Whoa! I just noticed in #firefox Nightly that if I right-click on some text, I can choose to translate the selection. Neat!

s08nlql9@lemm.ee to Firefox@lemmy.ml – 170 points –
Mike Conley (:mconley) ⚙️ (@mconley@mozilla.social)
mozilla.social
12

It's also local to your device and doesn't get sent anywhere as I understand it. Firefox is such a boss.

It'll be nice to not need an extension for this.

it supports translating whole pages currently, its hidden in the hamburger menu though and doesn't support all languages

If its maintained by Mozilla, then it would be nice if this stays an extension. This makes it easier to uninstall stuff you don't like or what to replace it with another extension doing something similar. Unless it is a core to the system, I prefer to have extensions; if its maintained by the same devs off course. I prefer not to install third party extensions, that's not what I'm suggesting here.

Maybe defaultly installed extension? This feature would be useful for normies who dont install extensions but would remain uninstallable.

That's what I suggested. Previously Mozilla did that too. I think the "Pocket" was an extension, but later decided to make it un-unistallable (not sure if it was uninstallable in before). But yeah, you get the idea. As an extension people can still remove it (I know I would).

If you'd like it gone from the UI, you can set extensions.pocket.enabled in about:config to false.

As I understand, the Pocket code in Firefox is a glorified bookmark, so there isn't really a need to remove it beyond that.

That's great, thanks. I must have tweaked something in the past, as the extension doesn't appear in my UI. But good to know about this setting (which I'm gong to false it now). Besides there might not be a need, I really dislike that this foreign extension cannot be removed. It's not maintained by Mozilla. Similar to apps on your phone you cannot remove, but are from other devs and such. It's annoying. But anyway, thank you for this.

Mozilla bought the company behind Pocket in 2017, so the extension is actually maintained by Mozilla.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service)#History

Mozilla staff stated that Pocket would continue to operate as an independent subsidiary

That's not actually maintained by Mozilla. Its still operating on their own. I meant maintained directly by Mozilla stuff, as part of Firefox, not just the name of Mozilla slapped on it because they are the shareholders or like that. However, this is much better situation than I thought and thanks to this reference from you I am less worried now.

it's available in the current stable version, just behind an about:config flag, will edit this one later on with the one when I get the time to get back on my machine

edit: took a while but I believe it's browser.translations.select.enable that enables it