Slashdot Mirror
Incorporating Machine Learning into Firefox 2.0?
blakeross asks: "I will be doing research this summer at Stanford with Professor Andrew Ng about how we can incorporate machine learning into Firefox. As we work to finish up Firefox 1.0, we're also seeking ideas that will make Firefox 2.0 blow every other browser out of the water. People who come up with the best 3-5 ideas that involve the use of machine learning will win Gmail accounts, and if we implement your idea you'll be acknowledged in both our paper and in Firefox credits. Your idea will also be appreciated by the millions of people who use Firefox. We'll also entertain Thunderbird proposals. See my weblog post for more details; I'll read all comments posted in response to this story or to my weblog."
(Undisclaimer: I do machine learning research at BYU.)
:)
:)
Machine learning, in general, is getting computers to generalize based on data instances. The two main flavors are classification (inferring classifications of data instances based on previous instances) and regression (inferring a function based on input/output pairs).
A lot of people incorporate artificial intelligence into the category "machine learning," though it's not strictly correct. Machine learning is more a branch of AI than anything. One way to keep them straight is to think AI = deduction, ML = induction. (That's vastly simplifying, but it helps to classify them roughly.)
I wonder which way the author leans? Could he possibly post to clarify his meaning?
You can do an awful lot with machine learning that you can't do with conventional techniques. You can often get great results for otherwise NP-hard problems. Slashdot had a story a while back about using machine learning to do mesh compression, in which their algorithm comes up with a close approximation to the real answer to an NP-hard problem in polynomial time.
I'm currently using it to interpolate 2D images, and kicking bicubic B-spline interpolation all to heck. (Paper pending...) The machine learning algorithm infers shapes from the pixels, and keeps edges sharp.
If I come up with an idea, I'll post it later. In the meantime: isn't Firefox supposed to be lean and mean?
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Requirement met: www.google.com, type in tabbrowser extension. First link is a mozilla plugin that has that as an option.
s .html.en#download
Actually, it was the third link. http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabextension
Click the third link down on that page at that area (Download Tabbrowser Extensions [tabextensions_en.xpi]" and there ya go.
-DrkShadow
"PS: Not machine learning, but the sole requirement by me for a browser (dunno if its done in firefox now as hvent used it for a long time): Open new tab as a default rather than a new window, or at least provide the option."
3 words: Tab Browser Extensions. It's all there.
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
2. Create a full-text index in real-time of every page that has been browsed. When the user visits any web page, display a sidebar of "Related previously-viewed pages."
see http://pychelsea.sourceforge.net/
Just wanted to let you know that Netscape 6.1 has searchable bookmarks, at least the one I have installed searches my bookmarks.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I've been waiting for searchable bookmarks for about a decade now and it is yet to appear in any web browser.
Your decade is at a close! As of version 5, available today, Omniweb has both searchable bookmarks and history, Launchbar (also available now) can search across all browser bookmarks simultaneouslt, and Safari 2.0 will have this kind of functionality as well next year in Mac OS X "Tiger".
~jeff
Wow, he followed that suggestion fast:
From Mozilla Firefox 0.9 (One Tree Hill) Release Notes
I don't know if he's a "programming god," but I seriously doubt he's "some highschool kid with all summer to screw around."
http://prefbar.mozdev.org/
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
uhm, every mozilla-based browser, as well as konqueror, can already do almost exactly what you have described. i just checked, i can do all of it except drag the bookmark to the desktop and filesystem integration in mozilla and firefox, and it only takes about 30 seconds to make a shortcut to the bookmark group on the desktop manually. in konqueror i can do all of it except tabs (it opens a new window on middle click, which is as good as tabs if you give it its own desktop) and bookmark groups, although i understand theres a patch underway to enable bookmark groups. if the features of moz and konq were combined you would have EXACTLY what you described. so, nothing new here, just a wish to put them together.
This is the only suggestion so far that really seems worth making the browser larger (and hence, slower).
Link Prefetching is already in Mozilla/Firefox.
Shamelessly ripped from Here
The problem with your navigation keys is that you've got the system caret accessibility option turned on. In Tools->Options->Advanced->Accessibility, turn off 'Move system caret with focus/selection changes'. Navigation keys should now act just like MSIE.
That's exactly what Windows XP has. Recent programs are on the menu you immediately pull up, and all programs are under a menu called "All Programs" at the bottom.
Also, you can disable that feature in Windows 2000.
Konqueror can be made to open a new tab instead of a new window.
From in Konqueror, Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Web Behavior -> Open Links in a new tab instead of a new window.
It says links, but the setting applies to filesystem browsing too.
bash: rtfm: command not found
This is an option which Opera already supports. Button layout is Rewind, Back, Forward and Next. I would love to see this in Firefox.
I don't think machine learning is needed for this problem.
FlashBlock. already does something like you suggested with a button allowing the content to loaded. It just replaces all Flash with a placeholder that you can click to load. The newest versions add a whitelist of sites to allow (e.g. Homestar). Since there are relatively few sites with a legitimate need for Flash, it works quite well in practice.
The page says "Sorry, no Firefox 0.9 installer yet.", but I've found it works fine for me with 0.9.x.
Firefox has done this since forever. Right now, I get "gmail.google.com" before "gamespot.com", because the primary heuristic is visit count.
Both Mozilla and Firefox do the same thing, although the autocomplete implementation for each is separate.
Bug 78270 discusses the algorithm; this was fixed before Firefox was ever released. It was inspired in part because IE appears to use a similar algorithm.
Check Fast Forward and Rewind
This is BUILT INTO FIREFOX. Just go to manage bookmarks, and use the search bar.
Not a sentence!
Submitted to bugzilla.mozilla.org here.
It's already here. It's called virtual memory. Rarely used sections of memory get paged to disk in favour of more commonly used pages.