The past couple of days, I’ve been trying out Mozilla’s beta version of Orbit, advertised as “AI you can trust” for “easily summarizing emails, documents, articles, and videos across the web without sacrificing your privacy.”
One of the most useful–and amusing at times–features I’ve found is its ability to provide text summaries of YouTube videos.
Unlike the other AI chat bots I’ve tried, with its summary and questions posed to it, Orbit focuses on the specific web page you’re currently on instead of the entire web.
Orbit is still in beta, and Mozilla seems receptive to, and apparently acts on, the feedback they’re receiving, so if you’re potentially interested in such a tool, now would be a good time to try Orbit and weigh in on its design.
Joining now is not euphorically jumping on a bandwagon but coughing dust after being trampled over two dozens times by other latecomers who missed the train.
The violet circle stays on screen all the time. Its not even static. Some sort of animation thats highly distracting. Mozilla totally ditched UX with this one.
It could’ve been a right click menu option or toolbar icon.
That violet circle–the default display–is one of the main complaints I saw when I looked at reviews of Orbit. Some complained, and they added a “minimal” option for it, which is much less annoying than the big violet circle. You can try the minimal option via the Settings in Orbit. Much better.
Actually, it’s that problem and the solution they came up with that made me think Mozilla is actually going to pay attention to user feedback.
Yes, it’s great when I see a video with a click-bait title that makes me curious but I don’t want to spend the time to watch the whole video. It has already saved me from wasting a bunch of time!
