Gotta say I'm super annoyed by getting spoon-fed AI popups in every piece of software I'm using. How about fixing bugs and optimizing mem and perf? Whatever happened to caring for end users. Empathy is aparently dead in the era of VC capital.
Disable AI in Firefox
141–150 of 161 posts
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> I'd rather see slower development if it was moving in the right direction. 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 underesti…
> What makes you think it'd happen if full-time employees at Firefox cant do it?
The full-time engineers are given work to do by incompetent Mozilla management. It's the management that are driving Mozilla into the ground and setting baffling goals. Remove the management and have work based on features that users want, then you can see Firefox develop in the right direction.
As an example of how to organise this, you could have a bounty system for feature requests. Users define a feature they want to see and in negotiation with developers set acceptance criteria for when it's delivered. Users can then assign money as an incentive to complete the feature request. In this way, users can ensure they support developers to deliver the features they want to see.
> Browser is extremely complex. HN is underestimating how much work goes into making a browser.
Nobody is underestimating this. Firefox is already a mature product that can serve a wide range of user needs. What it lacks is effective leadership. I could live with slower development if the development it had was based around features that users most wanted. I don't need Firefox to support every web feature under the sun, the features it already supports is good enough for the vast majority of websites. Letting the users call the shots about it's future direction will help to guard against irrelevancy.
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#143Earlier 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…
For now you can still try noai.duckduckgo.com - not sure it will stay, but it still works.
This is great to avoid ai but doesn't solve the index quality decline.
(though it might be a case of there simply being no good search anymore)
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#144Earlier 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
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.
I've never had Chrome preinstalled. I use it because it seems to me a great browser despite some annoyances. I think that goes for most Windows users.
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd rather see slower development if it was moving in the right direction. 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 underesti…
> What makes you think it'd happen if full-time employees at Firefox cant do it? The full-time engineers are given work to do by incompetent Mozilla management. It's the management that are driving Mozilla into the ground and setting baffling goals. Remove the management and have work based on features that users want, then you can see Firefox develop in the right direction. As an example of how to organise this, you…
> As an example of how to organise this, you could have a bounty system for feature requests. Users define a feature they want to see and in negotiation with developers set acceptance criteria for when it's delivered. Users can then assign money as an incentive to complete the feature request. In this way, users can ensure they support developers to deliver the features they want to see.
Could you actually provide any examples of large-scale software projects working this way, and not the usual way with coordination being done by special people or w/o any (e.g., by the devs)
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can you do vertical tabs in userChrome.css? Add tab groups/stacks/side-by-side views/workspaces/custom tab context menus?
(not to diminish the css, it's great for theming and correcting the many usability mistakes in browser defaults, and wish all the browsers used that)
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#147"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…
Mozilla's default setting is true. This is the tired, old "opt-out" tactic 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
Its easier to just go to a bfirefox rowser flavor that has better defaults like librewolf or maybe zen browser.
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can you do vertical tabs in userChrome.css? Add tab groups/stacks/side-by-side views/workspaces/custom tab context menus? (not to diminish the css, it's great for theming and correcting the many usability mistakes in browser defaults, and wish all the browsers used that)
Vertical tabs are a native feature of Firefox for a few months now, and before that they were supported with an extension. userChrome.css was (then) used for hiding the original tabs.
I'm not sure what you mean with the context menus, but Web Extensions can add things to context menus.
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#149"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…
It's already not true. I had browser.ml.enable and browser.ml.chat.enabled set to false but I was still getting an option to ask an AI Chatbot about stuff in my right-click context menu. I had to also set browser.ml.chat.menu to false.
Also pick a lane mozilla. Either use "enable" or "enabled", don't use both.
Re: Disable AI in Firefox
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What makes you think it'd happen if full-time employees at Firefox cant do it? The full-time engineers are given work to do by incompetent Mozilla management. It's the management that are driving Mozilla into the ground and setting baffling goals. Remove the management and have work based on features that users want, then you can see Firefox develop in the right direction. As an example of how to organise this, you…
> As an example of how to organise this, you could have a bounty system for feature requests. Users define a feature they want to see and in negotiation with developers set acceptance criteria for when it's delivered. Users can then assign money as an incentive to complete the feature request. In this way, users can ensure they support developers to deliver the features they want to see. Could you actually provide an…
Large scale? No. However, it has been done before. For example, for open source Amiga development work...