- Firefox 139 has added a pre -liaison view function to AI
- This summarizes the web pages without needing to click on a link
- Like all the generation of AI, you need time to think, which can be a pain
With artificial intelligence (AI) all anger these days, it is not uncommon to find that your favorite web browser has added a lot of characteristics of AI designed to change the way you navigate online. Firefox is no exception: as explained in the launch notes of its latest update of version 139, the browser has brought previous views of links to its users.
Once the experimental function is enabled, it can activate it floating the mouse pointer on a link and pressing Alt+Shift. This triggers a preview table that summarizes the key information about the website so you can see what it is without the need to visit.
At first glance, I love this idea. Imagine that lands on a web page and you are not sure if you can trust your integrated links. Or you are super busy and you just want to know if it is worth clicking on a linked page. With a previous view of AI Link, you can get artificial intelligence to do the job for you.
Firefox’s AI comes into play by showing a set of key points that summarize the main ideas of the linked page, helping to understand it before clicking. But although that initially sounds great, I’m not totally convinced yet.
A good idea with an annoying defect
I have been a faithful Firefox user for 20 years, and I have seen that a large amount changes at that time. And with the emergence of AI, I should not surprise me that the Mozilla developer has inclined to automatic learning characteristics in recent years.
While the previous views of the link feel like a good idea on the surface, for one thing, they allow you to verify if a link is really what it says without having to click and find out, they suffer from a problem of common: you must wait for them to generate. It is the same with tools like Chatgpt, where you should wait for AI to think about an answer. The previous views of the Firefox link are not snapshots, and when I tried them, I discovered that they ended up braking my navigation experience.
Even so, they must be activated with a specific keyboard shortcut, which means that they will not appear when they simply move on a link, minimizing the risk of accidental activations. That is good, since a slow generation picture that darkens the text you are trying to read would become annoying quickly. As things are, you can activate the previous views if you wish, or ignore them totally if you do not.
This is far from being the only tool that Firefox has added during the last year or so. You can now add a chatbot from AI to your sidebar, use AI to check your eyelash groups and more. And although the previous views of the link help keep up with the current Tech Zeitgeist, I am not sure that it is a feature that uses a lot at this time.
