to do better.

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

#187

Post by noisem4ker »

addicted wrote: post #181
noisem4ker wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Vertical Tabs test pilot thing was [...] to test these APIs Except that Tab Center wasn't a way for them to test the new WebExt APIs, as it was still based on XUL. See here: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/whats-all-this-abo... >maintaining [the old extension API] ate up a crap ton of resources, so don't come up with that move being a waste of resources Arguably not a waste if that meant preserving the…

The old extensions were not compatible with e10s. If the Firefox team wanted to improve speed/security/modularity, etc. they had to ditch the old extension model. It sucks, but necessary.

>The old extensions were not compatible with e10s.

Addons based on older APIs could be made compatible with the newer multiprocess design (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Working_with_mul... ) and for a while Mozilla tried to persuade developers to update theirs (see https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/08/02/multi-process-fir... )

It was only not long after that when Mozilla's fresh direction decided to start pushing the WebExtensions bandwagon only while dropping everything else, in spite of the thousands of man-hours invested by the addon developers (many of which, you can understand, were not happy; see http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html )

>they had to ditch the old extension model

To me, that's more like a political decision they made at an arbitrary point in time.

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

#188

Post by dmitriid »

alex_duf wrote: post #176
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…

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?

Rust, at least, had a clear design goal.

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

#189

Post by dingo_bat »

addicted wrote: post #178
dmitriid wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Vertical tabs used to work so well on Firefox that I held on for just that, even when everybody had already left for Chrome. Then they killed it. Now you're saying they dropped it because they couldn't get it to work again. Kind of sad.
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