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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

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Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#571

Post by geooff_ »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

I'm looking for AI features in a few places, one example is a git client that can draft commit Summary and Descriptions. This should be a very simple task and could use a simple on-device model. It feels like AI features are a firehose though. You either get none and a very 2018 product experience or a complete rework of everything "designed for agents".

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#572

Post by raffael_de »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

It's been a habit of mine for more than a decade to deactivate any feature with "smart" in its name by default. I want my machines to be predictable and stupid.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#574

Post by AlienRobot »

noisy_boy wrote: post #523
Workaccount2 wrote: post #339

Firefox somehow fell into the hole of feature-pack in an effort to save itself. Firefox instead desperately needs to focus on making it a high performance browser that people enjoy using for..... browsing . They can start with fixing the spell check, which is hilariously awful for 2008. And we are in 2025. Signed, a 20 year user.

They can add features that help with browsing. E.g. they can steal the workspaces idea from Vivaldi. Or the side by side split window idea which is great for comparisons. Or adding a light weight mode which is somewhere between full fledged and text reader modes. There are so many improvements that can make the browsing experience significantly better. I wish they picked at least some of these things instead of stuff…

They can steal Workspaces from Vivaldi.

Or they can steal vertical tabs from Vivaldi.

Or they can steal the built-in RSS client form Vivaldi.

Or they can steal the ability to save sessions from Vivaldi.

Or they can steal the built-in notes from Vivaldi.

Or they can steal the tab stacking from Vivaldi.

Or they can steal the profile switching from Vivaldi.

Honest question. What could Vivaldi "steal" from Firefox?

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#576

Post by plorg »

tadfisher wrote: post #560
PaulHoule wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem in the software industry today that is bigger than AI, probably the greatest controversy in software marketing. Part of the model of products like Adobe's Creative Suite [1] is that they are always adding new features -- and if you want people to keep renewing their subscription you want them to know about new features so they feel like they are getting more out of their product. Trouble is using a pro…

Bell icon in corner. Colored dot on bell. No need to overthink the UX on this beyond what color to make the dot.

Can I dismiss that distracting little pip without having to click through a tutorial for every new feature? Can I just turn this off?

This is especially irritating when, say, you set up a new phone and the app treats you as if you've never used it before.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#577

Post by rkomorn »

AlienRobot wrote: post #574
noisy_boy wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can add features that help with browsing. E.g. they can steal the workspaces idea from Vivaldi. Or the side by side split window idea which is great for comparisons. Or adding a light weight mode which is somewhere between full fledged and text reader modes. There are so many improvements that can make the browsing experience significantly better. I wish they picked at least some of these things instead of stuff…

They can steal Workspaces from Vivaldi. Or they can steal vertical tabs from Vivaldi. Or they can steal the built-in RSS client form Vivaldi. Or they can steal the ability to save sessions from Vivaldi. Or they can steal the built-in notes from Vivaldi. Or they can steal the tab stacking from Vivaldi. Or they can steal the profile switching from Vivaldi. Honest question. What could Vivaldi "steal" from Firefox?

> Honest question. What could Vivaldi "steal" from Firefox?

Not being so weirdly buggy on Windows. It's my main browser but man does it have odd behaviors that need restarts occasionally.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#578

Post by thesuitonym »

tadfisher wrote: post #564
thesuitonym wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Wave didn't just go away, it became Google Docs.

Nope! Docs was an acquisition. Google Wave became Apache Wave, where software goes to die.

Sorry, I didn't mean it actually got renamed, just that all the collaboration junk that people did in Wave still can be done almost exactly the same in Google Docs, with the added benefit that people actually know what it is and how to use it.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#579

Post by mattmaroon »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

It’s great in photo shop. Removing a background has never been easier.

There are certainly lots of great use cases, the problem is everyone is shoving it everywhere because they don’t want to feel behind the times and for every great use case there are several times where it accomplishes nothing but makes the UI worse.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#580

Post by glenstein »

rollcat wrote: post #218
phantasmish wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have loved to see them leverage their browser to make a distributed social network, back when they had enough market share to attempt such a thing. An open slack-alike also seems like a good fit for them. Alas, they have tons of cash but little capacity to do anything useful.

Mozilla has started so many incredibly ambitious projects: Firefox OS, Rust, Servo/Stylo, Quantum... A slack-alike would at best give them a +1 against killedbygoogle.com. Yep, a federated social network is indeed an ambitious problem, perhaps Mozilla would've been well-suited to tackle it. The problem is not the tech or scope, but timing. 15 years ago everyone was happy to be on FB / Twitter. 10 years ago, Microsoft…

Rust/Servo/Quantum culminated in tangible benefits that reflect successfully played out projects from which Firefox reaped major rewards. And FireFox OS, perhaps more than any other, is something I wish we had right now, because if they never gave up on it and we had a 10+ year old alternative mobile OS waiting for its moment, it could have been well positioned in a moment like this one where Android is increasingly betraying the trust of its developers. I think the Yahoo/Mozilla partnership, quickly forgotten, could have been meaningful if there was good vision.

Yahoo had a major collection of properties that still had relevance, and core services like email, search and maps that I remember Matt Yglesias (of all people) insisting would have been the keys to the success of a FirefoxOS. Yahoo had the infrastructure, but no vision and a bad brand, and Mozilla was the inverse. An interesting what-if that unfortunately amounted to nothing.

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