Latest news with #Firefox
The Star
a day ago
- The Star
Is AI the future of web browsing?
When was the last time you thought about your web browser? If you don't remember, no one will blame you. Web browsers have remained fundamentally unchanged for decades: You open an app, such as Chrome, Safari or Firefox, and type a website into the address bar. Many of us settled on one and fell into what I call 'browser inertia,' never bothering to see if there's anything better. Yet a web browser is important because so much of what we do on computers takes place inside one, including word processing, chatting on Slack and managing calendars and email. That's why I felt excited when I recently tried Dia, a new kind of web browser from the Browser Co. of New York, a startup. The app is powered by generative artificial intelligence, the technology driving popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, to answer our questions. Dia illuminates how a web browser can do much more than load websites – and even help us learn and save time. I tested Dia for a week and found myself browsing the web in new ways. In seconds, the browser provided a written recap of a 20-minute video without my watching its entirety. While scanning a breaking news article, the browser generated a list of other relevant articles for a deeper understanding. I even wrote to the browser's built-in chatbot for help proofreading a paragraph of text. Dia is on the cusp of an emerging era of AI-powered internet navigators that could persuade people to try something new. This week, Perplexity, a startup that makes a search engine, announced an AI web browser called Comet, and some news outlets have reported that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, also plans to release a browser this year. OpenAI declined to comment. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. The two companies have denied the suit's claims.) Tech behemoths like Google and Apple have added lightweight AI features into their existing browsers, Chrome and Safari, including tools for proofreading text and automatically summarizing articles. Dia, which has not yet been publicly released, is available as a free app for Mac computers on an invitation-only basis. What does this all mean for the future of the web? Here's what you need to know. What is an AI browser, and what does it do? Like other web browsers, Dia is an app you open to load webpages. What's unique is the way the browser seamlessly integrates an AI chatbot to help – without leaving the webpage. Hitting a shortcut (command+E) in Dia opens a small window that runs parallel to the webpage. Here, you can type questions related to the content you are reading or the video you are watching, and a chatbot will respond. For example: – While writing this column on the Google Docs website, I asked the chatbot if I used 'on the cusp' correctly, and it confirmed that I did. – While reading a news article about the Texas floods, I asked the browser's chatbot to tell me more about how the crisis unfolded. The bot generated a summary about the history of Texas' public safety infrastructure and included a list of relevant articles. – While watching a 22-minute YouTube video about car jump starters, I asked the chatbot to tell me which tools were best. Dia immediately pulled from the video's transcript to produce a summary of the top contenders, sparing me the need to watch the entire thing. In contrast, chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude require opening a separate tab or app and pasting in content for the chatbot to evaluate and answer questions, a process that has always busted my workflow. How does it work? AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude generate responses using large language models, systems that use complex statistics to guess which words belong together. Each chatbot's model has its strengths and weaknesses. The Browser Co. of New York said it had teamed up with multiple companies to use their AI models, including the ones behind Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude. When users type a question, the Dia browser analyzes it and pulls answers from whichever AI model is best suited for answering. For instance, Anthropic's AI model, Claude Sonnet, specializes in computer programming. So if you have questions about something you are coding, the browser will pull an answer from that model. If you have questions about writing, the Dia browser may generate an answer with the model that OpenAI uses for ChatGPT, which is well known for handling language. What I appreciate about this design is that you, the user, don't need to know or think about which chatbot to use. That makes generative AI more accessible to the mainstream. 'You should just be able to say, 'Hey, I'm looking at this thing, I've got a question about it,'' said Josh Miller, the CEO of the Browser Co., which was founded in 2020 and has raised over $100 million. 'We should be able to answer it for you and do work on your behalf.' But aren't there imperfections? While Dia proved helpful in most of my tests, it was, like all generative AI tools, sometimes incorrect. While I was browsing Wirecutter, a New York Times publication that reviews products, I asked the chatbot if there were any deals on the site for water filters. The chatbot said no, even as I read about a water filtration system that was on sale. Miller said that because the browser drew answers from various AI models, its responses were subject to the same mistakes as their respective chatbots. Those occasionally get facts wrong and even make things up, a phenomenon known as 'hallucination.' More often than not, however, I found Dia to be more accurate and helpful than a stand-alone chatbot. Still, I double-checked answers by clicking on any links Dia's bot was citing, like the articles about the recent floods in Texas. What about privacy? Asking AI to help with a webpage you're looking at means that data may be shared with whatever AI model is being used to answer the question, which raises privacy concerns. The Browser Co. said that only the necessary data related to your requests was shared with its partners providing AI models, and that those partners were under contract to dispose of your data. Privacy experts have long warned not to share any sensitive information, like a document containing trade secrets, with an AI chatbot since a rogue employee could gain access to the data. So I recommend asking Dia's chatbot for help only with innocuous browsing activities like parsing a YouTube video. But when browsing something you wouldn't want others to know about, like a health condition, refrain from using the AI. This exchange – potentially giving up some privacy to get help from AI – may be the new social contract going forward. How much will this cost? Dia is free, but AI models have generally been very expensive for companies to operate. Consumers who rely on Dia's AI browser will eventually have to pay. Miller said that in the coming weeks, Dia would introduce subscriptions costing US$5 a month to hundreds of dollars a month, depending on how frequently a user prods its AI bot with questions. The browser will remain free for those who use the AI tool only a few times a week. So whether an AI browser will be your next web browser will depend largely on how much you want to use, and pay, for these services. So far, only 3% of the people who use AI every day are paid users, according to a survey by Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm. That number could grow, of course, if generative AI becomes a more useful tool that we naturally use in everyday life. I suspect the humble web browser will open that path forward. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Time Business News
2 days ago
- Business
- Time Business News
Tired of PDF Headaches? How Developers Can Automate Document Generation With Pixel-Perfect Accuracy
For developers working in fast-moving SaaS environments, one pain point continues to slow productivity and create unnecessary friction: generating consistent, production-ready PDFs. Whether it's invoices, reports, onboarding documents, or agreements, the old methods of using Word templates, PDF editors, or cobbled-together scripts often result in broken layouts, unscalable workflows, and high maintenance overhead. In a digital ecosystem that demands automation, the way we generate documents should reflect the same standard. Traditional PDF solutions often lack the flexibility developers need. Most template-based systems rely on rigid formatting tools that don't adapt well to changes in layout, branding, or dynamic content. Exporting from office software introduces a host of compatibility issues, especially when the final document must mirror modern HTML/CSS styling. In large-scale or API-driven systems, even minor inconsistencies can cascade into major support problems or brand misalignment. These shortcomings become even more apparent when teams try to automate. Many PDF tools weren't built with developers in mind. Limited REST APIs, restricted customization options, and poor support for modern design elements like responsive layouts or fillable form fields make them a bad fit for today's needs. Modern web development has embraced HTML and CSS as the foundation for interface design, email rendering, and now, document output. HTML-to-PDF conversion isn't a workaround anymore. It's a best practice. By rendering a document directly from a styled HTML page, teams ensure full control over layout, fonts, branding, and responsiveness. More importantly, this approach lets developers create dynamic, data-driven documents that can be generated on demand, localized per user, and integrated seamlessly into any workflow. HTML-to-PDF APIs empower dev teams to treat documents like code: testable, version-controlled, and scalable. One of the biggest technical advantages of modern html to pdf api tools is the use of headless browsers. These tools render HTML/CSS just like Chrome or Firefox would, but in a server environment. This guarantees pixel-perfect fidelity between the web interface and the resulting PDF, even when advanced CSS or JavaScript is involved. PDFGate is a standout platform in this space. Designed specifically for developers, it provides a high-quality, easy-to-integrate HTML to PDF API that leverages headless browser rendering for 100 percent accuracy. That means your exported PDFs will look exactly like your web app, dashboard, or invoice template with no broken elements and no layout surprises. It also supports advanced features like fillable fields, digital signature placeholders, custom headers and footers, and embedded fonts. This gives teams full design control without compromise. Many use cases, especially in HR, legal, and healthcare, require PDFs that aren't just pretty but interactive. Fillable fields allow users to input data directly into the document, sign forms, or save partially completed versions. PDFGate makes it easy to convert standard HTML forms into fillable PDF documents, preserving the interactive fields during conversion. That means you can reuse the same HTML codebase you use on your website and turn it into a portable, interactive document without plugins or proprietary formats. For businesses handling onboarding, client intake, job applications, or compliance workflows, this is a major productivity boost. As businesses grow, so does the volume of documentation. Whether it's daily order summaries, recurring invoices, or system-generated reports, generating PDFs manually quickly becomes unmanageable. With an API-based approach, documents can be created programmatically, triggered by events in your app or CRM system. This eliminates repetitive work, reduces the risk of human error, and ensures that each document follows the same formatting rules. Using a robust solution like PDFGate ensures that every generated PDF, whether it's the 10th or the 10,000th, looks and performs identically. The API accepts raw HTML and CSS, processes it via a headless browser, and returns a downloadable PDF that matches the original design exactly. This kind of consistency is impossible to achieve with manual workflows or outdated template tools. Your brand identity extends beyond your website and into every document you send. PDFs used in client communication such as receipts, confirmations, contracts, or reports should reflect the same level of polish and attention to detail as your user interface. With HTML-to-PDF generation, your team can ensure that logos, fonts, layouts, and colors match your digital presence perfectly. Legacy export tools often distort this experience, either by flattening content, stripping styles, or ignoring CSS rules. But a headless-browser-powered solution like PDFGate renders the full page as intended, preserving the design exactly as your front-end developers envisioned it. One of the key benefits of using PDFGate is its developer-first design. The platform offers a clean RESTful API, clear documentation, and flexible integration options that suit both monolithic systems and microservices. Whether you're building in Python, Ruby, Go, or any other stack, the API is simple to call and quick to implement. The documentation includes working examples and explains how to use options like page size, margins, headers, footers, and authentication. There's no need to learn a proprietary template language or install heavyweight rendering engines. If your team already knows how to write HTML/CSS, you're already most of the way there. Another major advantage is the ability to embed digital signature fields and meta tags. These features are often missing from basic PDF export tools. This makes the platform suitable for legal, financial, and compliance-heavy industries. PDF generation often becomes part of mission-critical workflows such as order processing, payroll, tax documentation, and legal contracts. Downtime or instability isn't an option. PDFGate is built to handle production-grade workloads and offers the reliability and performance scaling required for enterprise use. Whether your system needs to generate 10 PDFs per day or 10,000 per hour, PDFGate's infrastructure can support it. The API is built to scale automatically, ensuring your platform delivers consistent results even during traffic spikes or end-of-month reporting cycles. PDFGate isn't just another document tool. It's a purpose-built solution for developers who need fast, reliable, and accurate PDF rendering. With support for modern standards, headless browser technology, and advanced features like fillable fields and digital signature placement, it offers everything teams need to automate document creation in a modern SaaS or e-commerce environment. Unlike one-size-fits-all tools or bloated desktop editors, PDFGate is designed for speed, simplicity, and developer control. It helps you build document automation into your platform, product, or internal system without breaking your design system or wasting engineering hours. The cost of using outdated or manual PDF tools is higher than most teams realise. It shows up in time lost, errors made, branding inconsistencies, and frustrated users. By adopting a modern HTML-to-PDF workflow and partnering with a trusted platform like PDFGate, development teams can automate smarter, scale faster, and deliver a more consistent experience to customers and stakeholders. For pixel-perfect accuracy, interactive forms, fast deployment, and full developer flexibility, PDFGate offers a powerful solution that brings the future of document generation into your hands without the legacy headaches. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
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Business Standard
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
AI web browsers explained: From Perplexity Comet to ChatGPT shopping
US-based artificial intelligence startup Perplexity recently introduced its AI browser, Comet, which uses 'agentic AI' to understand user intent and perform multi-step tasks on its own. Whether it's summarising pages or helping book tickets, the browser is said to handle tasks with minimal input. Meanwhile, OpenAI's ChatGPT has also stepped into AI-powered web experiences, launching a new shopping assistant that helps users search, compare, and make buying decisions directly through the web, making online shopping smarter and more interactive. This brings us to question: what exactly is an AI browser? And how is it different from traditional web browsers such as Google Chrome? Let us find out: What are AI browsers AI browsers are next-generation web browsers that come with built-in artificial intelligence to make users' browsing experience smarter and more helpful. Instead of just letting users view web pages, these browsers use AI models to understand what a user is looking for, automate repetitive tasks, and offer personalised suggestions. The core differentiating factor here is agentic AI. What is agentic AI Agentic AI refers to systems capable of acting independently, making decisions with minimal human supervision. These AI agents can perform complex tasks across various domains, from customer service to sales and marketing, opening new possibilities for automation. How do AI browsers work AI web browsers use AI agents that can understand your intent and carry out tasks on your behalf, like reading content, clicking links, or even booking tickets, without needing constant input from you. More specifically, web-based AI agents in a browser understand natural commands, summarise content, and take smart actions, which makes web tasks faster and easier without switching between apps. These AI agents also learn from your browsing habit, getting better at handling tasks on their own with time. How are AI browsers different from traditional web browsers AI web browsers stand apart from traditional browsers by adding intelligence and automation to the browsing experience. In a regular browser like Chrome or Firefox, users manually search, open tabs, read content, and take action. AI browsers, on the other hand, can understand natural language commands, summarise pages instantly, and even take actions like clicking links or filling out forms. Purpose Traditional browsers: Mainly used to display websites and let users browse manually. AI browsers: Designed to help users complete tasks using AI understanding and automation. User input Traditional browsers: You type search queries, open tabs, and click around. AI browsers: You can give natural language instructions like 'find me the best budget phone' or 'summarise this article.' Task handling Traditional browsers: All actions (searching, comparing, reading) are done by the user. Though some browsers have been updated with select smart capabilities. AI browsers: Can handle many tasks for you like summarising content, booking services, or gathering information. Task automation Traditional browsers: No or limited built-in intelligence, everything is done manually. AI browsers: Use large language models to automate steps and respond smartly. Tab and content management Traditional browsers: Users open and manage multiple tabs. AI browsers: It can summarise pages, preview results, or give direct answers, reducing the need for many tabs. Examples Traditional: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari. AI-powered: Perplexity AI's Comet, Opera's Neon Perplexity Comet Perplexity Comet involves smart software agents that can understand user goals and context to carry out multi-step, repetitive actions on their own. According to Perplexity, the assistant can manage full sessions, eliminate distractions, and streamline workflows, whether users are comparing products, researching topics, or solving complex problems. Google's AI Mode AI Mode in Google Search is powered by Google's Gemini 2.5 AI model. It lets users speak a question, upload an image, or take a photo using Google Lens and then ask questions based on what's in the picture. For example, you can identify a plant and ask how to care for it, or upload a photo of a broken item and ask how to fix it. Important to note, the AI Mode is part of the Google Search experience and available through any web browser, including Chrome. Opera's Neon Opera Neon is an agentic browser designed to understand a user's intent and assist with their digital tasks. Opera's AI tools: Chat, Do, and Make. This lets users get answers, complete tasks, and create content directly in the browser. For example, it can fill forms on your behalf. What is the future of AI Browsers The future of AI browsers depends on their ability to act more like personal assistants than just tools for viewing websites. As AI agents become more advanced, they are increasingly able to perform complete tasks on behalf of users, reducing the need to manually search, click, or even open separate apps. AI browsers powered by agentic AI can understand complex requests, plan actions, and execute them across multiple steps, all within a single browser window. This opens up possibilities where users might no longer need to install separate apps for tasks like shopping, booking tickets, or checking schedules. For example, recently, Google announced virtual try-ons and buying using AI Mode, it helps you shop by personalising results, automating purchases, and even letting you virtually try on clothes, all within a smart browsing experience. This functionality could replace the need for separate shopping apps of each platform.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
A tool that can make sense of a screen full of documents and tabs? Sign me up
I am writing this column in a text editor on my laptop. I also have a browser (Firefox) running that has – pauses to count – 18 tabs open. Each one represents a web page containing information that I searched for when planning the column: websites , YouTube videos , a list of relevant podcasts to which I should have listened , pdfs of relevant reports , notes that I've made when reading through the sources I've consulted , lists of links that are conceivably relevant – etc, etc. And, somehow, I have to weave a coherent narrative from all the stuff in those tabs. Cue violins? Save your sympathy: I'm just an ordinary Joe facing what confronts millions of 'knowledge workers' every day. As Steven Johnson, one of the world's best science writers, puts it : 'You find yourself in these situations where the job you were trying to do involves synthesi sing information that is scattered across 15 open tabs and a bunch of documents sitting on your drive, and, you know, wherever that is, all over the place. 'And whatever you're doing, whether you're writing a book or working on a marketing plan, whether you're conducting user research and you've got 20 different transcripts, or you're working on a documentary and you got all these interviews – it's just very hard to manage.' And switching from tab to tab, trying to find your way to the information that you're looking for, just doesn't work any more. We're long past 'information overload' and have moved onto something much worse: a phase of cognitive fragmentation, when information is not just over abundant but scattered, disorgani sed and contextually disconnected, making it nearly impossible to synthesise or see relationships between pieces of knowledge. What we need, Johnson thought, is a new kind of computing tool that would enable us to spend less time trying to organise all these disparate sources of information. That could be done by providing a single virtual space into which we could dump all those pesky tabs and then get an AI that's 'read' your documents to help you make sense of them. As it happened, some researchers at Google Labs had been thinking along similar lines and so Johnson hooked up with them – and NotebookLM was born. It's a remarkable tool that, to date, seems to have flown under the radar of public attention, perhaps because people thought it was just some esoteric tool for academics. The basic version is free ( there is, as ever, a premium version) , it's easy to use and it runs in your web browser. To engage with it, you have to identify a number of sources of information on a topic in which you're interested and upload them to the tool. Each notebook you create can have up to 50 sources in various formats: audio files, text (both pasted into NotebookLM and in common file types), Google Docs, Google Slides, Markdown (a simple markup language for creating formatted text) and pdf files, web URLs and YouTube videos. Once the sources are in place, the fun begins. NotebookLM allows you to explore the sources in a variety of ways: by providing summaries or analyses ; picking out common themes or divergences; preparing study guides or a briefing document; creating a visual mind map that may be useful ( for example, in a PowerPoint presentation); creating timelines or notes on particular aspects of the sources in response to a query – and so on. Intriguingly, it can also generate what Google calls an 'audio overview' of the material you've uploaded in the form of an AI-generated podcast-type conversation. This last feature has now gone viral in a modest way after the New York Times tech journalist Kevin Roose uploaded his latest credit card statement and then had to listen to a pair of AI-generated strangers discussing his profligacy. Of course, underpinning all this is a large language model (LLM) – in this case, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro – but here it plays a different role than in its usual form. What Google has done is to use a powerful general-purpose LLM to create a personali sed and private AI tool that has expertise in the information the user gives it. So rather than being a general-purpose chatbot, it was designed to be deeply knowledg able about your specific documents and research materials. This is achieved using a fancy technique called retrieval- augmented generation (RAG). Within NotebookLM, RAG improves the performance and reliability of Gemini by incorporating external, verified sources of knowledge (the sources uploaded by the user) into its text-generation process. So rather than relying solely on its internal training, it actively retrieves and references the sources as a way of keeping it 'grounded'. I've been using NotebookLM for a couple of years and have found it genuinely useful for both academic and journalistic work. It is a good example of technology being used for the augmentation of human capabilities rather than as a means of undermining or displacing them. And it's a pretty good way of controlling browser-tab bloat. What I'm reading Admission of gilt Trump's Gilded Design Style May Be Gaudy. But Don't Call It 'Rococo' is a nice Bloomberg essay by Feargus O'Sullivan . Brought to book Regina Munch's essay Encounters with Reality in the Point magazine offers a critical appraisal of Christine Rosen's interesting book The Extinction of Experience. Town crier Why I Moved Out of Temple Bar After 25 Years has Frank McDonald writing in the Irish Times about how the coolest part of Dublin became uninhabitable.
Time Business News
4 days ago
- Time Business News
How to Set Up Netgear WiFi Extender via Web Browser or WPS
Yes, there are mainly two methods that a Netgear extender user can use to configure it. One is just with the help of a button and another is through the computer or laptop. We will share both of the setup methods with correct instructions to set the extender up with your router. Let's start with the technical configuration route which is manual (through mywifiext wizard). And then end it with the quick setup methods (WPS button). If you're someone who likes seeing things on screen and making sure each step is done right, this method is for you. Connect your Netgear WiFi extender into a power socket. Watch the Power LED, give it 30 seconds or so. It should go solid green or white. If it's blinking forever, try a different outlet. On your phone, laptop, or whatever device you've got go to your WiFi list. Look for something like NETGEAR_EXT. Connect to that. No password needed yet. Just hop on. Open Chrome, Safari, Firefox whatever you use. Type or into the address bar. Hit enter. If that doesn't load? Try: 192.168.1.250 Still no luck? Reboot the extender. Try again. Once you land on the Netgear setup page, you'll get a step-by-step wizard. Use these instructions: Choose your home WiFi network. Enter the actual password for your router. (Not the one on the extender label.) Let the extender do its thing. It'll connect, set up a boosted version of your WiFi, and ask you to name it. You can keep the default name or call it something like MyWiFi_EXT if you want to know it's the extended signal. Your device will disconnect from NETGEAR_EXT. Go to WiFi settings again and connect to the new extended network. Test it. Open YouTube. Check speeds. Walk around your house. Now, the Web browser Netgear extender setup done. But there is one more way to connect your extender with the router (it is easier and faster than browser setup). If you don't want to mess with browser pages or passwords, WPS is your best friend. Not every router supports it but if yours does, this is ridiculously simple. Power your extender by just Plugging it in the working wall socket. Wait for the power LED to stabilize, means the extender is boosted now. It's usually marked clearly with 'WPS' on it. Hold the button for like 2 seconds. WPS light will start blinking, means the extender is searching for the router network. Within 2 minutes, head to your router. Press its WPS button. WPS button. Wait. The extender will sync with your router and clone the network. The extender WPS LED will stop blinking and turn solid means the router links with the extender. Once it connects, you'll see a new WiFi network name ending in _EXT. You don't need to set a new password. It uses the same one as your router. Let's not pretend this always goes smoothly. Here's what to do when stuff goes sideways: Page not loading on browser? Clear cache or try a different browser. Reboot the extender. Clear cache or try a different browser. Reboot the extender. Wrong WiFi password? Double-check caps lock. You'd be surprised how many people mess that up. Double-check caps lock. You'd be surprised how many people mess that up. Can't find NETGEAR_EXT? Netgear extender Reset procedure is initiated by holding the reset button (usually a pinhole) for 10 seconds. Netgear extender Reset procedure is initiated by holding the reset button (usually a pinhole) for 10 seconds. WPS not working? Not all routers support it. You might have to stick with the browser method. Hope this setup guide helped you to connect your extender with your WiFi router via two different methods (WPS or mywifiext). You must also learn how to troubleshoot common troubles by provided tips section above. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
