7mo ago

Mozilla is adding tab grouping, vertical tabs, profile management, and local AI features to Firefox

connect.mozilla.org Here’s what we’re working on in Firefox

At Mozilla, we work hard to make Firefox the best browser for you. That’s why we're always focused on building a browser that empowers you to choose your own path, that gives you the freedom to explore without worry or compromises. We’re excited to share more about the updates and improvements we ha...

Firefox @lemmy.ml

connect.mozilla.org /t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/td-p/57694

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Firefox @lemmy.ml

Here’s what we’re working on in Firefox

connect.mozilla.org /t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/td-p/57694

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168 comments

tab grouping
Sure, okay.
vertical tabs
To each their own.
profile management
Whatever, it's fine.
and local AI features
HOLLUP
- We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models -- i.e., more private -- to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities. The alt text is then processed on your device and saved locally instead of cloud services, ensuring that enhancements like these are done with your privacy in mind.
  IMO if everything’s going to have AI ham fisted into it, this is probably the least shitty way to do so. With Firefox being open source, the code can also be audited to ensure they’re actually keeping their word about it being local-only.
  
  Don't you need specific CPUs for these AI features? If so, how is this going to work on the machines that don't support it?
- While I dislike corporate ai as much as the next guy I am quite interested in open source, local models. If i can run it on my machine, with the absolute certainty that it is my llm, working for my benefit, that's pretty cool. And not feeding every miniscule detail about me to corporate.
  
  I mean that's that thing. They're kind of black boxes so it can be hard to tell what they're doing, but yeah local hardware is the absolute minimum. I guess places like huggingface are at least working to try and apply some sort of standard measures to the LLM space at least through testing...
- Focus on "local". Mozilla is working since a while on that.
- I tried one of their test builds. Seems like the AI part just means the browser can integrate with llamafile (Mozilla’s open source solution for running open source llm’s with just one file on any platform)
- I wonder when tech companies are going to start calling AI something different to deal with the luddites. Like skyscrapers whose floors are labeled 12 and 14.

If you're here because of the AI headline, this is important to read.
We’re looking at how we can use local, on-device AI models -- i.e., more private -- to enhance your browsing experience further. One feature we’re starting with next quarter is AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.
They are implementing AI how it should be. Don't let all the shitty companies blind you to the fact what we call AI has positive sides.
- They are implementing AI how it should be.
  The term is so overused and abused that I'm not clear what they're even promising. Are they localizing a LLM? Are they providing some kind of very fancy macroing? Are they linking up with ChatGPT somehow or integrating with Co-pilot? There's no way to tell from the verbage.
  And that's not even really Mozilla's fault. It's just how the term AI can mean anything from "overhyped javascript" to "multi-billion dollar datacenter full of fake Scarlett Johansson voice patterns".
  
  there are language models that are quite feasible to run locally for easier tasks like this. “local” rules out both ChatGPT and Co-pilot since those models are enormous. AI generally means machine learned neural networks these days, even if a pile of if-else used to pass in the past.
  not sure how they’re going to handle low-resource machines, but as far as AI integrations go this one is rather tame
- There are a lot of knee jerk reactions in the comments. I hope few of those commenters have read the article or, at the least, your comment.
  
  thats most of the internet, just reacting to headlines.
- We're also using machine learning for the local site translation. The AI buzzword is doing more damage than good PR.
- AI has become truly meaningless term for everything and nothing.
  Not to mention all the justified hate it received. It’s probably time to kill it once again and delegate it to the future like usual every 10 years or so starting with Deep Blue

People that wanted vertical tabs must be really excited
- Anything to fill all that absolute wasted space from every website formatting things to fit phones and not desktops. Ultra wide really sucks ass for a lot of things.
  
  IMO that's mostly a window-management problem, not an app layout problem. The point of an ultra wide monitor setup (other than flight sims or something) is to be able to view a bunch of different things side-by-side.
  Edit: speaking of which, now that we've come almost full-circle from no tab support, to multiple tabs in the same process, to one process per tab, it seems to me that tabs themselves ought to be part of the window decoration, not the app. I mean, they're useful for almost everything you might want to have multiples of (editors, file managers, terminals, etc.) so why force every app maker to implement them over and over again?
  
  To be honest, it's not just for phones. The wider the monitor, the more I'd need to move my head if a website uses the whole space, instead of keeping it centered. Obviously it shouldn't be too slim but you can't really just fill an entire monitor or align your content to the left of the screen anymore nowadays.
- Its honestly the only reason i use brave and edge over Firefox. Can fully commit to FF now.
  
  The TreeStyleTab extension for Firefox has added vertical tabs for a decade
- I admit, this news has made me add a note to re-download firefox on my work machine...
- would be cool if it's smooth like how arc does it, would instantly switch back to Firefox if they manage that. arc is still buggy on many things or when i use some websites.
- I am, specially after seeing how well it was implemented in the nightly version. It can't be compared to an extension that enables the same capability.
- Anyone who really cared was already using an extension that did these things.
  
  That's unnecessarily dismissive. Unfortunately, even the best extensions have their downsides. Some used a browser that suited their preferences better instead, which is a shame for both Firefox and the user, in my opinion.
  Mozilla recognizes this and is finally taking action to integrate highly requested features into Firefox. Many "who really care" are glad for this, because it is a good thing.
  
  What's extra funny is that those extensions are made by Mozilla already
  At least tab grouping and vert tabs were last I looked

This is what Mozilla should have done a LONG time ago - focussed on browser features, ease of use, compatibility and speed. Make a better browser if you want to win a browser war.
- Maybe they should, but focusing on adding new features endlessly is how we ended up with this state of internet browsers. The most complex app running on a desktop are too big, it's basically impossible to create a new one. (Yes you can fork but that's just adding toppings to ice cream). The browser war ends only one way.
  If we break up the do-everything application into significant parts then a healthy "war" can exist. Why does a browser need to play video, you already have an app for that.
  
  I definitely don’t want them to continually add more feature cruft. When I said “focussed on features” I simply meant “make sure what they’ve got is second to none”.
- Agreed, really hoping they stick to refocusing on the browser.
- Forcing useless features or features that are useless to most users is more or less what windows is doing. Why the double standars?
  Especially when Firefox could have included those features as optional modules (even as preinstalled extensions) that we could simply remove if we dont want them?
  
  How are they being forced upon you?
  
  I definitely don’t believe Mozilla should continue to add features. But I like them focussing on the ones they’ve got.
  Edit: Changed this comment to better reflect what I actually meant.
- I loved the suckless user interface of Firefox. Vivaldi? Chrome? Arc? They suck

One of these things is not like the other
- I do not know why browser makers like Opera or Brave(and now apparently Firefox) is going hey ho over AI. I don't see a proper benefit of integration of local AI for most people as of now.
  As for vertical tabs, Waterfox got it just now. It is basically a fork of Tree Style Tabs and very basically implemented. I am honestly happy with TST on Firefox and while a native integration might be a bit faster(my browser takes just that few extra seconds to load the right TST panel on my slow laptop), it'll likely be feature incomplete when compared to TST.
  
  It depends. I really liked Mozillas initiative for local translation - much better for data privacy than remote services. But conversational/generative AI, no thank you.

I want fewer built-in features, not more of them. All of these things should be extensions, not built into the browser core.
I mean, I'd be perfectly happy for said extensions and more to be shipped by default -- it would be good for Firefox to come "batteries included" even with adblocking and such, and that's most likely the way I would use it. But I just want it to be modular and removable as a matter of principle.
I remember how monolithic Mozilla SeaMonkey got too top-heavy and forced Mozilla to start over more-or-less from scratch with ~~Phoenix~~ ~~Firebird~~ Firefox, and I want it to stick close to those roots so they don't have to do it again.
- They are probably extensions, just like pip, pocket, screenshot upload, languages, search engines, themes, etc.
  Shipped by default, handled like extensions internally but not exposed to the user. You see it in the extension*.json files in your profile folder.
  
  In that case, I want them exposed just like user-installed extensions, so it's more obvious how to get rid of them if you want.
- We need modular browsers. It is hard for Mozilla to keep the track to the W3C and all the nonstandard stuff that Google, Microsoft and Apple add to their browsers. If those elements were modules, it would be easier for people to collaborate and for Google and Microsoft to be obligated to add support for other browsers.
  
  You're talking about a modular rendering engine, which is a different thing than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about stripping down the UI until it resembles XUL Runner, then adding the functionality back as extensions.
  You're not wrong that it's important for the engine's code to be organized well for developers' benefit (and ideally for the engine as a whole to be self-contained -- it'd be great if Gecko were as easily-embeddable as Blink), but I'm not so sure that users need to be able to add or remove pieces of it in a way similar to what I'm talking about for UI features.
  More concretely:
  I think Firefox should ship by default with all the functionality it currently has, plus uBlock Origin and some other things. But I want it to be designed such that if you went into the extensions manager and disabled everything, things like tab support, bookmarks, history, and maybe even the address bar and back button would be gone. It would still be capable of fully rendering a web page, though.
- The default experience when people Google "install Firefox" should absolutely provide as much feature parity with other major browsers as possible. 99% of users will want them or not mind them. And for that last 1%, I guess I'm not sure if it's worth the development headaches for them to bake in a configuration change that power users could get by forking the codebase anyway.
- Something like a deeper integration of an addOn/extension would be nice.
  Modularity could be a way to do it.

Local AI sounds nice. One reason I'm cynical about the current state of AI is because of how many send all your data to another company
- Eh, I don't particularly care too much either way. It seems to be solving problems with the 80/20 approach: 80% of the benefit for 20% of the effort. However, getting that last 20% is probably way more difficult than just building purpose-built solutions from the start.
  So I'm guessing we'll see a lot more "decent but not quite there" products, and they'll never "get there."
  So it might be fun to play with, but it's not something I'm interested in using day-to-day. Then again, maybe I'm completely wrong and it's the best thing since sliced bread, but as someone who has worked on very basid NLP projects in the past (distantly related to modern LLMs), I just find it hard to look past the limitations.
- It is. Unfortunately it does tend to use up a lot of RAM and requires either a fairly fast CPU or better yet, a decent graphics card. This means it's at least somewhat problematic for use on lower spec or ultraportable laptops, especially while on battery power.

Profile management
Fucking finally!
The fact that you had to use external applications or manually go to an internal Firefox menu to change from one to another sucked!
- -P -no-remote works great for me.
- Finally I can have a personal profile, a work profile, and a porn profile!
- I just bookmarked the settings page for profiles, which made it work pretty well. But it was definitely more janky than something native.

Tab grouping, nice! Finally back after they removed then years ago..
- I wish they'd backpedal on the floating tabs too. I still fucking hate them and they never really used them for anything like they said they would. They're just as shitty as they always have been.
  
  Eh, I honestly don't notice it. There's a very small (like <5px) gap between the tab and the next bar down, and it's only noticeable when I'm looking at it, which is pretty much never. I've attached a screenshot for reference (I use the built-in dark theme, Container Tabs, and shrunk my tabs in about:config).
  
  Floating?

"AI", more like A-eyeroll 🙄
- There's AI and there's AI. I really like that Firefox has local models for translating content. Them adding AI that describes images for visually impaired people is pretty cool.
  
  Yeah people forget that AI isn't just the garbage generators of late. It's all machine learning based software. There are lots of perfectly valid applications of AI that have been used for decades. The term has just become tainted recently by LLMs.
  
  Ok that seems like a good idea. But since when did we need "AI" to translate text? I think this is my big problem. It feels like a lot of "Here's an AI to wake you up at the right time before work!" When shit like that has existed for years with a bunch of "if" and "else" statements. It's not hard to create a series of conditions to do a lot of the things I'm seeing AI uselessly shoved down our throats.

Local AI, or also, how AI should be. Actually helpful, instead of a spying and data gathering tool for companies

That's all fine and good but Firefox on Android is currently in a sorry state. No per-site process isolation, buggy, can't keep tabs open, slow, choppy, drains battery. Had to uninstall it on my brand new Galaxy S24+ and my Pixel 6 Pro because it was draining so much battery. When are you going to finally stop ignoring Firefox Android, Mozilla?
- I've been using it for at least a decade now and haven't encountered any of the issues you mention.
- I've used it exclusively for a long time and haven't experienced any of this
  
  Yeah, same. This is bonkers to me. I have dozens of tabs open on my Pixel 7 and my battery still lasts all day.
  
  Well here's the drain I was talking about at least. 18% in less than an hour and thirty minutes of use for a web browser isn't normal. In an hour of use a Chromium browser only drains 6-7 ish % for me. This has been an issue for I guess the past month or so? It drove me crazy so I had to uninstall. And it's not just me either, there are tons of posts from people with the same problem on Reddit. If you don't have problems, good for you I guess.
- slow, choppy, drains battery
  Sounds like you don't have an adblocker.
  
  Nope. He's right. There are similar threads on reddit too every single week about the mobile version. It's simply bad.
  
  I ran Firefox Android with uBo and AdGuardDNS.
  
  I'm experiencing a similar issue on my phone and I'm using ublock, it is draining the battery very fast and making the phone hot.
  I wonder if there is a good alternative/degoogled chrome for Android?
- Idk, it seems to work fine on my old, crappy Moto G, and it also seems to work fine so far on my new Pixel 8 (just bought it recently).
  Maybe Chrome is a little faster, idk, I don't use it much, but Firefox is completely fine.
  Then again, maybe my standards are lower. I just want it to browse the web, and it does that pretty well. The ad-blocker is an absolutely killer feature which is why I don't use Chrome, so maybe I'm willing to put up with worse performance. But it seems plenty smooth to me.
  
  This is the big thing for me. Any speed gains I might get from Chrome are entirely wiped out by how much the web browsing experience is dragged to a crawl by ads and spyware.
- I use it on a Pixel 7 Pro. Can't say I have the same issues.
  I also have a notorious problem with too many tabs (I am beyond 99)
- Agreed, there a two years bug still open on Firefox just refusing to load pages.
  I have to force quit Firefox multiple tones a day and there are new bugs popping up on the tab picker.
  Its hard to go back to chrome and lose addons. I need u block especially on mobile.
  
  Im having a great experience on samsung internet with adguard and blokada 5 (on a pixel 7 if it's relevant)
- Same. I had to uninstall due to the battery drain issues. Pixel 6 Pro. Battery life is not something I am willing to compromise on.

Building back to that 2005 standard feature set.

Awesome news! Really miss the tab groups from Chrome, really the only thing haha

YEAH!
YEAH!
YEAH!
no.
- Why the no?
  It's local only, and actually used to improve the product as opposed to being another shitty chatbot.
  This is how it should be done.
- Vertical tabs will be neat for my ultra-wide!
- Isn't that no. the exact attitude a lot of boomers have for technology? Look where that got them.

All great changes! I've been using Floorp to have vertical tabs, but I'd gladly switch back to Firefox when its implemented. Profiles have always been a great feature, but had a bad user experience, glad to see its being improved.
Really interested in the local AI. Firefox has been doing interesting work with that recently.
- Sidebery is a great FF extension that provides vertical tabs, trees, and groups.
  
  I've tried a few extensions, but they haven't felt as integrated as the one's in Floorp, due to firefox limitations. The main reason I want vertical tabs is to save vertical screen space by removing the horizontal tab bar, which can be done with userchrome.css, but thats inconvenient to do on multiple devices. I appreciate the recommendation though, I haven't used that one and it looks very powerful.

Can I disable all local AI features? Or better yet not have that functionality installed?
- AI BAD!
- Can I dsable all local AI features
  Hopefully
  Or better yet not have that functionality installed?
  Unlikely. Firefox has long been gone down the way of "everything included". They started bundling extensions and peripheral features into the core of the browser long ago, and despite backlash kept going that way. We're already in the "I have to disable a lot of stuff when I install Firefox" territory.

So Tree Tabs built in? I've used them for so long, I don't know how other manage without them. Yet I know no one else who uses them, even after I show them. Be interesting see how well the new built in ones work.
- I tried, but I already use TMP in full page vertical view.
  I never got the hang of tree style tab in the sidebar. I think I just don't like the sidebar.
- I tried, but I already use TMP in full page vertical view.
  I never got the hang of tree style tab in the sidebar. I think I just don't like the sidebar.

I want something like XULRunner back.
No, they don't owe me anything. I just want it back.

I hope it won't end up like Chrome. Suddenly my tabs were opening in different weird groups and I couldn't find anything.

Tab groups how? Bunched up into 1 tab so you can't see anything or are they replacing the Simple Tab Groups extension. And what's different from the current profile manager.
Changes are all well and good until they force me to change my workflows even a little; then technology has gone too far!!!
- And what's different from the current profile manager.
  From a usability standpoint, what current profile manager? Having to web search to find out how to open it puts it beyond the reach of most users.
  
  I wish it was harder to find in Gnome, where its right below "New Private Window" in the right-click context menu. I accidentally open it almost every time I try open a private window. Thankfully I don't need private windows as much now that I use the Multi-Account Containers extension.

Ever since I was an avid Lynx text only browser user, I've been asking for a complicated ~~privacy invasive (if the AI is remote)~~ (hey neat, it's local!) browser that interacts with me in a nedlessly conversational way. Thank goodness someone is finally cramming AI into my simple web lookups. (/Sarcasm)
- How do you log into lemmy on lynx? I've been trying to find a text browser I can use for lemmy, with no success so far.
  
  I belive there are standalone TUI lemmy clients

168 comments

YEAH!

YEAH!

YEAH!