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    What's New with Firefox 142

    (www.mozilla.org)
    177 points keepamovin | 18 comments | 02 Sep 25 10:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.403s | source | bottom
    1. everdrive ◴[02 Sep 25 13:25 UTC] No.45102820[source]▶
    I'm genuinely perplexed why people find link previews useful. The page image is too small to really see, and it's not as if rapidly opening and closing a tab actually takes effort. It may be faster than the long click depending how comfortable you are with keyboard controls.

    I have other questions as well -- does the link preview ignore your plugins? So if you loaded the web page, would uBlock Origin prevent tracking which is _not_ prevented when loading the preview? If you have a phishing test url with a unique identifier, do you flunk the test even if you don't click through?

    replies(11): >>45103051 #>>45103111 #>>45103185 #>>45103354 #>>45103408 #>>45103433 #>>45103485 #>>45104009 #>>45105387 #>>45106500 #>>45112324 #
    2. Y-bar ◴[02 Sep 25 13:46 UTC] No.45103051[source]▶
    Mostly in agreement, though I could perhaps find them useful if not for:

    Four times of five the link previews are blocked by a cookie consent or newsletter signup modal anyway.

    3. zerkten ◴[02 Sep 25 13:50 UTC] No.45103111[source]▶
    >> it's not as if rapidly opening and closing a tab actually takes effort. It may be faster than the long click depending how comfortable you are with keyboard controls.

    For normal people, i.e. those who aren't techies, you have your answer right there on why this may be useful. We are very efficient with our browser usage. Normal people struggle with this task because they get lost in the steps. Even if they can do the steps at a slow pace, it doesn't stick because it's too slow. The leap to using keyboard shortcuts just won't happen for the majority of people.

    I think your points on how this is implemented are fairer. That said, that said it seems like the best approach is to follow the simplest and most efficient approach, which is to not load extensions, or use what is loaded.

    The success of features like this is known with technical users like us. We don't like them because we have a workflow that avoids the issue like the phishing one you describe. It's unclear whether this helps users and is likely somewhat experimental. I think it's a much better place to be doing work that other areas where they have invested even if it has many issues.

    replies(1): >>45103908 #
    4. Springtime ◴[02 Sep 25 13:57 UTC] No.45103185[source]▶
    > I have other questions as well -- does the link preview ignore your plugins? So if you loaded the web page, would uBlock Origin prevent tracking which is _not_ prevented when loading the preview?

    This was the primary reason I'd never used Vivaldi browser's long-standing feature of being able to set sites within a side panel, since it ignored addons. Was only last year that was changed to allow addons.

    5. nemomarx ◴[02 Sep 25 14:10 UTC] No.45103354[source]▶
    for me I'm interested in the preview so I know where the link goes in a general sense, not what it looks like. i would use it for shortened or redirected links to see where a random anchor is pointing before I actually open it?

    It already seems to basically grab the text from reader mode. What might be more useful is a way to just open a link directly in that to avoid paywalls or annoying uis though

    6. tux3 ◴[02 Sep 25 14:15 UTC] No.45103408[source]▶
    It's an idea that makes a lot of sense on Wikipedia, because every page there explicitly starts with a short summary, and often an image that can be pulled from the infobox. I'm not yet convinced it will work well on the rest of the Web.
    replies(1): >>45104881 #
    7. ◴[02 Sep 25 14:16 UTC] No.45103433[source]▶
    8. carlosjobim ◴[02 Sep 25 14:20 UTC] No.45103485[source]▶
    They would be very useful if they were instead in form of a META image and then just the website text. Not the entire website design.
    replies(1): >>45104167 #
    9. ffsm8 ◴[02 Sep 25 14:54 UTC] No.45103908[source]▶
    Eh, isn't it even quicker without keyboard? Third button opens in New tab, third button again closes the tab.

    But you're point is correct that the majority of people do indeed not use any device quickly. No matter wherever it's a phone or desktop browser.

    replies(1): >>45105308 #
    10. rozab ◴[02 Sep 25 15:02 UTC] No.45104009[source]▶
    It's just horrible. For me the preview doesn't show until I've hovered for ~3 seconds (even before I turned on AI), in which time I could have long since middle clicked the page, skimmed, and closed it again.

    This is the content for the preview:

    > www.mozilla.org

    > What's new with Firefox 142

    > What's New | Firefox 142

    > 3-4 mins reading time

    No OpenGraph descriptions are good, so I can't see it ever being better than this. I don't know why this reading time metric has become a thing, it's useless because it doesn't know which parts of the page I'm interested in. I could actually see the full url from the immediate link preview, so having only the domain here is worse than useless.

    The AI summary is both too short and too slow to be useful (unless maybe you're running an RTX 6000 or whatever). For this link, it only mentions Relay.

    And even the basic behaviour seems broken. The preview appears at seemingly random locations on the page, sometimes under the cursor and sometimes far below. When it does decide to appear away from the cursor, releasing the mouse button actually follows the link, completely negating the purpose of the preview!

    11. WorldMaker ◴[02 Sep 25 15:14 UTC] No.45104167[source]▶
    Interesting thought. A lot of sites have been adding various META tags for link previews in social media, it might be neat to have a browser native form of that, especially because making it a browser feature could help push it back to open standards (right now most of them are OpenGraph which despite "open" in the name is still somewhat proprietary to Facebook/Meta and Twitter Cards which will probably forever be called that).

    One interesting breakdown: https://getoutofmyhead.dev/link-preview-meta-tags/

    (ETA: This does seem to be what the feature actually does, having now tried it. Ignoring the AI Summary feature part of it, most of it does appear to be META tag driven and uses the card images of OpenGraph/Twitter Cards.)

    12. ARandumGuy ◴[02 Sep 25 16:02 UTC] No.45104881[source]▶
    But also that's been part of Wikipedia's website for years now, no special browser support necessary. And because it's tailored specifically to Wikipedia, it works great!

    Page preview seems nice in theory, but I'm unconvinced it'll be that useful. Web pages just don't have a the level of standardization necessary to automatically grab a useful preview. And I don't think Firefox has a big enough pull to make that sort of standard.

    replies(1): >>45111300 #
    13. wtallis ◴[02 Sep 25 16:29 UTC] No.45105308{3}[source]▶
    Out of the box, a minority of computers have a third button to click: it's pretty much just desktop mice not from Apple. Laptops and Apple mice require a power user to jump through hoops to have a way to express a middle click that's easier than reaching for the control key.
    14. NoGravitas ◴[02 Sep 25 16:33 UTC] No.45105387[source]▶
    I quite prefer the link "peek" in Zen, which I'm led to understand is based on the one in Arc. Shift click a link, it opens up in a configurable-size floating modal (90% by default) on top of the current page, with controls to pop it out into a full tab or close it. It's only a small improvement over "open in new tab, switch to new tab, close new tab", but it feels nice.

    The new link preview in Firefox seems a lot less useful.

    replies(1): >>45107052 #
    15. aspenmayer ◴[02 Sep 25 17:43 UTC] No.45106500[source]▶
    > I have other questions as well -- does the link preview ignore your plugins?

    If it’s anything like Reader View in Firefox, I would expect it to ignore plugins, which is absurd in the Reader View case, and would be in the link preview case as well. So much for my browser being a user agent.

    16. wonger_ ◴[02 Sep 25 18:23 UTC] No.45107052[source]▶
    Sounds similar to Safari's link preview. I like it. A modal preview is less of a context switch than opening and closing a tab.
    17. sudahtigabulan ◴[03 Sep 25 01:31 UTC] No.45111300{3}[source]▶
    I used to appreciate it (on Wikipedia), but too often it gets triggered by accident and prevents me from reading what I actually want to read. So much so that I had to find some way to disable it (probably by blocking JS via uBO).

    Similar story with GitHub "hovercards". They were helpful, but someone recently decided they have to work in the Issues/PR lists too and, again, it just prevents me from reading the very thing I want to read. Had to disable them (everywhere, unfortunately).

    18. 1vuio0pswjnm7 ◴[03 Sep 25 04:44 UTC] No.45112324[source]▶
    It seems like Firefox (Mozilla) looks for any excuse to make an HTTP request

    I can't think of another software program I have ever seen that makes so many non-user-initiated, i.e., automatic, HTTP requests by default; some of this behaviour cannot be disabled

    Of course the default telemetry is infamous