Mozilla Releases Firefox Browser With Experimental Voice Search, 1TB File Sharing And Notes
Google Chrome might be the world’s most popular web browser, but that isn’t stopping Mozilla from trying everything in its power to give Firefox a fighting chance at retaining (and gaining) market share. With that in mind, Mozilla has announced three new experimental features for Firefox as part of the Firefox Test Pilot.
The first is called Voice Fill, which relies on Firefox’s built-in Speech to Text (STT) functionality to input text. Voice Fill can be used to conduct searches using Google, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo searches. Using your voice to search is as simple as clicking the microphone button next to the search field on your search engine of choice and speaking. Mozilla says that Voice Fill will become better as you use it, although it remains to be seen if AI voice recognition will be able to provide a faster and more accurate result than you quick fingers on the keyboard.
The next feature in the Firefox Test Pilot is Notes, which allows you to quickly jot down the jumbled mess of thoughts that are rolling around in your head at any given moment when browsing the internet. Notes is integrated right into the Firefox UI and will in the future sync with Firefox Accounts across all of your devices.
“Whether it’s a sticky note, an app or the back of an envelope, so many of us rely on jotting down quick notes to keep track of our busy lives,” writes Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen. “Notes is a simple, convenient place to take, store and retrieve notes – all within Firefox.”
Finally, there’s Send. This feature allows you to send files (up to 1TB in size) to friends, family or clients that can are encrypted in-transit. Uploaded files are shareable via a link, which you can send via email or any other medium (i.e. Facebook Messenger or text). Your uploaded file will be deleted after the first successful completion of a download or after one day (whichever occurs first).
As with all experimental features, there’s no guarantee that all or even some of these features will make it into production builds of Firefox. However, it’s reassuring to know that Mozilla is thinking outside the box to make Firefox a more productive browser for users.
