Mozilla has announced the release of an update to its Firefox browser. In version number 118, users will find a significant innovation - a built-in translator
The Firefox browser now has a built-in page translator that works even without the Internet::Mozilla has announced the release of an update to its Firefox browser. In version number 118, users will find a significant innovation - a built-in translator
I’m sure there’s some use cases out there, but that kind of sounds dumb at first. You can use a built-in page translator that translates web pages… without the internet. How are you getting to these pages in the first place then? I’m assuming the appeal is more from the privacy aspect, because it’s not communicating with anyone else to get those translations?
I think the point isn’t that you wouldn’t be connected to the internet, rather that the translator itself isn’t yet another thing that will phone home with all of your data
It’s much faster for one. Google Translate is super slow compared to this and it sometimes refuses to work if the Google overlords think you might be a bot or something.
You still need an extension for certain languages. It seems like they only have about a dozen available, a few more on the way, and hardly any eastern languages yet.
As a long term Firefox user, I’ve been disappointed with Mozilla’s decisions in the recent years, but this is awesome. This is the kind of features Firefox should be receiving instead of useless UI changes.
That’s really not good. Literally all of these are European languages.
I’d rather have it connected to a better translation service than have it be offline. I don’t understand why the translator working offline is even a plus. It’s a web browser.
I assume there must not be any FOSS translation services they can use so this offline translator is just a consequence of that.
That’s fine for translating news articles, but maybe not for private email. Different people accept different risk levels in different situations. If you have reason to be using https then maybe you don’t want to send that data to a third party.
I just use brave browser when I must do casting. It works fine, you do have to enable it though. they call it “media router” or something like that in the settings. VLC also lets you cast to chromecast so there is a protocol for non-google apps, not sure why firefox never implemented it.
I wish I could leave chrome, but FF can’t keep up with me. I’ve been trialing FF across multiple systems and OS’s and it’s the same across them all, around 100-150 tabs it gets unstable, uses way more RAM than Chrome and then eventually crashes
I can have literally hundreds upon hundreds of tabs in Chrome.
Interesting, I found chrome to be worse with a lot of tabs open. Not much worse though, I think they are both bad. I started using OneTab with FF and it made things a lot smoother. Easy way to save specific windows with a lot of tabs until I need it again later.
Now I only use about ten active windows with 4-50 tabs each lol
Idk man lol I was testing FF to try to get off Chrome and I tested it on multiple Win10 and MacOS computers (Physical and VMs) and it was pretty much the same across
Although Chrome seems to get weird once you cross the 600 tab barrier, but having a 600 tab “limit” vs <200 is still a lot better
Try Tab Suspender. With it you can open as many tabs as you care to, it will auto-suspend tabs unless you choose tabs not to suspend. This way you can open as many tabs in as many windows as you want, even suspend all the tabs in one window or many windows.
One Tab is even better, it puts all open tabs into 1 tab as a long list, then you can open those as needed in new tabs or windows.
I was using the beta before this and its nice to have it inbuilt but its not quite as good as the beta was. The main drawback with the new approach is that you can’t force the translation if it thinks the page is in English. I use self hosted RSS and I have Translated subsections on that and unfortunately I can’t get the new translator to do the job where the beta would.
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I’m sure there’s some use cases out there, but that kind of sounds dumb at first. You can use a built-in page translator that translates web pages… without the internet. How are you getting to these pages in the first place then? I’m assuming the appeal is more from the privacy aspect, because it’s not communicating with anyone else to get those translations?
I think the point isn’t that you wouldn’t be connected to the internet, rather that the translator itself isn’t yet another thing that will phone home with all of your data
It’s much faster for one. Google Translate is super slow compared to this and it sometimes refuses to work if the Google overlords think you might be a bot or something.
I’ve been disappointed with Orion and Safari lately. Not ready to switch to Chrome, but maybe it’s time to give Firefox another shot.
Firefox rocks! (And subsequent forks of it)
I had to search for it quite a bit to find it. It’s in the (stupid IMO) menu with the three lines, they made to replace the proper menu bar.
For anyone interested in the tech behind that, it’s based on Project Bergamot: https://browser.mt/software (now you don’t need the extension anymore).
You still need an extension for certain languages. It seems like they only have about a dozen available, a few more on the way, and hardly any eastern languages yet.
Production
Development
As a long term Firefox user, I’ve been disappointed with Mozilla’s decisions in the recent years, but this is awesome. This is the kind of features Firefox should be receiving instead of useless UI changes.
Are you saying you don’t want a button that looks like a pinned tab that only lets you change between a handful of time-limited themes?
But at the very least you can remove it
As long as Mozilla remains committed to a free and open internet, I will remain a faithful firefox user.
Even if every update after this one is a useless UI change. :p
I can’t seem to find the setting. Is it not available for Firefox for Android (Fenix), do you know?
For a born again Firefox user, what decisions?
Why does this Firefox thumbnail go so hard tho
Someone link to a page that this will work on.
They demo this with their own homepage mozilla.org after you’ve updated. I thought it worked great.
I updated through my distribution’s repository and I don’t see anything translatable on mozilla.org.
Would be good to have this in the mobile/tablet versions also (I just checked and didn’t see it), as this is my main reason for still using chrome
Would be great to have that on Lemmy Sync app, too! After browsing a while, a large proportion of posts start being in languages I dont understand.
It has online translation if you sign up for Sync Ultra. I believe it uses Google Translate.
Only these languages though:
Still impressive
Yeah but these websites are usually already localized in English at least to some extent. Many Asian websites would benefit much more from this.
That’s really not good. Literally all of these are European languages.
I’d rather have it connected to a better translation service than have it be offline. I don’t understand why the translator working offline is even a plus. It’s a web browser.
I assume there must not be any FOSS translation services they can use so this offline translator is just a consequence of that.
That’s fine for translating news articles, but maybe not for private email. Different people accept different risk levels in different situations. If you have reason to be using https then maybe you don’t want to send that data to a third party.
I’m sure they would be happy to accept your help in translating a new language.
Gets 5 free stuff and bitches for not getting 50. Some people…
That’s a sick firefox fanart or whatever
AI generated :/
Glad to see this has made it into the browser! This has been a 🇪🇺 funded project for years now!
But they killed the fox in their new logo :(
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This was the last thing I actively used chrome for, time to fully switch over I guess now that I can translate my Russian tracker.
I still use Chrome when I need to Chromecast, any way around that?
I just use brave browser when I must do casting. It works fine, you do have to enable it though. they call it “media router” or something like that in the settings. VLC also lets you cast to chromecast so there is a protocol for non-google apps, not sure why firefox never implemented it.
This works, but it’s definitely a beta product, and not release quality…
Add Chromecast support to Firefox with Fx_cast extension
Not that I’m aware of. It’s in the name right? Lol
I wish I could leave chrome, but FF can’t keep up with me. I’ve been trialing FF across multiple systems and OS’s and it’s the same across them all, around 100-150 tabs it gets unstable, uses way more RAM than Chrome and then eventually crashes
I can have literally hundreds upon hundreds of tabs in Chrome.
you can do the same with firefox, you can have hundred of tabs open there as well, it has the same capability to suspend tabs.
I get tab anxiety at about 20 at which point the least visited get scrapped.
150 tabs??? What the hell are you doing on your browser?
A lot of people seem to never use bookmarks and depend on just leaving the tabs open. shrug I guess they let their history last forever too.
Interesting, I found chrome to be worse with a lot of tabs open. Not much worse though, I think they are both bad. I started using OneTab with FF and it made things a lot smoother. Easy way to save specific windows with a lot of tabs until I need it again later.
Now I only use about ten active windows with 4-50 tabs each lol
Idk man lol I was testing FF to try to get off Chrome and I tested it on multiple Win10 and MacOS computers (Physical and VMs) and it was pretty much the same across
Although Chrome seems to get weird once you cross the 600 tab barrier, but having a 600 tab “limit” vs <200 is still a lot better
Maybe that’s why I sought out a program like one tab afterall
200 tabs was probably on the low end for me before I started using that extension
It’s been years now, so I may be guilty of some false memories
Try Tab Suspender. With it you can open as many tabs as you care to, it will auto-suspend tabs unless you choose tabs not to suspend. This way you can open as many tabs in as many windows as you want, even suspend all the tabs in one window or many windows.
One Tab is even better, it puts all open tabs into 1 tab as a long list, then you can open those as needed in new tabs or windows.
I was using the beta before this and its nice to have it inbuilt but its not quite as good as the beta was. The main drawback with the new approach is that you can’t force the translation if it thinks the page is in English. I use self hosted RSS and I have Translated subsections on that and unfortunately I can’t get the new translator to do the job where the beta would.