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Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

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Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#301

Post by celsoazevedo »

elorant wrote: post #292
mfru wrote: post #243

Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox. Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.

Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

It's hard to be in charge of a project like this. You're criticized no matter what you do.

The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#302

Post by zenoprax »

j1436go wrote: post #300

I switched to LibreWolf, use uBlock Origin and have modified the web search so it uses noai.duckduckgo.com and appends -ai to every Google search query. I'm rather happy with this setup.

I wasn't aware of the "-ai" flags. Good to know.

Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? I think there's a limit of only five for some reason.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#303

Post by blibble »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #301
elorant wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

It's hard to be in charge of a project like this. You're criticized no matter what you do. The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

the people still using a fat client are likely doing it because they don't like change

edit: I say this MYSELF as a thunderbird user!

I don't want an "new experience" every 9 months, and having to explain it to my parents

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#304

Post by baggachipz »

zenoprax wrote: post #302
j1436go wrote: post #300

I switched to LibreWolf, use uBlock Origin and have modified the web search so it uses noai.duckduckgo.com and appends -ai to every Google search query. I'm rather happy with this setup.

I wasn't aware of the "-ai" flags. Good to know. Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results? I think there's a limit of only five for some reason.

> Do you have a preferred way of blocking domains from appearing in search results?

Paying for Kagi which lets you promote/demote/block domains to your heart's content.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#305

Post by p_ing »

usefulposter wrote: post #89
p_ing wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structure-wise, that comment is not great. Why do you think it’s AI — simply because of a dash of flavor?

Click on the profile. Read every comment made since the account started posting again. Tell me what you think about those comments.

They're all sloppy. It reads nothing like an LLM.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#306

Post by badsectoracula »

mrklol wrote: post #115
ddxv wrote: post #102

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was t…

Firefox mentions the following ones: "- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. - Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. - AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. - Link previews, which show key points before you open a link. - AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, includin…

> AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral."

When i saw this i expected something more... integrated, but when i tried it with a local LLM (using koboldcpp) after enabling the option to show localhost as an option (it is hidden by default for some reason) all it did was to local whatever webpage was running on the localhost URL (even though koboldcpp also provides an OpenAI compatible endpoint, which is what i expected Firefox to use to provide its own UI). It seems to have some sort of heuristic to find the input box where you type in queries and autofills that with the page text or parts of it (if you have it selected) and that's all.

I kinda expected it instead to use the API endpoint, have its own chat UI, provide MCP tools for accessing and manipulating the page's content, let you create reusable prompts, etc. The current solution feels like something you'd throw together in a weekend at most.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#307

Post by [deleted] »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #301
elorant wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

It's hard to be in charge of a project like this. You're criticized no matter what you do. The old UI was criticized by some for being outdated, a mix of old and new styles, didn't fit well with new OS/app styles, etc. It was crap. So they update the UI and it's still crap... for other users. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#308

Post by mzajc »

elorant wrote: post #292
mfru wrote: post #243

Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox. Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.

Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update. There are menu options everywhere, two ribbons on the top, a hamburger menu on the right and another on the left. For a long time you opened Thunderbird and it didn't default on the last message that you received but somewhere in the middle of the heap.

> Apart from the UI which is crap since their last major update

But when they updated the UI, they

- Added options to use to make it very close to the old layout

- Set those options for you if you had it customized like that in the previous version

Which is IMHO much better than how Mozilla handled the redesign - you can get the old style in a GitHub repo thanklessly maintained by one person[0], enable userchrome support in about:config (until they decide to take it away one day!), and enable compact mode (also gated behind about:config and called "Compact (not supported)". Oh, and remember to update the userchrome every few updates because they keep breaking it.

That's the difference between user-centric and not user-centric.

[0]: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#309

Post by Orygin »

account42 wrote: post #260
Orygin wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are burning dev time on features barely anyone asked Got a source for that? HackerNews is *not* representative of the average browser user.

The average browser user isn't using Firefox and won't be any time soon.

If you don't add features that the average user might want, then yeah there won't be any more new users.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#310

Post by jeppester »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #257
jeppester wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what sort of user testing made them decide that what Firefox users really need is a chat bot in the site bar. Isn't a chat bot in a tab good enough? If it wasn't because I find myself using the AI-sidebar all the time I would probably have shared your opinion. I guess it's just quite convenient to have it separated from the "regular" tabs and their history.

Could you please describe your use-case? How do you use it? How do you make use of it? I use Claude code, so I understand that paradigm; I don't grok this though. Is it any different then going to a web page i.e. gemini.google.com and typing your query there? Could this side bar have been a "search bar" at the top? Now that I say it out lou, adding them to the 'search providers' isn't a bad idea. Generally speaking I…

I always have my browser open, so having it just one click away and not interrupting with whatever else the browser is showing feels convenient.

I'm using linux, so there are no official desktop apps I could use instead. Had there been, perhaps I'd have had a different opinion about the AI sidebar.

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