Inside Project Nova, Firefox's biggest redesign in years

Comments

• Dojan@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  “Definitely, the idea of extensions and just customizations in general is: can you create more of like a natural language interface that lets people do everything they want?”

  What?

  “There’s really no reason for anyone to say, ‘This is your browser; you can do whatever you want,'” Varma added.

  What??

  Are they drunk, or is my reading comprehension failing? I don’t understand these sentences.

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  • XLE@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Those quotes are nearly incomprehensible and they aren’t isolated incidents either. This CEO talks like every tech CEO selling AI products.

    When you look at the term browser, it’s very antiquated in the sense that there’s static content, and when I click on the content, I get to the next link… With apps, it became more bidirectional. There’s more rich engagement with AI.

    Instead of being a browser, it’s becoming a generative system, but it’s not doing it in a negative way that prevents the person’s incentive from creating the content in the first place.

    CEO sure did say a thing. But it’s [the interviewer’s job to say please explain what you mean” in response.

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  • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    can you create more of like a natural language interface that lets people do everything they want?

    I don’t want a ‘natural language interface’ in my browser.

    I want a browser interface in my browser.

    This shit ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

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    • ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Based on the rest I think they don’t mean actual natural language interface, but having enough personalisation options to setup the UI in a way that’s natural for your workflow. They are just speaking 2026-corporatise instead of English.

      The full sentence is:

      “Definitely, the idea of extensions and just customizations in general is: can you create more of like a natural language interface that lets people do everything they want?” Varma added. “For example, we announced an update that we’re doing to our design, which is called Project Nova. And a lot of people didn’t like the rounded corners modernization. Now, we can let people pick how round they want their corners. People care, so we put it in the settings.”

      They also mention some misguided “AI” features, but not in this part.

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    • Dojan@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s a direct follow-up on a question about if you can create widgets on your home-page. At least I think that’s the interviewer asking a question, it could be a weird Trump-like ramble from the CEO as well.

      I didn’t like the previous CEO, particularly given her connections to Airbnb, but this one is undeniably worse.

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  • Banzai51@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You have to remember that when Mozilla first formed the goal was to create a mini-OS in the browser with apps and the whole caboodle. With that they then wanted TO DOMINATE THE WORLD!!! But their vision was tricky and taking way longer than expected, so they release Firefox as a temporary band-aid. Firefox went on to be their greatest project while the Mozilla Project burned, fell over in the swap, and was bulldozed into the sea. Over at Mozilla HQ there is still resentment that Firefox is their greatest project. They never gave up on WORLD DOMINATION. It’s like the ego of Marc Andreessen haunts them like a ghost.

    With AI, they see their opportunity for WORLD DOMINATION and are going for it again.

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• floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  “Like every tech company, we’re really excited about the velocity increases from AI, and so we have a lot of internal prototypes that are up and running, and extensions is one of them,” Varma said. “But a lot of things we’re staring includes questions like: Can you customize your homepage? Can you add widgets? Can you change your background in whatever way you want?”

  All that and rounded corners? Not sure I can handle this much future.

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  • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Can you customize your homepage? Can you add widgets? Can you change your background in whatever way you want?

    I could already do all of that, without AI.

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• XLE@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This has to be the most ridiculous paragraph I’ve ever read:

  The difference between Firefox and other apps is that Mozilla has no incentive to prioritize a particular app or service.

  Sure, Mozilla has no incentive to prioritize their biggest donor Google.

  A choice screen could deliver a variety of models — probably curated by Mozilla, Varma said — or nothing at all. (Perplexity AI just appeared.)

  This has to be a joke. What do you mean “it just appeared”? Mozilla only adds search engines after they secure fat stacks of cash, and Perplexity got even more kudos (including an in-browser notification) than other options like Ecosia.

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• azolus@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  So you have chosen death.

  I mean cool, we saw it coming, so no surprise here. But damn that sucks.

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• eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not a great article

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