Retiring the Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta extensions

Well i remember trying to train Dragon Dictate many many years ago teaching it to recognize voice patterns etc, it was a nightmare. Well i thought that Mozzilla was in the ballpark with creating a similar open source voice input although limited, voice recognition process that required minimal if no training and having tried Voice Fille and Voice Beta extensions, appeared to have ironed out many of the annoying stinks out without the requirement and needing to sit and read the Art Of War or Shakespeare before the progrann anaged to get the first line errect.
Oh well again the onset or ability to use ones voice too fill out forms / transcribe text and incubate or troll our Hech without need of hours ttwo get it to orgnize a sentence without having to redit and retype the (d)occumentevery second word was either not understood, or the (s)oftware would make up its own mind.
It is funny that although we now carry mobile phones - ring ring ā€œhelloā€ - to the dream was walk to reach others essentially, (b)ending and Ā§yping text messages, like another antiquated technology the pager.
The above mistake were int(er)entional
I hate say i am old enough - just - remember writing a letter and posting it. Then came the mobile brick, but for some reason just like the lost concept of talking to each other - watching people at the same table texting each other and except for yes or No a giggle between sending an sms to the person next to you or across the table has become the norm.
As someone who has difficulty using a keyboard and know people who would find the use of voice commands, would improve many lives i find it strange that having used Dragon Dictate 10 or more years ago, we still sit and plonk and thud a keyboard or phone screen, the ability to speak or hold a conversation has discapeared if born after 2000. However being able to control ones tech with voice commands or dictate a letter is still limited and software etc, is often expensive but when it works can make a long painful job a little less expensive and a deal a lot less annoying.
I must say i will miss Voice fill and Firefox voice beta will be a loss for may of us that find it difficult to use a keyboard etc. But it seems very clear that voice recognition, dictation or simply accessing or commanding our tech via voice is something that just either is yet to catch on or as many have found the software is still expensive and
requirement for training seems to have been stuck in the too hard or not viable . Although i have found Mozillaā€™s foray into this area of tech basket and buried deep in the internet cemetery. Although not functional full hardware It will be a loss. The glimmer of hope is with Mozilla being open source someone may pick it up in i hope not to distant future and will see it as challenge and pick it up again and use them as a template too develop this software further.

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Discussion in Reddit: https://redd.it/l81odx

ā€¦ no explanation for the decommissioning. I can guess a reason, but Iā€™d prefer the explanation to come from Mozilla.

Primarily economics, I guess. Plus maybe logistics, given COVID-19 restrictions.

@caitlin please, can someone at Mozilla confirm?

In any case:

Found

ā€¦ Mozilla has realigned its priorities, and Firefox Voice will no longer be supported by Mozilla. The Firefox Voice team will be going to new things, no longer with Mozilla. ā€¦

:arrow_forward: Changing World, Changing Mozilla - The Mozilla Blog (2020-08-11)

Historical

New Test Pilot Experiments Available Today - The Mozilla Blog (2017-08-01)

Mozilla Org Wide Updates: Impacts on Common Voice - Common Voice - Mozilla Discourse

Test Pilot/Voice Fill category (archived)

Update on Common Voice: Mozilla Foundation - Common Voice - Mozilla Discourse

@LexiconCode please, can you suggest a forum thatā€™s suitable for discussing a range of possible solutions? Not Firefox-specific.

For what itā€™s worth, https://www.google.com/search?q=ā€œSpeech+recognitionā€+ā€œopen+sourceā€+forum&tbs=li%3A1#unfucked led me to (amongst other things):

ā€“ running phpBB. Iā€™d prefer a Discourse forum but I shouldnā€™t be fussy.

I donā€™t have any recommendations for a forum at this time. Most of the work I do is coordinated through chat via Gitter/Matrix. However a Forum format would be preferable for such a discussion.

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I took up to FF because Chrome is a HUGE Resource Hog on my systemā€¦
I mean ā€¦ it slows to a crawl if I have a number of tabs openā€¦ gets unusable.
so I wonā€™t be going back to it any time soonā€¦ for sureā€¦

Hi, @andrenatal!

Thanks for replying. I understand. Itā€™s unfortunate that Mozilla canā€™t continue these services, but Iā€™m proud of Mozilla for being a privacy-conscientious, user-focused company. Thanks for all that you do! May God bless you. Jesus Christ loves you - He always has and always will, no matter what! Youā€™re priceless and you matter!

Keep up the great work! :slight_smile:

Kind Regards, SubjectTea9

I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking Pro. I have seen that outperformed by Speechnotes. I donā€™t fully understand this move and seems to be in the opposite direction from whatā€™s trending. I hope you guys reconsider. Thanks.

I had to reply to you because I couldnā€™t figure out where to post ;-(

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Hi. I just looked into Speechnotes. I see that it requires you to pay through a Google account, is it compatible with Brave? And will it stay compatible with Brave after Google makes those changes to the chromium APIs? There are some use cases where it would be helpful for me, but itā€™s not worth it if Iā€™m stuck with the bloat and user tracking of vanilla Chrome.

Yes as a long term user of firefox on Mate, Iā€™m sad to see yet more areas of this browser made less, not more, user friendly. Up to now I only had to switch to Chrome for casting.

sad sad day to see removal of voice

Hello, Isnā€™t the server side open-sourced as well ? that would allow users in nee of this functionnality to run their own stack

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Thank you for the informationā€¦ what does an ordinary non-computer person need to doā€¦ can I still voice on zoom and stuff like thatā€¦ if so I am a okā€¦

I would also like to be able to do voice searches on Firefox ! Google chrome does this very well already, but I prefer Firefox.

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Hi @bj_johnson2003, this should only affect your ability to do voice search on Firefox. Youā€™ll still be able to use voice features for other products like Zoom. :slight_smile:

I run my fashion blog so I research new topics each day which makes me tired sometimes. But with Firefox voice recognition I enjoy researching. Why retiring voice fill and firefox voice extension :frowning:

From https://github.com/mozilla-extensions/firefox-voice/issues/1913#issuecomment-775621853

ā€¦ we are decommissioning the addons purely because the use of Googleā€™s STT backend wonā€™t scale for us, and we never managed to train production ready models through projects like Deep Speech and Common Voice with the quality required for VF and FxVoice.

Google Chrome has voice typing.

Dear everyone,
Could you please share your thoughts on this idea? You can give a vote (kudo) to rally this effort in the down link, hopefully to ressurect the extensions Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-native-search-by-voice-to-firefox-mobile/idc-p/2185

@grahamperrin @caitlin @theo181297 @Gork_Skoal @sampaul25 @jessicaneo52 @hedyramy @bj_johnson2003 @jackblack65 @bobw6744 @Green_man @cosmonot1 @andrenatal @SubjectTea9 @Lspcguy

Dear everyone,
Could you please share your thoughts on this idea? You can give a vote (kudo) to rally this effort in the down link, hopefully to ressurect the extensions Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-native-search-by-voice-to-firefox-mobile/idc-p/2185
@LexiconCode @subjaysmb @Krrishdhaneja @buddhalion @artjgalus @speff @DavidPBaril @ZeusCell @David_Strong @sublimemm @Phie @Macawlover70 @dkd @inyazserg @BruSkald

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Why in heavenā€™s name was Voice Fill not continued? A bribe from Google?! I am eternally stuck without privacy because I use voice search very often. Not even Brave has a usable Voice Search optionā€¦the Google monopoly has to end!!! I use Firefox so infrequently now because of this.

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