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Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

blog.torproject.org

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Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#121

Post by kwanbix »

netule wrote: post #50
squidbeak wrote: post #17

An AI sidebar doesn't bother me. But it should be an extension, not an inescapable part of the browser.

I'd love to be able to open up an arbitrary web page in this sidebar. It would be super valuable for research. They can obviously do it, since the AI sidebar also loads a web page, but the functionality is locked for some reason, and vertical splitting extensions are pure jank. I really wish Mozilla would focus on addressing some of the numerous user feature requests, rather than whatever the current trend is.

Yeah, I lived in the Netherlands for five years, so I switched to Chrome because its translation feature is much better.

Now that I'm back in my home country, I've gone back to Firefox, which I prefer from a philosophical standpoint. But there's one simple feature keeping me from using it full-time: the ability to rename windows.

My workflow relies on having one window per project. I name the windows Project1, Project2, Project3, and so on, so it is very simple to find each one.

There are a few Firefox extensions that allow renaming windows, but the names disappear every time I restart Firefox, and they don’t sync across devices.

So, unfortunately, I’m back to using Chromium.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#122

Post by Brybry »

netule wrote: post #50
squidbeak wrote: post #17

An AI sidebar doesn't bother me. But it should be an extension, not an inescapable part of the browser.

I'd love to be able to open up an arbitrary web page in this sidebar. It would be super valuable for research. They can obviously do it, since the AI sidebar also loads a web page, but the functionality is locked for some reason, and vertical splitting extensions are pure jank. I really wish Mozilla would focus on addressing some of the numerous user feature requests, rather than whatever the current trend is.

The tab group work Firefox has done has been mostly great.

The idea that Mozilla doesn't focus on user feature requests seems unfounded? [1]

[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas/tab/most-ku...

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#123

Post by glenstein »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #87
franga2000 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put that in italics and quotes, presumably to mock the people saying this but...yes, you should! Google does much worse things and is effectively a monopolist, so not using Firefox necessarily means using Google, which only entrenches their monopoly further. Bitch at Mozilla, sure, but don't stop using it.

>...yes, you should! Why? They're actively hostile to me as a user and nor catering to my needs and desires. >Google does much worse things and is effectively a monopolist Monopolies are the government's job to tackle so talk to your representative about Google, but leave suers alone to use what they like. When cars polluted we had the government force them to lower emission, not shamed users for buying cars. >Bitch…

I think you're overstating the hostility relative to what an average user might say (biased pro-firefox user myself but I don't take their browser imperfections as active hostility).

And yeah, despite your protestations to the contrary, not wanting one company to have a browser monopoly really is a legitimate reason to support alternatives. In fact it's one of the best reasons. That's the problem with ridicule detached from reasons, you're going to look down like Wile E. Coyote and see there's no ground under you.

I'd love for real conversation about, say, keeping Servo, Web Assembly, the fallacy of "privacy preserving ads", how it would be nice to have a Firefox OS now with Android forcing "verified developers", about working with EFF to keep open standards and privacy at the center of the web. There's a rich conversation to be had about the role of Mozilla in the future of the internet, but incredulity and vague generalizations should be left back in the writer's room at Warner Bros.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#124

Post by Topfi »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #38
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly they aren't doing any/good work, if they allow popups to cover content. It's literally their job to prevent stuff like this. Mozilla needs to bring in the Bobs from Office Space: "What is it you say you do here?"

Well, what are examples of these popups? Just because a modal window exists doesn't mean it's bad for accessibility.

I wish someone would answer your question.

As it stands, without any example, I for one have no idea what is being talked about, where these popups in FF are, how they affect accessibility.

Do I dislike modals that cover the entire window, yes, absolutely, but I have never encountered such in FF as a browser.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#125

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"Mozilla has reversed course on when the protocol portion (e.g. http or https) of the URL in the URL bar is hidden since Firefox 128. We used to have logic in one of our patches around Onion Services (which are always end-to-end encrypted regardless of the application-level protocol used) to follow whatever Firefox does for https. However, with the latest changes in Firefox, this patch became a bit gnarly to apply correctly so we took a step back and thought to ourselves, why are we even conditionally hiding this from the user?"

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#126

Post by PaulHoule »

dblohm7 wrote: post #20
PaulHoule wrote: post #5

I file a ticket with Firefox whenever an unwanted dialog pops up covering content. If you tag these as being accessibility related they get bounced back and forth between a few people before getting closed and thus pour just a little bit of sand in the gears.

This is wasting the time of accessibility engineers who are doing very important work. Please don't.

Not very well.

I'm one of those web developers who still uses Firefox as my daily driver which means the products I work on work on Firefox. Maybe twice a year a tester uses Chrome and turns up something that's not quite right.

Developers like me are a major reason why Firefox is still a viable web browser and there is someone like me in most organizations. If it wasn't for people like us more and more web pages would work in Chrome only and you just couldn't do things with Firefox. Collectively we probably contribute as much to the success of Firefox than all the people who actually check in changes to the source code but we are not treated accordingly. If they piss all of us off Firefox will become a non-viable web browser.

So far as accessibility I am doing a round of accessibility on my site and found things have gotten way worse for multiple reasons. I used to use NVDA + Firefox but since upgrading to Win 11 NVDA is completely broken for me and I have to pull the power plug on my computer to shut down NVDA.

Narrator + Edge basically works, but Narrator + Firefox is completely spastic. I might have a navigation bar with elements like

-- Choice 1

-- Choice 2

-- Choice 3

in a and it might read something like "Choice Landmark 1 Navigation Navigation Landmark Choice 2 Landmark Choice Navigation 3 Landmark" where using any ARIA role comes across as website vandalism because it makes Narrator + Firefox blurt out "Landmark" and "Group" and similar words randomly when it is reading stuff.

When something is that broken it doesn't seem worth even putting a ticket it for it.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#127

Post by unethical_ban »

icepat wrote: post #32
BeetleB wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI integrations, AFAIK, work only if you provide an API key.

Yes, however it still means that the browser is phoning home to somewhere. To be able to make use of that API key, it has to send some data out. Is that data routed over TOR? Does it even matter given that an API key can be used to deanonymize you?

If you don't put in an API key, does it try to connect?

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#128

Post by pessimizer »

lenerdenator wrote: post #116

Mozilla's beginning to lose its way. There are far too many "luminaries" in the tech industry who've had the last 20 years of "must create value!" go to their heads, even in the FLOSS space. When profit motive does not exist (and it shouldn't in FLOSS) then you need to stick to things like the UNIX philosophy and KISS (keep it simple, stupid) in order to create good software. Trends mean nothing when you're in this m…

> Mozilla's beginning to lose its way.

Beginning?

> If the group's leadership cannot comprehend this, then they need to be removed immediately and blacklisted from leadership at future organizations in the future.

You have no power to do this. They would have to remove themselves, or Google would have to make a phone call.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#129

Post by PaulHoule »

ryandrake wrote: post #52
marcosdumay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... Pretty much so. Unless it's a real emergency or the contents don't make sense until you do something, every modal window is an accessibility problem.

Even if it is a "real emergency," modal dialogs still don't make sense because people are so annoyed by them, they don't read them . If you really, really want the user to read something, don't put it in a modal that pops up over the thing they actually want to do. They're pretty much horrible UX for any conceivable use case.

There are certain applications that I'm frequently using to resolve a problem (say I just found out a bill is overdue) where I really feel under the gun and I find it astonishingly annoying to have to close a large number of dialogs telling me about new features.

A human being with some empathy might realize that you're initially in a state where you're not receptive to a message and later realize you are.

If I got a popup advertising a new feature after I completed a task I'd be a lot more receptive to it, particularly in that I'd be feeling the glow of having completed a task, being satisfied with the product, and not feeling so pressured, having some headspace to learn about a new feature.

Re: Tor browser removing various Firefox AI features

#130

Post by FirmwareBurner »

glenstein wrote: post #123
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...yes, you should! Why? They're actively hostile to me as a user and nor catering to my needs and desires. >Google does much worse things and is effectively a monopolist Monopolies are the government's job to tackle so talk to your representative about Google, but leave suers alone to use what they like. When cars polluted we had the government force them to lower emission, not shamed users for buying cars. >Bitch…

I think you're overstating the hostility relative to what an average user might say (biased pro-firefox user myself but I don't take their browser imperfections as active hostility). And yeah, despite your protestations to the contrary, not wanting one company to have a browser monopoly really is a legitimate reason to support alternatives. In fact it's one of the best reasons. That's the problem with ridicule detach…

>I'd love for real conversation about, say, keeping Servo, Web Assembly, the fallacy of "privacy preserving ads"

What is a "real" conversation? And what do those conversations help with here? Do you think Mozilla listens or cares about your conversations when they have all those billions coming from Google and can just sit and do nothing?

>how it would be nice to have a Firefox OS now with Android forcing "verified developers"

A lot of things would be nice, like ending world poverty and wars, but I'm being pragmatic and realistic instead of dreaming about things that won't realistically happen since in our world high level changes only happen, if big money or politics get involved.

>There's a rich conversation to be had about the role of Mozilla in the future of the internet

Conversations that would be a waste of time since Mozilla won't act based on our conversations. HN is full of such conversations. I'm being pragmatic, not entertaining some shallow philosophies of "wouldn't it be nice if" that don't lead anywhere since if 'ifs' were cookies I'd be fat.

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