Firefox Voice competitors Siri Alexa Assistant on the browser: Firefox Voice is a wizard that will allow the user to control the Firefox browser with voice.
Like many digital players, the Mozilla Foundation is interested in voice assistants. For example, it launched the Common Voice project, a voice dataset that allows small businesses to develop their own AI, and which could reduce the dominance of GAFAM over digital assistants.
But at the same time, Mozilla has also worked on a product that allows you to control your browser with voice commands.
Called Firefox Voice, this project is currently described by the foundation as being a simple experiment, which is in beta.
For now, the idea is to have Firefox Voice tested by a limited number of users so that it can be improved for an official launch.
Firefox Voice competitors Siri Alexa Assistant
Currently, this is an extension for Mozilla Firefox, which only works on the desktop version.
OK, Mozilla?
Below you have a demonstration in English. On its website, Mozilla also cites sample requests (in English), which give us an idea of the usefulness that Firefox Voice could have when browsing the web.
The user can ask the voice interface to search for a recipe, to go to a specific site, to answer a question like "Who created Breaking Bad?" », Launch a title on Spotify, control a video player, display the weather or translate.
Mozilla also gives a list of services or sites that are currently compatible with Firefox Voice and for which we can have advanced features. Gmail is one of the services listed and therefore it would be possible to ask this assistant to search for specific content in the inbox.
In any case, with Firefox Voice, the user could therefore obtain certain information or open a page without having to click, but simply by asking the assistant. It's quite similar to how Google Assistant and Siri work on mobile, but in this case, it has been adapted to the web.
At the moment, we don't know when Mozilla could deploy a stable version or the languages in which Firefox Voice will be available.
Mozilla Firefox will block requests to send notifications by default
Tired of popups asking your permission to send notifications? In 2020, Mozilla Firefox will block these by default.
Like mobile and computer applications, websites can send notifications even when they have been closed. If possible, it is through APIs offered by modern browsers.
In some scenarios, these notifications can be very useful, for example on email service sites, or to be notified by your favorite news sites.
But unfortunately, since so many websites have appropriated this functionality, Internet users receive too many requests to send notifications, generally in the form of popups.
To remedy this, Mozilla Firefox will block these popups by default, from 2020. This is what Mozilla would have indicated to the Zdnet site. In an article published this weekend, the online media indicates that this decision was made after studying the behavior of Internet users with these requests to send notifications. In essence, 97% of Firefox users either rejected these notifications or decided to prevent websites from displaying them.
As of January, with the release of Firefox 72, the browser will no longer display pop-ups when a site asks you for permission to send you notifications.
A compromise
The system that allows sites to send notifications, however, will not disappear on Mozilla Firefox. But instead of bombarding people with popups when they open websites for the first time, Firefox 72 will display a new animated icon near the URL bar.
And if the user wishes to receive notifications about the site they have visited, they will only have to click on this new icon.