Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

manualdousuario.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 782 posts

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#721

Post by berkes »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #162
berkes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I have used that feature for a few weeks now and find it utterly useless. Partly because it is squished. But mostly because it offers no value over just having a tab open with Claude (or in my case Mistral). The extra buttons (summarize) and integration (context menu) hardly ever work (pages and selections are often too large for gpt, copil…

Being able to e.g. hook up Claude Code to any webpage would be killer for both web development and task automation.

I already do this via docker desktop MCPs in which I run a.o. Playwright¹.

Zed and VS code can now drive a browser. E.g. to perform tasks like "run the site on a local server and verify that you see the counter increase when you click this new plus-button"

¹https://hub.docker.com/mcp/server/playwright/overview

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#722

Post by berkes »

chrisweekly wrote: post #107
berkes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I have used that feature for a few weeks now and find it utterly useless. Partly because it is squished. But mostly because it offers no value over just having a tab open with Claude (or in my case Mistral). The extra buttons (summarize) and integration (context menu) hardly ever work (pages and selections are often too large for gpt, copil…

I think that's exactly what people are doing w the Playwright MCP...

It's indeed exactly what I do.

And I think Firefox should step up and become a better alternative to playwright. One geared at developers with tools like profiling, dom-manipulation (basically the Developer Console) assertions, visual comparison etc. Or (and?) one geared towards normal browsing and interacting with webapps.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#723

Post by berkes »

jy14898 wrote: post #109
berkes wrote: post #50

I don't want AI in Firefox. For one, because it breaks the Unix philosophy of "doing one thing and doing that well". In that vein, I do want Firefox to develop/allow/improve an interface so that machines, amongst which AI-MCPs, can drive my firefox. And do so safely, secure, contained, etc. So that my AI agent can e.g. open a Firefox tab and do things there on my behalf. Without me being afraid it nukes all my bookma…

I don't think you can apply Unix philosophy to a (GUI) web browser, you don't use it compositionally.

Not literally. But in spirit.

I don't want my web browser to be a mediocre PDF reader. I want my good and perfected PDF reader to be a PDF reader. I don't want my web browser to be a Web development IDE. I want a specialised (version of) a browser with all the developer tools and one that lacks all these features is lighter, safer and simpler for browsing. I don't want an FTP client in my web browser (I don't want one anywere lol). Firefox was extracted from Mozilla back in the days exactly because Mozilla had become a browser that was bloated and crammed full of features that were unpolished or just subpar. Firefox saved Mozilla and fought back by being lean, fast, and terribly focused at doing one thing and doing talhat well.

I want a browser that's good and forever improving in letting me browse the web and run and use web-apps.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#724

Post by a_t48 »

danudey wrote: post #517
a_t48 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini in GCP for SQL queries is mildly useful, as I’m rusty and forget how to write but generally know enough not to run a query that mutates the db.

"How do I get a list of every resource in a project" "How do I change the resource limits for CPU core count" Beyond that I've never used Gemini for any actual purpose.

Yeah, basically.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#725

Post by smarnach »

moffkalast wrote: post #632
notepad0x90 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also need to integrate with windows/enterprise setups better, that's one of the main reasons people use chrome based browsers.

You'd think so, you'd really fucking think so, but Firefox is genuinely by far the slowest on Linux. On Windows it's closest to Chrome.

Are you using the Ubuntu Snap to train Firefox? If so, you can switch to the native Debian packages released directly by Mozilla. They don't do that sandboxing stuff, and they are a lot faster. I don't notice any speed difference between Chromium und Firefox even on a Raspberry Pi.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#726

Post by kure256 »

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.

More and more people now start with an AI assistant instead of traditional browsing — not because they love AI everywhere, but because it’s simply faster than navigating websites. The shift is already visible: assistants can surface structured information directly, and they’re beginning to prioritize citations, so sources that are clear and machine-readable get more visibility.

If the web doesn’t adapt, a lot of high-quality content will slowly disappear from the “AI layer” of discovery.

We’re trying to document this shift here: https://github.com/ai-first-guides/first.ai/blob/main/docs/i...

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#727

Post by tsoukase »

AI in an open source project will be horrible. Proprietary AI services backed by billions, hiring top programming, back/front/ui talent lead by ambitious dreamers are already problematic at most limited. A bunch of loose free lancers in their night time are not the best team to prepare a responsible and competitive AI gateway.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#728

Post by rldjbpin »

AI or not, feels like the focus in the past few years for the browser has been to do catch-up on the trendy feature rather than improving the core experiences.

TBF some of these features are also unique and something i cherish when browsing the web (e.g. container tabs). however, the devs must ask why every "new" browser is just a chromium fork in the end.

there should be a try to pivot to the core experience than feature parity to see if it actually brings more people over.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#729

Post by cncjchsue7 »

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 want it. They just need to figure out the ux. Chat ain't it. I'd love voice chat to access the web.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#730

Post by simianparrot »

mattthebaker wrote: post #442
simianparrot wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I try Firefox it’s slower than Chrome or Safari. Every time. And since that never seems to improve, I suspect that’s why its market share keeps dropping because all the fluff doesn’t matter if the core feature is just worse.

Personally, I don't really see the value proposition in being able to load and serve you ads faster, compared to a browser with a proper ad blocker.

I don't know what you mean; uBlock Origin Lite blocks every ad on any page I visit in Safari and Chrome, even YouTube ads. Safari also blocks tracker cookies by default, and is significantly faster than Firefox in my use.
Post reply on HN