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This is nice to know but in future versions of Firefox that single config switch (browser.ml.enable) will both change names and split into multiple sub-switches, most likely appearing in different pages of about:config.
These sub-switches will then not remain consistent.
Bank on it.
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Step 1: Fork Firefox Step 2: ?? Step 3: Profit Sometimes HN commenters are so funny.
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What makes you think it'd happen if full-time employees at Firefox cant do it? We can poop on the leadership over at Mozilla, but there are FTEs getting paid to work on Firefox.
You cant just replace with few people running passion project on weekends, and even get the remote success Firefox has.
Browser is extremely complex. HN is underestimating how much work goes into making a browser.
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> 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
It'll be a usable product, but it will be extremely extremely niche, until the dev burns out or just quit it.
I hope I'm wrong, but a browser is a XXL type project and needs proper funding (means = there should be a reason for it to exist, not altruistic as lets have an alternate because reasons ..)
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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…
Those are browser automation tasks. Most of them can be done with Playwright/Puppeteer/Selenium. I don't see why a browser should have to support AppleScript specifically. The Chrome DevTools Protocol and WebDriver BiDi are the standard protocols for interacting with browsers programmatically. Firefox supports WebDriver BiDi. Just use any tool that supports it, or talk to it directly. Maybe AppleScript can do that, I…
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Sure. KHTML wasn’t embeddable outside KDE either until Apple made that happen.
That was always KHTML's goal, but Apple saw value in it for their business plan, just like it saw value in FreeBSD to reuse as their OS's base.
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That was the original intent. They only recently added the "chatbot-y" kind of stuff since the infra is all already there. The main uses were for their translation tools and PDF alt-text generation (which I believe disabling ML will disable as they rely on the on-device transformer tools to do).
I disabled browser.ml.enable and local translation was still working. In my case, that's all I need, but it looks like it still allows on-device transformers.
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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…
Just wait until someone has the bright idea to expose Apple Events over an MCP server or something. Then everyone will be scrambling to integrate applescript into their applications so they can cash in on the computer-use model craze.
You don't even need an mcp server. Claude Code can just run osascript. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44492369
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Just wait until someone has the bright idea to expose Apple Events over an MCP server or something. Then everyone will be scrambling to integrate applescript into their applications so they can cash in on the computer-use model craze.
I'm really surprised no one has done this. You don't even need an mcp server. Claude Code can just run osascript. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44492369
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Probably because they don't want to take on that maintenance burden. Even just letting someone do that and merging it in is opening up a whooooole can of worms.
Then they should just say so and close the open issues, instead of letting them linger for literal decades and have people waste time on them then ignore them. That’s just bad stewardship. Anyway, the reasons are irrelevant and I’m frankly tired of explaining this to Firefox defenders. Someone asked “what about Firefox are you missing” and I responded with what it’s missing for me . Plugging your ears and coming up w…
As a user, I do not want nor need my browser to support AppleScript. AppleScript is something that should not exist. In somewhat typical apple fashion, it's some NIH platform-specific bullshit that nobody really cares about and is only half-assed supported even on it's native platform. The only way to deter Apple from creating these sisyphus-ian pieces of software is to just stop supporting them and force their hand to use something less bespoke. Although, Apple is not the only culprit of this - nor are they even the worst about it.
If I had my way, Mantle would not exist, iMessage would not exist, and some others. We would live in a perfect utopia and then we'd all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
"If you’d like to turn these features off, open about:config in the Firefox address bar, search for browser.ml.enable, set it to false, and that should disable everything." This is nice to know but in future versions of Firefox that single config switch (browser.ml.enable) will both change names and split into multiple sub-switches, most likely appearing in different pages of about:config. These sub-switches will the…
Almost no one changes defaults, according to the experts
It's perverse to think about:config is doing favours for anyone except Mozilla and its business partners
Otherwise the defaults would be false, i.e., opt-in