Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly

blog.mozilla.org

84 pointssharpshadow78 comments

This post is very thin on details. A better source is in the Firefox Nightly News blog post titled “Experimenting with AI services in Nightly”. [1] This is currently opt-in.

Some excerpts from that post [1]:

> To start, this experiment will only be available to Nightly users, and the AI functionality will be entirely optional. It’s there in case it’s helpful, but it is not built into any core functionality.

> In the first experiment that you can try out this week, you will be able to:

> Add a chatbot of your choice to the sidebar, so you can quickly access it as you browse.

> Select and send text from webpages to.

> Summarize the excerpt and make it easier to scan and understand at a glance.

> Simplify language. We find this feature handy for answering the typical kids’ “why” questions.

> Ask the chatbot to test your knowledge and memory of the excerpt.

> To activate the experience:

> Go to Settings > Nightly Experiments and turn the AI Chatbot Integration experiment on.

> Choose your preferred chatbot from this list of providers: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, Le Chat Mistral

> Then, as you browse, select any text, right-click it, and choose the Ask chatbot option to send the text, page title, and prompt to your provider.

[1]: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/06/24/experimenting-wi...

> Add a chatbot of your choice to the sidebar, so you can quickly access it as you browse.

Hey Mozilla, while you're working on putting things of my choice in the sidebar, how about letting me have my browser tabs over there without a bunch of jumping through userchrome hoops to hide the top tab bar?

I'm not going to complain about them adding whatever features they want... so long as they implement first the things that people have been asking for years.

Side tabs, proper tab groups, they said these features are coming "this year". But how come it takes them longer to do these things over AI which no one really asked for.

Seriously, proper tab management can't be such a gargatuan task that they can't get it out of the way faster than AI implementations.

It just boggles my mind that they haven't done it already. More niche browsers had official sidebar tabs ages ago, and so have Firefox add-ons (but as mentioned it's become a huge pain to set this up properly). But beaten to the punch by Edge?

Someone must have made a decision 10-15 years ago that this was a "power user" feature and with their sliding market share it wasn't worth chasing that small segment of users. But then who are they trying to get as new users?

Or maybe they figured having add-ons like Tree Style Tabs was sufficient, and don't care that no normal person will be able to hide the top tab bar and set it up as a proper UI. But again, less customizable than Edge isn't a great look.

That's being worked on too! https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re...

Yay! Thanks for the link.

Another important part from the article you linked:

> Nightly can be configured by advanced testers to use custom prompts and any compatible chatbot, such as llamafile (discord), which runs on-device open models, including open-source ones.

> To start, this experiment will only be available to Nightly users, and the AI functionality will be entirely optional.

There are at least two ways of reading the scope of the initial qualifier, but, given Mozilla's fondness for trying to force certain features they like on users (cough Pocket cough Mr. Robot cough), I don't like that "the AI functionality will be entirely optional" is preceded by "to start."

I like these features.

Man, I was actually kind of happy about Mozilla's seemingly-measured response to the AI hype, and mostly running local models to perform actually useful tasks (translation, alt text generation).

But I really don't think cramming a bunch of proprietary online services like ChatGPT counts as "intentional and methodical". It comes across more like a "we need AI!!!" cry of desperation, throwing principles like privacy in the wind.

How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

Or being able to mark a window as "main" so even if I accidentally close it first, I don't lose all my pinned tabs upon restart? Again, I'm sure many people have burnt their fingers with this long-standing issue.

I have nothing against AI driven stuff but I keep hoping that one day Mozilla will do the basic things first.

> How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

> Or being able to mark a window as "main" so even if I accidentally close it first, I don't lose all my pinned tabs upon restart? Again, I'm sure many people have burnt their fingers with this long-standing issue.

IIRC, Firefox has just about the same built-in session recovery features as the other major browsers. There's also session management extensions as a backup.

>> How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

To be fair, that's what some people said about browser tabs when they first arrived too. I can see the use of having two or more browser tabs displayed in the same browser window as one logical unit, and being able to use the OS to switch between windows with different tabs. Two examples I can think of right now would be HN comments next to the article but in the same tab, or a group of live streaming videos in a grid.

Having the HN comments side by side with the article is an awesome idea! I took the liberty of creating a simple Firefox extension for that. It is still pending approval by AMO, but once that is done, it will be available @ <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/hn-side-by-si...>

There is a divider that you can drag sideways to change the split ratio. Note that it creates an iframe inside the HN comments page, which means some websites (especially high-profile ones, unfortunately) can't load, as their security settings forbid embedding - there is nothing I can do about that, as it's a browser security feature.

In case you prefer a GreaseMonkey user script, I've got you covered too @ <https://pastebin.com/iVVYUUQ6>

Screenshots @ <https://imgur.com/a/2y41J0Z>

Eep, I just learned the AMO approval process is currently backlogged for weeks or even months. The GreaseMonkey user script is identical, though, and you can peruse the source to make sure it does nothing untoward.

Fortunately it's now been approved, so it looks like they cleared that backlog quickly or it was overstated.

Nice!

Thanks for that - the incredulity of other replies made me think that I was asking for something unheard of; another use case is when you want to monitor multiple web pages simultaneously e.g. multiple Jenkins jobs.

Tabbed windows managers never were a thing even for people like us. Tiling windows managers are not mainstream but at least are something we know to exist. A known unknown for many of us. A feature like that in a browser could be nice for people that prefer traditional windows managers but might like to tile tabs in some browser window, maybe not all of them.

When browser tabs came about windows basically was a tabbed window manager if you only used maximized windows since it did not group windows from the same app in the taskbar. Basically tabs, but in the taskbar.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

Exactly. This guy is saying "my windows manager sucks, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it"

But other browsers do this (Vivaldi, Arc has split view) and its great. If the OS does it you have awkward additional spacing between those tabs and additional browser chrome because the browser is unaware of the context you're in - comparing stuff side-by-side.

I'd like an excuse to use Firefox again, but they've just given up on new UI functionality and I'd miss out on a lot by switching away from Arc.

> Exactly. This guy is saying "my windows manager sucks, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it"

Not really - see response to sibling comment.

> I am not talking about general tiling; just selective tiling for browser tabs.

Right, so your windows manager doesn't support selective tiling, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it??!

You seriously haven't seen a program that provides split panes? Never used an IDE that allows you to see multiple files at the same time in the same window, in a grid of panes, side by side?

You're just distracting. My point is this is what a windows manager is for, and you're avoiding to address that. Like someone else said, "You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs."

> You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs.

Because I don't want to manage 4 windows tiled like 4 panes - I want to manage a single window with 4 panes. What happens if I close one of 4? Now I have a gap that an related or unrelated window will fill or it'll be a wasted space - this doesn't happen in case of split panes because the other panes will expand to take the space. I logically group my work in separate windows - so in a split pane setup, once I'm done, I close a single window instead of having to close separate windows one by one. If I have a 4x2 grid in your tiling-WM-is-the-truth world, you expect me to close 8 windows one by one?

> You're just distracting.

Sure, if you lack imagination, everything must be feeling like a distraction.

TLDR

It makes sense for a browser to support this.

I'm not sure how what you describe is not what a tiling WM offers. Except for the "closing main window" thing but can't you just cancel closing with the history menu?

Imagine an IDE that allows you to see multiple files in an X by Y grid - replace "files" with web pages. Is expecting that feature in a browser that far fetched? Or are we resigned to creating multiple windows + tiling WM as the one-true-solution for this usecase?

You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs. My guess is you're unhappy with toolbars being repeated in each tile, is that it? If so, I believe Suckless's striped-down browser is the closest, together with a tiling WM.

If code editors are indicative, yes some power users tend to like a tiling window manager bundled in the app. So you may be right but I think it's out of scope for Firefox which targets the masses and it's definitely off-topic here.

> You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs.

Yes I don't want repeated toolbars because they are waste of space when they are repeated in each window/pane - having to switch browsers isn't the point, the discussion is about what Firefox can do to improve its user's life (even if everyone doesn't expect/need split panes in their browser, some do). Because I don't want to manage 4 windows tiled like 4 panes - I want to manage a single window with 4 panes. What happens if I close one of 4? Now I have a gap that an related or unrelated window will fill or it'll be a wasted space - this doesn't happen in case of split panes because the other panes will expand to take the space. I logically group my work in separate windows - so in a split pane setup, once I'm done, I close a single window instead of closing the separate "pane-like" windows one by one.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

I am not talking about general tiling; just selective tiling for browser tabs.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

By that logic it shouldn't have tabs either, but we generally view those as useful

They surely aren't necessary, though, and many browsers leave that to the WM as well.

Would this work?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs-we/

Firefox has a "Recently closed windows" menu under History, and by default Ctrl+Shift+N reopens the last closed window, if you close it by accident.

You can also Ctrl+click all the tabs you want to save, like the pinned ones in the main window, right click on one of them, select Bookmark tabs, and save them in a bookmark folder. Then if you accidentally close them you can middle click that bookmark folder to reopen all of them at once.

> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs-we/

I already tried this extension - it basically opens new windows and tiles them side by side instead of splitting the current window. It is better than nothing but not really what I'm talking about.

> You can also Ctrl+click all the tabs you want to save, like the pinned ones in the main window, right click on one of them, select Bookmark tabs, and save them in a bookmark folder. Then if you accidentally close them you can middle click that bookmark folder to reopen all of them at once.

That describes my current workaround.

Idk if they exist anymore, but there used to be plugins for this.

Anyone know which about:config-parameters I need to change to disable it?

Yes, here's the exhaustive list:

So instead of reading it properly, you jumped the ship and ask directly for disabling it?

As a way of really saving yourself time or making a statement?

Based on what assumption?

I did read it. And it is a tounge-in-cheek comment with a fair trace of honesty.

I think Firefox is the best option today, but that doesn't mean I trust Mozilla (with "Pocket"-debacle being the supernova of reasons).

I would think Mozilla recently becoming an ad company would be more of a reason not to trust them than the whole Pocket situation.

The current CEO pushed out the person that was supposed to come back from medical leave of cancer to be the CEO. That story never got enough likes on this site though.

Anyway, the board and CEO did shady stuff so who knows what direction they will take Mozilla

I was actually surprised to find out that Firefox has ads on the new tab page. Discovered this when I accidentally forgot to turn off my VPN connection to an US server and Firefox took this as a sign to display ads. You can turn them off manually in the settings but since I never got them in Europe, I'd left the setting on its default value ("Please show me ads").

I think its too shallow.

It doesn't explain anything just a general undefined 'hate' against it.

Do you generally think ai integration is bad?

They split their focus too much chasing all the latest buzz. Then their funds get wasted and they close stuff down having created no additional value.

At least in my opinion, this is a great feature. I'm also waiting for it to allow local agents.

Will be a corner stone of llm integration.

It's not turned on by default (yet)

Or, better yet, the compilation config parameters.

God no.

Focus on a quality product instead of shiny buzz words for once.

It looks like by "AI" they're only referring to LLM-based features. Other AI that I think would be beneficial in a browser would be OCR text in images, image classification and description (maybe optionally censor gore and similar), change detection on websites, good history search.

They already have some features that could be marketed as AI like reader view and local translation.

They specifically call out adding alt text to images in PDFs.

Is it safe to assume that these API calls to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral are costing Mozilla money?

I'm assuming you're going to have to sign in to your account with those services and that this is just an integration, not a free service

I thought that might be the case as well, but didn't see any mention of that in the docs.

Probably no, as they must have an agreement to sell your navigation as training data to those providers.

Please cite your sources when making a claim of this magnitude.

I've been using Librewolf for about a week now, and I hope they strip out/disable this AI feature.

A few librewolf "gotchas", BTW, should anyone else want to try it: https://c.im/@sbb/112653498580361415

Nice. I was about to wonder what firefox derivatives were about. Then I realized I could find it myself: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browsers_based_on_Fire...

Oh boy, they have too much money? Nobody asked for this and/or need this feature.

Nobody may "need" it, but I'm someone who wants it. I typically have multiple LLM tabs open to quickly ask things while I'm browsing, and I see the potential of having this functionality be directly integrated into the browser.

but they happily remove features power users love because... no reason

KISS

Couldn't this just be done with an extension?

Totally agree. If Firefox Translations can be an extension, so can this.

Mozilla forever determined to do anything but actually improve their core product.

I know it's opt-in, but nobody is going to switch to a browser because they ship this kinda stuff.

So quick to roll out AI but I'm still waiting for proper tab grouping. I know it's coming, they've already said so.

But how is AI given priority over the most requested feature in their forums?

God no. How does this help you? You're last in the race of browsers to link AI features, and this sounds like it's not even a plugin but a core feature. I don't understand who would want or need this. You skipped bitcoin, you skipped NFTs, why do you enter the grifter's race now?

edit: I only know of Vivaldi declaring they're against adding AI features [0]

[0] https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/vivaldi-wont-allow-a-mac...

I'm fine with local "AI". I use the built-in translate feature quite extensively. I don't want it connecting to these outside services that prey on user-data and take advantage of user privacy; especially the likes of Google that is providing its AI services to Apartheid Israel's army.

I don't want it because I don't have a reliable connection.

Feels like this should be an extension, not a core part of the browser

Boardroom:

AI!

AI, what?

Dunno, just AI.

Ok.

Meanwhile, at a random VC in 2024:

AI!

AI, what?

Dunno, just AI.

Say no more. Here's a $100M check.

I’d rather they add tab groups first.

ai for kids

TLDR: Opt-in

Opt-in, for now...

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