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Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

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Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#161

Post by nwenzel »

Pacabel wrote: post #145
phlsa wrote: post #83

Hi, I'm one of the people who worked on this and I wanted to provide a little background and a few clarifications. Lightspeed is currently not a product. It's a collection of sketches and thoughts. It is also NOT the next version of Firefox. While some ideas might find their way into mainline Firefox at some point, many of the assumptions on which Lightspeed is based are the exact opposites of Firefox core values (e.…

Based on the comments here and those that appear under the article, people in general are not at all impressed by these ideas. I don't think the hatred is as universal as it is for, say, Australis, but it's close enough that it should be discomforting. What is your response to this? Do you think it's right to continue work on a project that the majority of people dislike for a variety of very legitimate reasons?

"Do you think it's right to continue work on a project that the majority of people dislike for a variety of very legitimate reasons?"

Almost certainly yes. How else can you find new, previously unknown products and ideas of value? Don't you ever just brainstorm crazy ideas because you don't know where an idea will take you? You know... think different... here's to the crazy one's.

Didn't sama just publish a blog post about that: http://blog.samaltman.com/stupid-apps-and-changing-the-world

Also, "majority of people" might need to be edited to say "majority of a subset of people who are HN readers/commenters and who are so interested in browsers that they watch nearly 10 minutes of video on the topic."

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#162

Post by frik »

Someone1234 wrote: post #146
ckluis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search operators are super powerful and awesome to use in google - providing a way to use those from the browser itself can help provide a distraction free environment, but also opens up new possibilities: bm:“tag" - show list of all bookmarks with that tag Just a thought.

Windows tried to do that with their search (in Vista, 7, and 8). It has been a disaster. Hidden functionality is a UI and UX anti-pattern. How do people know to type "bm:" for Bookmarks? Google? Is a Google search now part of the UI's workflow? Or will people simply stop using Bookmarks because it is so obscure (you're seeing this with mobile browsers, Bookmarks are hidden so go unutilised). Ditto with Windows. In Wi…

Windows Vista had the advanced search bar, the UI offered similar search options that were available in Windows (95-XP).

Vista advanced search: http://www.mydigitallife.info/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/vis...

Win95: http://toastytech.com/guis/win95find.png ; WinXP: http://www.adammathes.com/academic/search-engines/desktop/xp... ; Win2k: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/features/sea...

The major difference was that Vista (Longhorn) originally was meant to be powered by WinFS and Vista shipped just with Windows Search (the indexing service that was also available for WinXP as "Desktop Search").

For some unknown reasons the advanced search bar is absent in Windows 7+.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#163

Post by frik »

chc wrote: post #135
sdrothrock wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frequent usage should just percolate autocomplete suggestions to the top. This design doesn't really need them, and tbh I've barely used bookmarks in any browser in a long time. BECAUSE address bars autocomplete sites I frequently go to, the bookmarks end up being a way to store sites that I go to /infrequently/ and use for reference or only check up on every few months.

That's the same way I use bookmarks. I won't bookmark, say, Hacker News, but I will bookmark a recipe site that I know I'll want to refer to for ideas sometime down the road.

Recipes are static text, you could just save the page (as HTML) on your device. (URLs change all the time, and website vanish) Later, the file can be found with Windows search / Spotlight.

I bookmark more dynamic pages, e.g. news articles with comments that will be around for some longer period.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#164

Post by Excavator »

MarkMc wrote: post #156

I wonder if natural language processing could remove the need for a dedicated settings page. For example, just type "Change search engine" or "use this page as my homepage" or "search my bookmarks for obama" and the amazebar shows the appropriate widget or result. In fact, I think that Siri-fication could be a huge step for a vast number of applications. I develop an accounting app and it would be a huge benefit to m…

There was the Ubiquity project¹ by Mozilla Labs which was officially discontinued but still lives on as a community project².

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_%28Firefox%29

2: https://bitbucket.org/satyr/ubiquity

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#165

Post by frik »

gsnedders wrote: post #154
asadotzler wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they fail? What forced them to go back? What could have been done differently in the implementation to have resulted in a different outcome.

> Why did they fail? What forced them to go back Users, in both cases. (I've not been privy to the data in a long time and never for Opium, but I suspect the uninstallation surveys showed it quite clearly from what was said.) The original decision to drop it was based on telemetry showing the majority of users never touching bookmarks. > What could have been done differently in the implementation to have resulted in…

> The original decision to drop it was based on telemetry showing the majority of users never touching bookmarks.

Advanced users often deactivate telemetry (for privacy reasons). So you the telemetry statistics cover the normal users. For example: Microsoft made the same mistake and trusted their telemetry statistics too much. That's why they made (in retrospect) stupid and rather unpopular decisions in their recent products.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#166

Post by nitrogen »

frik wrote: post #163
chc wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same way I use bookmarks. I won't bookmark, say, Hacker News, but I will bookmark a recipe site that I know I'll want to refer to for ideas sometime down the road.

Recipes are static text, you could just save the page (as HTML) on your device. (URLs change all the time, and website vanish) Later, the file can be found with Windows search / Spotlight. I bookmark more dynamic pages, e.g. news articles with comments that will be around for some longer period.

A simpler UI (easy as or easier than bookmarks) for saving a page for offline viewing might help with this.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#167

Post by 21echoes »

Pacabel wrote: post #145
phlsa wrote: post #83

Hi, I'm one of the people who worked on this and I wanted to provide a little background and a few clarifications. Lightspeed is currently not a product. It's a collection of sketches and thoughts. It is also NOT the next version of Firefox. While some ideas might find their way into mainline Firefox at some point, many of the assumptions on which Lightspeed is based are the exact opposites of Firefox core values (e.…

Based on the comments here and those that appear under the article, people in general are not at all impressed by these ideas. I don't think the hatred is as universal as it is for, say, Australis, but it's close enough that it should be discomforting. What is your response to this? Do you think it's right to continue work on a project that the majority of people dislike for a variety of very legitimate reasons?

i just read the comments here on HN for ~10 minutes and i'd say most all were positive and in the brainstorming spirit. what do you mean "hatred"??

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#168

Post by Excavator »

nitrogen wrote: post #166
frik wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes are static text, you could just save the page (as HTML) on your device. (URLs change all the time, and website vanish) Later, the file can be found with Windows search / Spotlight. I bookmark more dynamic pages, e.g. news articles with comments that will be around for some longer period.

A simpler UI (easy as or easier than bookmarks) for saving a page for offline viewing might help with this.

Like Reader Mode¹ in Firefox for Android? It's also planned² for the desktop version.

1: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-use-reader-mode

2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558882

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#169

Post by nnethercote »

jonstewart wrote: post #105
mkohlmyr wrote: post #73

I was surprised to see this rise on the front page. Am I the only one who didn't get excited at all by this? When I see a post titled "a browser experiment" from mozilla.org I tend to think I'm going to get more than some wireframes and talk about "busybees". It will be an experiment once some (any) of it has been built. In any case from what I did see in the video I would say: 1) Bookmarks are broken, but removing t…

Concur about use of the word "experiment". I started watching this last night, then realized it was just a dude talking about some crude drawings. I'd love to switch back to Firefox. Make it as fast and as stable as Chrome, and I will. Until then, Firefox should go back to being called Mozilla...

When was the last time you tried Firefox? Its performance has improved a lot lately. Many people find that it is as good or better than Chrome in that regard, though it depends on the particular workload.

If you do try switching back, please use the "Reset Firefox" feature if you have an old profile hanging around. This resets the profile, while preserving your history, bookmarks, passwords, etc., and it can fix lots of weird problems that older profiles tend to suffer from. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi... has more details.

Re: Lightspeed – A Browser Experiment

#170

Post by nnethercote »

ejr wrote: post #11

I had a flashback to the days of web portals. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like that they're trying something because complacency is never a good thing. You have to try things to see if they work. I think the biggest allure of this is that there are people with simple needs that want their technology to "just work" as they said. I also agree with owlish's comment in that there are some quirks that need rapid…

> I like that they're trying something because complacency is never a good thing. You have to try things to see if they work.

That's an admirable way of looking at things. I wish more people were as open-minded about software changes.

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