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Disable AI in Firefox

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Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#111

Post by Kwpolska »

mingus88 wrote: post #86
iberator wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox focus

I use focus daily, but it’s not a daily driver. It doesn’t to tabs, and links that the site forces to open in a new tab often don’t work. It also doesn’t do JS well by design. I use Firefox focus for throw away links I come across, but for everything else I need a full browser

You can’t open a new tab yourself, but you can open it by long-pressing a link.

If you’re running in a Custom Tab on Android, you need to switch to the full Focus if multiple tabs are involved.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#112

Post by arcanemachiner »

mikae1 wrote: post #102
lucideer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm solely relying on DuckDuckGo I've been fully on DDG for years but becoming slowly skeptical & looking for alternatives. 1. They're leaning heavily into "responsible AI", much like Mozilla 2. Might be just me but I feel like their algorithm became significantly worse recently. Over the years they've gone from being worse than Google in the early days to steadily improving & overtaking Google on quality (I made h…

https://startpage.com is a Google proxy instead of a Bing proxy (like DDG).

Pretty sure startpage sold out years ago...

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#113

Post by sdairs »

array_key_first wrote: post #78
sdairs wrote: post #5

I've used Firefox for 15 years and I really don't want to use Chrome. Can Mozilla just, like, make a good browser?

Yes, because as we all know, Google would never shove AI or ads in your face. I disagree with Mozilla here, too - but you can't cast Chrome as a magic spell. Chrome sucks ass. Google sucks ass. It's trivial to suck less ass than Google.

Chrome does suck ass, hence why I use Firefox and said I don't want to use Chrome, lol. But I want Firefox to be a good browser in its own right, not just "not Chrome". Firefox is just about over the "acceptable" line for me, as a power user for 15+ years (and under that line for most normal users) so I continue to use it, but they're neglecting it in favor of these useless AI features.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#115

Post by rudedogg »

Barrin92 wrote: post #98
rudedogg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is admirable that they even have a half-decent browser, but to compete at the top you need soooo much money and motivation. I’m guessing Ladybird will prove you wrong in due time

Modern web browsers are in the range of 30 million LOC, probably 50% of that is just pure implementation of web platform standards and engine work. Do you just need to advertise stuff among content creators these days with common sense going out of the window? It'll take them a decade to catch up without any engineering funding at the level that Apple/Google/Mozilla have.

> Do you just need to advertise stuff among content creators these days with common sense going out of the window?

I’m not a content creator and I don’t really care about Ladybird. I use Safari.

I’m just pointing out that browsers have decades of legacy cruft from mis-steps deciding what the web even should be and someone smart can carve out a path to covering 90% of use cases in 10% of the effort and code. And there are the huge organizational costs Google and others pay that a small organization doesn’t have to.

Your argument is the same as looking at a large company (say Microsoft) and saying no one can compete without trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of engineers. Ladybird has the benefit of hindsight, as well as a non-idiotic structure (I assume).

The defeatism among engineers is sad

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#116

Post by wobfan »

rudedogg wrote: post #70
bitpush wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla could have had the no-nonsense, high performance browser backend that everyone uses to build their own browsers I agree with the sentiment, but you underestimate the level of engineering, coordination, design work, testing it is to do this. It is admirable that they even have a half-decent browser, but to compete at the top you need soooo much money and motivation.

> It is admirable that they even have a half-decent browser, but to compete at the top you need soooo much money and motivation. I’m guessing Ladybird will prove you wrong in due time

Ladybird will be a Firefox alternative, nothing more. It can't be, by definition. People are not using Chrome, Edge or Safari because they're great browsers. They use it because it's preinstalled and good enough. They don't care, and they won't care in a future where Ladybird is a thing.

Ask 60% of their (Chrome, Edge, Safari) userbase, and they won't even be able to tell you what their browser is called.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#117

Post by username135 »

roscas wrote: post #105

Still, don't forget to install uBlock Origin on Firefox. If you don't have a Pi-hole, considerer installing one. If you use Windows (or android/ios/macos), there is no way MicroDollar won't know what you do or go, even if you have a VPN it still goes around the VPN. But if you use Linux, install OpenSnitch so you can control some other nasty connections.

Can you elaborate on what you're talking about regarding microdollar? Or provide some more information about your claim?

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#118

Post by Barrin92 »

rudedogg wrote: post #115
Barrin92 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern web browsers are in the range of 30 million LOC, probably 50% of that is just pure implementation of web platform standards and engine work. Do you just need to advertise stuff among content creators these days with common sense going out of the window? It'll take them a decade to catch up without any engineering funding at the level that Apple/Google/Mozilla have.

> Do you just need to advertise stuff among content creators these days with common sense going out of the window? I’m not a content creator and I don’t really care about Ladybird. I use Safari. I’m just pointing out that browsers have decades of legacy cruft from mis-steps deciding what the web even should be and someone smart can carve out a path to covering 90% of use cases in 10% of the effort and code. And there…

It's not defeatism at all. I think it's just important to acknowledge that a browser, or software at the scale of Microsoft is real work, these are objectively gigantic engineering efforts and not all of the people at those firms are stupid.

If you're really smart and you say "I can do it with half or a quarter of the resources with hindsight", sure I might give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you're going to claim you can do it with 0.1% of the resources in a volunteer Discord server effort, no. Not because I wouldn't be happy if that was possible, but because that's not how the world works. Linux is being able to compete with Microsoft because there are now large billion dollar companies like RedHat, Steam and others investing into the development. It takes real money and developer time.

And that's the second point, Mozilla has to make these compromises because they are one of the few companies that actually maintains an independent software project at this scale. And if any other competitor ever wants to get there, they'll need to answer these funding questions too. Even if they're ten times as clever, they'll still need tens or hundreds of millions.

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#119

Post by yoavm »

latexr wrote: post #87
yoavm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! The last time I used a Mac was many years ago, so I'm not sure what would you do with AppleScript in the browser. What are some example use cases?

Just so we’re on the same page, you use AppleScript outside the browser, but it interacts with the browser. Some basic use cases: - Change to first browser tab whose URL or title matches . - Close every browser tab matching . - Grab all your tabs and backup their URLs to a file. - Join all tabs from all windows into a single window. - Execute JavaScript on a page and get results back. - Grab the URL of the current ta…

Got it. Last time I attempted to do this kind of things, I used TabFS (https://github.com/osnr/TabFS). I think you might like it!

Re: Disable AI in Firefox

#120

Post by yoavm »

eviks wrote: post #108
yoavm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they make a pretty good browser. It is performant, supports blocking ads easily, standard compatible, customizable and recently even added support for vertical tabs. What are you missing?

It's poorly customizable, you can't even change keyboard shortcuts (extensions can't do it globally either). Vivaldi is customizable.

I was mainly thinking about userChrome.css changes, which allow you to more or less rebuild the whole UI with code. Can't think of many other browsers that let you do that.
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