[HN Gopher] Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)
Author : karlicoss
Score : 259 points
Date : 2022-06-28 10:02 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (discourse.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (discourse.mozilla.org)
| bwat48 wrote:
| misleading title, some addons are available... e.g. I use ublock
| origin in firefox on android
| randy408 wrote:
| You mean half a dozen add-ons are available
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Far more... if you're using Nightly (I do as my daily
| browser, with a dozen of active extensions). Not easy though:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
| dblohm7 wrote:
| (Former Mozilla developer here, who worked on GeckoView[1], the
| modern way to embed Gecko into Android apps, including all
| currently shipped Mozilla browsers on Android)
|
| From an engineering perspective, the sad thing about this is that
| the work to finish extensions in GeckoView was essentially
| completed in the months after the initial Fenix release.
|
| When GeckoView was still being rolled out into release, we
| understandably wanted to restrict the selection of addons only to
| those that exercised APIs that we knew were ready for production.
| Since that time, however, the WebExtensions work was essentially
| completed -- since that time it has entirely been a business
| decision to continue restricting the selection of addons
| available.
|
| I didn't personally work on the WebExtensions bits, but I know
| that those who did were frustrated that their work to finish
| fleshing out full extension support was being held back for
| seemingly arbitrary reasons (that were never explained to
| engineering).
|
| [1] https://geckoview.dev
| grigory wrote:
| (Also a former Mozilla developer, worked Fennec and Fenix)
|
| I think a more nuanced perspective here is that roughly 80% of
| the work was done, and the remaining 20% require significant
| effort and organizational energy.
|
| Not all of the WebExtension API surface is currently supported;
| there's a long tail of infrequently used extensions that
| require non-trivial engineering effort and often cross-team
| coordination to implement. However, the actual usage of these
| APIs in Fennec was very, very low, so the actual bet and the
| organization sales pitch for this work must be on building a
| platform, and evidently that's not happening. You can argue
| that this type of platform work and extensibility is why people
| use Firefox for Android. You can also look back at the actual
| usage telemetry (current whitelist is basically what vast
| majority of people used) and wonder if that additional
| investment will move the needle.
|
| There's also front-end/back-end engineering required to fully
| expand existing UIs into a proper "store" experience.
|
| Personally, I think as a matter of principle Firefox for
| Android should be fully open in terms of what extensions it
| allows installing.
|
| I believe that will eventually happen - it's where the
| prevailing winds are blowing inside the org, too! but it may
| take time for the stars to align, people to have energy to
| fight through the internal malaise, to pitch work that may not
| immediately help with any OKRs and is mostly about building
| community goodwill and sending a message, etc.
|
| As always, it basically comes down to lack of strong
| leadership.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| That's fair, I think in GV at the time we were more thinking
| about Fennec parity, so that's where my thoughts originate.
| grigory wrote:
| Right, I think it's pretty close to parity! I vaguely
| recall seeing some odd API that wasn't supported in Fenix
| that was in Fennec, but they're pretty rare. Fairly sure
| you could access history in Fennec via a webextension, and
| I think that's not supported in Fenix.
|
| I think what's generally missing in these discussions is
| that the whole project to bring extensions into Fenix was
| extremely user-driven - whatever people actually use in any
| significant volume on Fennec, Fenix supports. And the
| actual UX of installing extensions is just so much more
| streamlined and nicer in Fenix.
|
| If you purely look at it from the "most value for most
| users" perspective, Fenix extensions are a great success.
| And, it's also a success in purely engineering terms - code
| that's not bringing a lot of value but yet creates an
| overall maintenance drag is omitted.
|
| What may have been missing from it is the ideological bit -
| for a platform to be truly open - and to be a viable
| platform!, it can't have a restricted "whitelist". And I
| agree with this. But it's not clear that "mobile-browser-
| as-a-developer-platform" is a sustainable long-term pitch
| for an organization as small and as resource constrained as
| Mozilla.
|
| So, there's a tension between these two perspectives. In
| purely "rational" terms, what's there is good, and there
| are a ton of other much more pressing issues to work on for
| the small teams - bugs, performance, missing functionality
| that can actually "move a needle", etc.
|
| You can make an argument that in this case, the rational,
| data-driven engineers won. Which is the opposite of what HN
| seems to think of Mozilla! What's probably needed for full
| webextension support is a strong, perhaps not purely
| rational leader that will rally folks and actually push the
| teams to do the work that may be useless, or useful to a
| tiny percentage of the user base, in a belief that it'll
| produce a better future. Which may or may not pan out!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > If you purely look at it from the "most value for most
| users" perspective, Fenix extensions are a great success.
|
| Except for the part where so many extensions that already
| have the needed APIs implemented still can't be
| installed.
|
| Changing that setting would move the needle with minimal
| developer effort.
|
| > But it's not clear that "mobile-browser-as-a-developer-
| platform" is a sustainable long-term pitch for an
| organization as small and as resource constrained as
| Mozilla.
|
| They were trying to make an entire OS, and now they can't
| keep the browser shell updated?
|
| There's correction and then there's overcorrection.
|
| Also I want my desktop and phone browser to work together
| well, so failure to make the phone work pushes me away
| from everything.
| freemint wrote:
| Can you elaborate how engineering on an open source product is
| prevented from doing the right thing(tm) by management?
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Because the vast majority of engineers working on the code
| base are _employed_ by the management. They can 't just do
| their own thing & remain employees. Plus the FF code is
| controlled by Mozilla corp. You have full freedom (as an
| outside contributor) only in the sense you can always fork,
| not that you can somehow force Mozilla to accept your
| patches. Same as Android and all other major OSS controlled
| de facto by corporations. True community led OSS is quite
| rare, especially among the market leading software among
| their category.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| This is correct. Full-time devs are going to spend their
| work time on what the people who pay them tell them they
| should be working on.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Because the person in charge of the repository said so?
|
| Just because something is open source (like most of my
| projects are open source), that doesn't mean the project
| owner must now accept any changes anyone in the world wants
| to make. Particularly when this 'anyone' is being paid by a
| company to implement what this company wants in a repository
| owned by said company.
|
| That's not to say that open source is useless: if it were
| closed source, you wouldn't have been able to tell that the
| code is in the repo, just not activated, and you wouldn't
| have the option to fork it and enable it yourself and make
| your own custom build (freedom to study, modify,
| redistribute, and run), or pay someone else to make this
| change for you. Try that with Microsoft Windows source code,
| you can't study or modify that or even run it without
| permission.
| oynqr wrote:
| Getting fired.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Can you elaborate how engineering on an open source product
| is prevented from doing the right thing(tm) by management?
|
| I have a purely speculative and very pessimistic opinion that
| is to _not_ compete too much with Chrome and Google, so
| Mozilla does not antagonize with the source of their money
| while still providing Google with a "but we have
| competition!" card that they can use to prevent governments
| from treating them as a monopoly.
|
| This is almost a conspiracy theory but, hell, that's the only
| explanation I have for so many management failures and
| aversion to their userbase.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google used the same pressure tactics to force LineageOS to
| remove their permission spoofing.
| kekebo wrote:
| That's sad to hear, thanks for the perspective.
| jonkoops wrote:
| This pretty much feels to me what is happening to Mozilla as an
| organization from an outsider perspective. Engineering is no
| longer as important as the evangelism and management is making
| strange decisions that lack focus on what the target audience
| really is.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The evangelism is even bad. It was more coherent and
| convincing back when the browser was better.
| Filligree wrote:
| The evangelism is mostly about stuff that nobody outside
| the USA cares about.
|
| It just looks like the browser is made by crazy people.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The evangelism was about web standards, web privacy, and
| user control. They deferred on standards to Google, and
| became positively hostile to the latter two subjects.
|
| I neither care about woke messaging, nor notice them
| doing very much of it because I'm not the kind of guy who
| thinks an interracial couple in a tv commercial is commie
| globalist mind control. My problem is that:
|
| 1) their messages on standards are incoherent and not
| backed by taking firm stands. The only reason I'm
| confident that they won't break uBlock (i.e. will hold
| the line on a portion of manifest v3) any time soon is
| because they would drop from 4% market share to 0.5%
| market share in a month. This is not a good reason to be
| confident, because they lost a similar proportion of
| market share to get to where they're at now, and they
| didn't seem bothered.
|
| 2) Other than uBlock, they've taken away or left to
| languish things like javascript enable/disable
| whitelist/blacklists etc. and fine cookie control, and
| murdered their extension ecosystem that was filled with
| privacy protecting extensions, and 4/5ths of the ones
| that are there now look scary and I wouldn't install
| them. Too bad they lost the community that would have
| vetted those extensions in moments in favor of the
| technical solutions of nerfed webextension APIs
| formulated by a company whose entire business model is
| exfiltrating data from unsuspecting users. So much for
| user privacy.
|
| 3) Firefox started putting things into the browser that
| couldn't be turned off, removing configuration options,
| and pushing a "wrecker" or "overly-vocal minority"
| narrative at their users who objected to that. So much
| for user control.
|
| Also, and I have no inside knowledge, it always seems
| like the people that write the website copy for whatever
| their latest PR effort is weren't even at the company for
| their last PR effort, and don't know anyone who was. I'm
| getting the impression that firefox is a place you go to
| burnish your resume/portfolio before getting a real job,
| which is the reason for the constant stupid tiny UI
| changes. Do people stay there for more than a year or
| two?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > I neither care about woke messaging, nor notice them
| doing very much of it
|
| A lot of it is at Mozilla.org, the non profit parent of
| Mozilla.com
| smachiz wrote:
| It would seem not many people inside the USA care about
| it either given their market share...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| why should mozilla continue to pay for a CEO and "managerial
| staff"? i don't mean accountants and all, but bosses and
| "managers" who are not paid by the work done but instead
| based on "market rates" as i read in some mozilla report
| sometime ago?
|
| what benefit does having a CEO to mozilla do when insiders
| and outsiders like me see no tangible benefit? its not like
| apple which has to pay their CEO top dollar to show they are
| so good. can the mozilla org not hire X number of developers
| who would be doing the actual work instead of a single CEO
| whose job, according to me at least seems to be doing
| everything in their power to ruin the good name of mozilla?
| its as if they are paid to take all the bad decisions.
| strange
| flflflldsl wrote:
| bitwize wrote:
| dblohm7 wrote:
| My 2 cents: One of the reasons why I left is that there was
| no longer any symbiotic relationship between product
| management and engineering. Product makes unilateral
| decisions, throws them over the wall, and engineering is
| expected to quit whining and just do what they're told.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Can anyone defend product management to me? Shouldn't this
| basically be UX/UI designers working together with
| developers based on user input acquired in some scientific
| way (either quantitative or qualitative)? How do product
| managers provide additional value?
| dblohm7 wrote:
| IMHO: Product managers are super important: it's their
| job to understand the market (where it was, where it is,
| and where it is going), the competitive landscape, and
| work with leadership on strategic planning.
|
| However, all three groups (UX, PM, Eng) need to work
| symbiotically. Everybody needs to be sharing information
| and acting as partners in the work they're doing.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > it's their job to understand the market
|
| It's their job to understand and copy chrome. Fixed that
| for you.
| zamalek wrote:
| Mozilla PMs seem hell bent on dictating where the market
| goes, and it's not working.
| lfksodjsn wrote:
| branon wrote:
| Conservative comments are not removed, bad-faith discourse
| probably gets flagged. I've said some pretty spicy things
| here and never noticed an issue. Check yourself maybe?
| strunz wrote:
| Are you kidding me? HN is one of the most transparently
| conservative comment sections on the internet.
| pcwalton wrote:
| The reason you're getting downvoted has nothing to do with
| the "progressive narrative" and everything to do with the
| fact that your posts are off-topic. Political complaints
| about Mozilla from a left perspective would be equally
| irrelevant. Availability of browser add-ons is obviously
| not a political issue.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Most of that evangelism doesn't even make any sense to me as
| a non-USian. I understand the US has its own share of
| internal problems, but feeding that to the whole world when I
| just want to download the damn browser seems weird. I won't
| post any links here to avoid offending anyone, but they
| should be pretty obvious.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| As a resident of a flyover state, I re-read that with
| California instead of US, and it still made sense.
| soundnote wrote:
| Not only does it not make sense, they presume they know
| better than their poor users what their users should see
| and what opinion on web content they should have. If I want
| activist browser developers, give me teams like Brave and
| Vivaldi, thankyouverymuch. Both actually do things that
| serve the end user in their own way. Insofar as the
| browsers have politics, they are politics about the browser
| itself like antitracking, privacy and user control.
|
| Also not American and yeah, if California would stay in
| California, that would be great.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > if California would stay in California, that would be
| great
|
| Then you wouldn't have most of the IT industry and
| especially FOSS.
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| >especially FOSS.
|
| I just wanted to log in and point out that GNU got
| started at MIT.
| schroeding wrote:
| That explains why all add-ons I tested in Nightly with the
| custom add-on list workaround[1] worked fine (ignoring the jank
| here and there due to missing optimization for small touch
| screens).
|
| It's quite irritating, as AMO even asks whether or not an add-
| on is compatible with Android when uploading.
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| There's one addon that doesn't work fine: Stylus Dropbox
| login fails due to "can't access property "getRedirectURL",
| chrome.identity is undefined".
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >since that time it has entirely been a business decision to
| continue restricting the selection of addons available.
|
| yep. a product superior to Chrome would be detrimental to
| Mozilla's de-facto parent company.
|
| same story with the desktop version.
|
| it's all so tiresome.
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "Firefox addons are still unavailable on
| Android, two years after Fenix release". Since that language
| doesn't appear in the OP, it seems a little editorialized and
| I've replaced it with the page title now.
|
| If there's a better (more accurate and neutral) title that uses
| representative language from the article itself, we can change it
| again.
| xthrowawayxx wrote:
| I exclusively use Firefox on Android because of the addons. For
| me it's the killer feature. Dark mode, ad blocks, YouTube while
| screen is off. It's made android so much more enjoyable.
| sbernecchia wrote:
| also fennec from f-droid is able to use custom extensions (and
| also about:config) it is compiled from firefox stable, with
| minimal changes, and mozilla telemetry disabled.
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
| pmontra wrote:
| I just checked. Firefox on Google Play is version 101.2.0 from
| June 8. Fennec on F-Droid is version 97.1.1 from February 26.
| Maybe it's not abandoned but it doesn't feel that one can count
| on it for timely bug fixes.
|
| Edit: then I remembered that F-Droid has the quirk of requiring
| a manual refresh of its repository. I did it and got version
| 101.1.0 from June 5. Much better.
| mrandish wrote:
| Yep, Fennec has been my solution to Mozilla abandoning FF on
| Android.
| rhamzeh wrote:
| That's a weird take, considering Fennec is FF on Android,
| just with some minor config changes.
|
| Your statement is akin to saying: "Firefox on Debian is my
| solution to Mozilla abandoning FF on desktop"
|
| If FF on Android _were_ abandoned, then so would Fennec.
|
| I use Fennec, but because I know that it the well-supported,
| actively developed Firefox on Android, but available on
| F-Droid _.
|
| _ which sadly Mozilla doesn 't provide or allow F-Droid
| maintainers to publish it as "Firefox"
| kashyapc wrote:
| For a year now, I began using DuckDuckGo's (DDG) "Privacy
| Browser" on Android. By default it removes ads and third-party
| trackers; no need for add-ons. So far DDG's browser works roughly
| on par with my older setup of stock Android Firefox plus a couple
| of usual extensions. I wonder why DDG's Android browser isn't
| more well-known.
| gs17 wrote:
| > By default it removes ads and third-party trackers; no need
| for add-ons.
|
| I wish it really was "no need", but it's frustrating if their
| built in list doesn't meet your needs. With uBlock I can add
| new rules easily.
| soundnote wrote:
| It doesn't block Microsoft trackers due to a search deal:
|
| https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1528838579455250434
|
| > For non-search tracker blocking (eg in our browser), we block
| most third-party trackers. Unfortunately our Microsoft search
| syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-
| owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and
| expect to be doing more soon. > > We've been working tirelessly
| behind the scenes to change these requirements, though our
| syndication agreement also has a confidentially provision that
| prevents disclosing details. Again, we expect to have an update
| soon that will include more third-party Microsoft protection.
| Sakos wrote:
| I use a bunch of addons beyond adblocking. It's really a huge
| pain that FF only allows whitelisted ones without jumping
| through ridiculous hoops.
| Pxtl wrote:
| After dealing with performance, janky scrolling, and crashing in
| FF and dealing with weird UI bugs in Edge (keyboard overlaps page
| instead of resizing page), I've sadly had to return to Chrome on
| my phone.
| moonshinefe wrote:
| I like using Firefox on Android because uBlock origin makes
| mobile browsing at least tolerable and it lets me use the
| "desktop mode" view on certain sites so e.g. I can listen to
| youtube playlists even if the phone is locked without paying for
| a premium service (for what I consider basic functionality).
|
| Surprised to hear literally the sole reason I use it on mobile is
| also neglected. Do they think they're going to out compete Chrome
| on Google's own platform for casual users or something? I don't
| get it.
| cowtools wrote:
| uBlock Origin is still availible on Firefox mobile, just not
| all addons
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google only funds Mozilla so it can be an anti-trust figleaf.
| It's kept on a short leash to ensure it is never a threat.
| soundnote wrote:
| Background YouTube playback works on Brave as well.
| jacooper wrote:
| Brave exists, its both faster and more stable than Firefox on
| android, and has the same ad block functionality.
| zaik wrote:
| > so e.g. I can listen to youtube playlists even if the phone
| is locked
|
| NewPipe on F-Droid is a killer app.
| Beldin wrote:
| Every video, I get errors in the UI. I once powered through,
| it seems eventually the video does play normally. Perhaps
| that is because of blocked ads(by newpipe then - I have no
| other restrictions on mobile)
| pmontra wrote:
| Keep NewPipe updated. You must install every update as soon
| as it tells you one is available. I've not got any error
| for a while.
| mmebane wrote:
| Also, add the NewPipe repository [1]. The versions in the
| main F-Droid repository are often out of date.
|
| [1]: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-
| fdroid-repo/
| vsskanth wrote:
| I use bypass-paywalls-clean addon and I'm forced to use Firefox
| Nightly and deal with all its weird bugs (it's nightly so that's
| expected) because of this.
|
| Things have improved quite a bit though. They finally fixed that
| stupid scrolling bug that cuts off a part of the page below the
| nav bar. That finally got me off Kiwi Browser.
|
| Eagerly waiting for all add-ons to be allowed in stable.
| sbernecchia wrote:
| you can use fennec from f-droid too. it's compiled from stable,
| not nightly.
| sp332 wrote:
| You don't have to put so many copies of the same comment on
| one story.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| It think it's fair, its a response to all the copies of the
| same complaint (aka "i dont want to have to use firefox
| nightly")
| causi wrote:
| They haven't added any extensions in a year and a half. It's
| not going to happen.
| sva_ wrote:
| You can use custom addons in Firefox Nightly though, at least.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
| phreack wrote:
| This sucks because it also means no one is making add-ons for
| mobile, it's more of an accident that we even have ublock.
| There's use cases that the Firefox team will not work on for
| decades that could be filled by add-ons if they just told people
| to go wild, absolute top of the list being text reflow to prevent
| having to scroll sideways to read long text. Opera is still the
| only browser that does it for some reason years on, but it gets
| worse every update.
| eadmund wrote:
| And Print to PDF still doesn't work, which is another regression.
| Why Mozilla why!?
| thewebcount wrote:
| I'm confused by this. Yesterday there was an article about how
| Apple only lets browsers use WebKit for rendering, and that was
| considered bad because it means that mobile browsers can't
| support add-ons. But it looks like Firefox doesn't support them
| anyway, so what's the problem again?
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I use ff almost exlusively both on my laptop and the phone.
|
| The existing gap between even the core features has been puzzling
| for a while.
|
| On mobile I can add a current page to home screen, collections
| and the top sites. Neither is available on desktop (with the same
| profile).
|
| WTF mozilla? What kind of usability is this? I am totally not
| looking forward switching to another browser but it looks
| inevitable...
| kbrosnan wrote:
| On Windows/Mac OS/Linux you can drag the lock icon to the
| desktop to create a desktop launcher/shortcut.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| thank you for the suggestion.
|
| i find collections super handy and use them but the fact they
| are not exposed (even in rudimemtary form) in desktop UI is
| appalling. the usefulness of collections drops by some 50% to
| me - i basically need to reopen a saved page in mobile, send
| it to the desktop browser (using "send to device" feature)
| and then, probably, save it again in bookmarks.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| Fenix is basically a whole new browser, and that means that all
| features need to be implemented again (which takes a lot of time,
| and I don't think Firefox developers have much of it). Lots of
| Fennec features are still missing (view source code, save as pdf,
| install general addons, the whole about:config...). Why they
| changed is a mystery, maybe the old browser had a core privacy
| bug or something that couldn't be fixed, but basically they
| killed Firefox on android.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Another gripe is Fenix UI animations are slower than Fennec. It
| makes the newer version slower and feel less responsive.
| itvision wrote:
| > Fenix is basically a whole new browser
|
| The web (HTML/CSS/JS/JIT/WebAssembly/Audio/WebGL/WebRTC/etc)
| engine is exactly the same, the rendering engine (WebRender) is
| the same, synchronization is the same.
|
| The UI is completely new - that's it.
|
| This is not a wholly new browser, this is a wholly new UI.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I though that fennec was a monolithic implementation for
| android of the Gecko engine, while fenix has the ui part and
| the geckoview part separated (so you could create a different
| app with the same rendering engine, like webview of android).
|
| I have read that geckoview takes the old gecko
| implementation, probably copied and adapted, but other than
| that it's a new project with a different development path.
| That's why I say it's a different browser.
|
| I may be wrong though,I tried to search for sources but
| unfortunately couldn't find any.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Another fun missing feature is the ability to delete cookies
| for a site.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jay3ss wrote:
| Click on the lock in the URL bar then "Clear cookies and site
| data"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh, you're right, they got that in in April.
|
| Very slow progress but nonzero progress.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Another missing cool feature from old Firefox for mobile was
| ability to remove a site url from suggest and history just by
| long touching on it, which seems to have entirely purged it
| from the places db.
|
| In fact, the new one doesn't remove things from suggest even
| if you remove it from your browser history manually, which is
| also really only convenient to do if you accessed it
| recently. If you don't want things spamming up suggest, the
| only option is to use private browsing or wipe your entire
| history.
| jayelbe wrote:
| You can view source in Fenix by typing `view-source:` at the
| start of a URL :)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I wish the developers would all organize, break off ties with
| Mozilla, and endorse a fork as the new real Firefox.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| i would think most of the developers have a job working for
| mozilla, by which they support themselves, which would make
| that somewhat harder.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Maybe Elon Musk or someone could pay them all to come to a
| new company, as long as I'm dreaming of pipes.
| Pakdef wrote:
| Most the addons that I use work with collections, but collections
| are cumbersome to use. Why don't they just have an option to
| unblock all addons and give you a warning that some might not
| work?
|
| The day they do that on Desktop, I don't know which browser I'll
| switch to...
| causi wrote:
| For those who think Mozilla did a good job with Firefox for
| Android, how do you justify the fact there's _still_ no way to
| change the User Agent without swapping to Beta? Sure, there 's a
| "desktop mode" button, but not only does that break and force you
| to reset the browser if you hit the back button but it doesn't
| actually change the user agent. Sites that bar mobile devices can
| still tell you're on mobile and stop you from seeing the page.
| Markoff wrote:
| one of the many reasons why Firefox is unusable on mobile
|
| Kiwi Browser FTW https://kiwibrowser.com/
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I was writing an extension for Firefox mobile to improve HN a bit
| to make it work nicer on mobile. Then whoops Firefox no longer
| does extensions really. *
|
| Such a wasted missed opportunity for the mobile web. FF could and
| still might be able to recognise the utility.
|
| (* Yes I can install it via developer mode I think, but it was
| for you too)
| yoasif_ wrote:
| FWIW, people that want to run extensions can either use Fennec
| (the F-Droid fork, not the old Firefox for Android) or Nightly
| versions. There _are_ developers targeting this stuff - I wrote
| about some here:
| https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| It does require creating a Firefox account and creating a
| "collection" so it's definitely not out of the box.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| I don't think I or my post implied that it was out of the
| box. You also don't need to create your own collection -
| one just needs to exist with the extensions you are looking
| for.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Sure. Wasn't implying anything. Just warning people. It's
| also why I haven't gotten around to it yet. I've made
| many accounts with Mozilla over the years and none of
| them were migrated over to this new system (ditto when
| they killed off moznet actually). I'm just sick of it.
| It's just enough friction that I haven't gotten around to
| fixing the annoyances of the missing addons.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Didn't know about this before. While reading about the
| process, does this expose publicly what extensions a person
| uses?
| jacooper wrote:
| Or you can just use Kiwi browser, which supports full Chrome
| extensions.
| nelblu wrote:
| I use iceraven to get around some of these limitations. Addons
| that I needed(privacy redirect) work great:
| https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser.
|
| From the github link : The ability to attempt to install a much
| longer list of add-ons than Mozilla's Fenix version of Firefox
| accepts. Currently the browser queries this AMO collection Most
| of them will not work, because they depend on code that Mozilla
| is still working on writing in android-components, but you may
| attempt to install them. If you don't see an add-on you want, you
| can request it.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| To this day Firefox for Android still does not have a tab bar on
| tablets. Which is double ridiculous since the previous two
| rewrites both did have one (in fact I contributed to the
| former...).
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Yeah, but what's the tablet market for Android these days?
| capitainenemo wrote:
| There's quite a few chrome books that run android apps. I
| think it's even default these days...
| jacooper wrote:
| For people who want to use extensions on mobile, check Kiwi
| browser, an open source chromium based browser with full support
| for extensions.
| therealmarv wrote:
| That's not true. It's more that Mozilla white lists only very few
| of the addons for the mobile browser.
|
| The fork Iceraven whitelists/allow all (?) of the addons (not all
| work fully, so the whitelist has a purpose):
| https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
| contravariant wrote:
| There is in fact a way to plug in your own whitelist if you use
| Firefox Nightly [1]. It's a bit of a hassle though, and it's so
| obscure that I'm fairly sure almost nobody is aware of it.
|
| [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
| pmontra wrote:
| I gave it a try weeks ago and it's not working for me. It
| keeps using only the addons I had before I attempted the
| suggested procedure.
| bklaasen wrote:
| Excellent, thank you! This also works in Mull, the
| "...privacy oriented and deblobbed web browser based on
| Mozilla technology."
| https://www.f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/
| nick__m wrote:
| I use this !
|
| When this was released I switch back from IceRaven to Firefox
| as I prefer a browser that receives timely updates.
| sbernecchia wrote:
| then you could try fennec from f-droid, which enables
| custom extensions and about:config, but unlike iceraven is
| compiled from firefox stable release, so it is updated
| shortly after a new firefox stable release.
| xigoi wrote:
| Last time I used Fennec, it had the same extension
| whitelist as Firefox. Did that change?
| nick__m wrote:
| I take a mental note to try it but I like nightly, I also
| use it on my desktop and I prefer it to normal Firefox. I
| doesn't exactly know why but there is something about the
| regular release that rubs me the wrong way.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Last time I used Iceraven many, but far from all, extensions
| were whitelisted.
|
| What's worse, bookmarklets were as broken in Iceraven as in
| Firefox. I never though it would happen (I've been an extremely
| loyal Firefox user), but I had to switch to Kiwi.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes, I thought it was odd, since I certainly use ublock origin
| right now. It is the reason I stick with Firefox on Android in
| the first place.
| oittaa wrote:
| Same, but it would be nice if all the plugins worked instead
| of the few that are whitelisted.
| ropeladder wrote:
| "the whitelist has a purpose" doesn't really capture what's
| going on, though. It's more like they whitelisted some of the
| most popular extensions and then just stopped completely with
| no intention of continuing.
|
| With the much more limited plugin API (and simple html plug-in
| config pages) of the new browsers you'd think it would be
| easier to build and vet secure, cross platform add-ons.
| sbernecchia wrote:
| yes, you're probably right, they have no intention of
| continuing. I think mozilla is not really committed to
| firefox on android. after all they have a minuscule market
| share on mobile, almost not existent. they probably think
| that most users will install just an adblocker, so they don't
| want to "waste" money enabling other extensions. so sad.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Somewhere in a parallel universe, Mozilla just let all the
| plugins claim compatability, and vaguely fascist users who
| dont like their politics are complaining that the instability
| of Mozilla on Android is the reason they hate them.
|
| And further along, in a universe where they poured a lot of
| time energy and money into fixing the whole plugin ecosystem
| and succeeded, they're complaining about something that
| didn't get done because of that shift in focus.
|
| The conversation goes something like:
|
| "Why are they spending time and money on fixing mobile addons
| no one uses? I think this is because their management are too
| political, not like their old unpolitical leadership. And as
| I say every time they get mentioned "I hate people who say
| and do political stuff!!". It makes me so angry. They should
| only do what I want or I'll force them out of business from
| pure spite. That'll teach them to be political.
| akira2501 wrote:
| So, Mozilla makes decisions to win over vaguely fascist
| users, or at least prevent them from having something
| negative to say? Or because in other universes there aren't
| perfect solutions?
|
| Do they have any desire to just.. make a good browser that
| fulfills peoples needs?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The point is, if you don't like an organisation for
| reason A, you'll easily find reason X, Y and Z why you
| don't like them.
|
| Ask someone who grew up supporting a certain sports team
| or religion why they don't like the rival team or
| religion, and they'll happily give you answers why. They
| may even believe some of them themselves. Some of them
| might even be valid criticisms, but they are almost
| certainly not why someone chose their home team or
| religion over another.
|
| This never ending drama seems to mostly stem from Mozilla
| ditching a potential CEO because his religious beliefs
| meant he felt he had to fund anti-equal marriage
| organisations. It all seems like echoes of that to me. 8
| years of boring whiney echoes.
| teddyh wrote:
| Yes. Humans make decisions based on feeling and
| intuition, and most people then check the decision for
| any glaring errors by using rules of thumb, and, in rare
| cases, reasoned logic. But nobody makes decisions based
| on logic. We all just have opinions, and later, when
| pressed, find "reasons" to keep them.
|
| See also this discussion about how to choose a phone:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656790#21661157
| robonerd wrote:
| > _vaguely fascist users_
|
| I've seen this one before, a GNOME apologist insinuating
| that anybody who wants thumbnails in the GTK filepicker is
| probably a 4chan user. Is this the new trendy way to
| dismiss criticism of software? Insinuate that anybody
| making specific concrete complaints about software has
| invalid political beliefs completely tangential to the
| feature/bug being criticized? What fun!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Or you can just wait two sentences into their comment
| when they simply can't stop thenselves saying something
| about progressive politics. Which you really don't need
| to mention, and common sense suggests you shouldn't, when
| criticizing a bit of software or a charity foundation on
| unrelated matters. Unless of course that is the point.
| robonerd wrote:
| One person who criticizes Mozilla mentioning politics is
| not a legitimate excuse for you to paint the entire class
| of people who complain about Mozilla with that brush.
| Ironically, doing so is vaguely fascist, in the sense
| that fascists love to spread the blame for individual
| crimes across entire classes of people they oppose.
|
| Incidentally, who's comment are you even talking about? I
| don't see any mention of politics in the comment you
| responded to.
| soundnote wrote:
| It's not one user, but it's also reasonably valid: There
| are browsermakers who just try to make a good browser and
| don't talk about politics incessantly, and as far as I
| can tell somehow their products seem to improve a lot in
| ways Mozilla's just doesn't.
|
| EDIT: As an example, Firefox is discontinuing search
| keyword sync via bookmarks. Vivaldi just implemented
| syncing search engines via their sync service, across
| both desktop and mobile.
| soundnote wrote:
| Let's talk about forging hammers for a moment: I could just
| be a blacksmith forging nice hammers to put nails into
| stuff and try to make them high quality - nicely weighted,
| comfortable handles, durable, repairable etc, make some
| decisions about quality/price etc.
|
| I could also sing Erika or the Internationale at the top of
| my lungs or rant about the modern art market at the same
| time. These aren't very related at all to my actual job of
| forging hammers. I could also have opinions about something
| at least somewhat related, like constantly telling people
| they shouldn't use my hammers to build modern architecture
| because it's a steaming pile of ugly garbage. Let's say
| modern buildings use a specific kind of nail. I could make
| the hammers so they're by default kinda garbage for working
| with those nails, though adjustable to work with them if
| the user so wishes.
|
| This evaluation of modern architecture is a valid opinion!
| But it's still really unsightly to advocate for simple
| tools to not be used for general purposes, or to try to
| build features into the hammer to make them a pain to use
| for making ugly buildings. It's simply not really my job as
| a hammersmith to do that.
|
| And it's that attitude that we've generally losing as a
| society - a craftsman's attitude to just do our jobs well
| and leave the unrelated politics elsewhere. We literally
| have spice merchants' websites with menus that go "Spices -
| Gift bags - About Republicans". Your job was to sell me
| chili and nutmeg so I don't end up in those plain toast
| meme pictures and not political commentary about how one
| party is the source of most everything wrong in America.
|
| Think about something like Christian rock. Most of it is
| pretty dull. Why? It tries to be Christian first, good
| music second.
|
| I'd like there to be more craftsmanship-type organizations
| and less political activism with a job on the side.
|
| Sincerely, one of your "vaguely fascist users".
|
| EDIT: Apologies to dang for talking about hammers and
| pepper sellers.
| guelo wrote:
| Mozilla doesn't seem to have a clue why people prefer firefox.
| It's not because of privacy or security, though that's nice. It's
| certainly not because it behaves similarly to chrome. It was
| always the extensibility. The power of plugins that allowed
| adblocking to be invented on firefox. They threw that away in the
| name of security and supposed clean code. Clean code doesn't get
| you users.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > It was always the extensibility.
|
| Going by the numbers, that's far from the truth. Majority of
| user never used addons, not even adblockers. Even the most
| popular addons are only used by a small minority of users.
|
| I'm also a big addon-user and complain what firefox has lost
| over time. But we should also admit that we are a minority, and
| addons are simply not the major selling point for a mainstream
| product's success.
| sillystuff wrote:
| > Majority of user never used addons
|
| Do they get those numbers via telemetry or from the server-
| side? If the former, those stats may be skewed by the overlap
| between the users who use several extensions and those who
| disable all telemetry.
|
| In a mozilla bug report where they discuss removing user.js,
| they point to telemetry that indicates that no one uses this
| functionality. I'd argue that the Venn diagram between users
| of user.js and those who disable telemetry approximates a
| single circle.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I suspect that this actually explains a lot of Mozilla's
| decision making that seems utterly disconnected from their
| userbase. They don't seem to realize that compared to
| Chrome, their userbase is disproportionately tech savvy
| enough to reject telemetry. They talk about the importance
| of privacy and security and whatnot, but then make all
| their decisions based around the behavior of the people
| that don't care about their privacy.
| ryanklee wrote:
| "userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to
| reject telemetry"
|
| You need data to support that claim. To me, it sounds
| unlikely. My guess, most users accept telemetry, tech
| savvy or not.
|
| For instance, I'm tech savvy, and explicitly choose
| telemetry when on non-work computers because I want to
| enable companies to understand my behaviors so they can
| in the best cases deliver better features to me.
| antisthenes wrote:
| You shouldn't be afraid to cater to the minority of power
| users. Power users are the ones that make browser
| recommendations to an outsized group of people, e.g. friends,
| relatives and coworkers. They are also the ones that drive
| new standard adoption.
|
| It's entirely plausible that when you alienate a power user,
| you also alienate their entire social circle, dependent on
| them for tech advice, so you lose 20x-100x of your
| audience/users.
|
| I'm not saying that's _exactly_ what happened, but it
| definitely happened to some degree. Personally, I no longer
| recommend or use Firefox to anyone. The techy people in my
| circle use Brave or ungoogled Chromium.
|
| The untechy ones use Chrome/Edge and maybe have Opera/Vivaldi
| as their backup browser or Safari if they're big Apple fans.
| Almost no one uses FF anymore. Without its extensibility, it
| simply doesn't compete anymore.
| rurp wrote:
| I think it's hard to tease out the size of effect. Extensions
| are only used by a minority of users, but that's mostly the
| set of vocal power users that are likely to be the go-to tech
| person within their social circles.
|
| I'm sure I'm far from the only HNer that has recommended or
| installed Firefox for many friends and family. I mean, I used
| to recommend and install Firefox before their terrible
| management turned the org into a dumpster fire. They've lost
| both myself and everyone I would have turned onto Firefox.
| slightwinder wrote:
| That might have been 20 years ago when Firefox grew from
| it's grassroot-movement. But Chrome started without
| extensions and grew more through marketing and Googles
| fame. Power users have their influence even today, but I'd
| say it's not as strong as it was in the old days. Most
| users have emancipated themselves from us, and can choose
| now on their own, because this kind of information is not
| arcane anymore.
| causi wrote:
| Mozilla lost the plot the day they decided chasing Chrome was
| more important than appealing to their actual userbase. That
| was about the time they started incrementing version numbers
| every six weeks and rendered the numbers meaningless.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Or you know, we just wanted to offer the closest thing we
| could get to continuous delivery of desktop software?
| doix wrote:
| Yeah, when they did the big performance rewrite(quantum?) and
| killed pentadactyl (vim mode), I was really upset. I remember
| using Firefox 52-esr for as long as I could to keep my workflow
| the same.
|
| In my mind, that was peak Firefox. Yes performance wasn't
| great, but I didn't care. It was good enough and I mostly
| browsed with JavaScript disabled.
|
| The new vim mode plugins can't compete with the old plugins
| because they are much more restricted in what they can do.
| causi wrote:
| The really galling thing is they lied right to our damn faces
| about how "the new faster systems breaks the old add-on
| system" while they were still using XUL behind the scenes. In
| fact an HN reader compiled versions of Firefox 57 and above
| with user-installed XUL enabled and they work perfectly well.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| Nothing is really stopping people from keeping those
| extensions compatible. Unsupported doesn't mean impossible
| - it just means you need to do some tweaks:
| https://webextensions-experiments.readthedocs.io
| causi wrote:
| I'm not understanding how that relates to the fact that
| the only thing stopping users from installing their XUL
| extensions on FF57 was a software switch they weren't
| allowed to touch without editing and compiling from
| source.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| No editing or compilation needed. You just needed to
| disable signature checks (xpinstall.signatures.required)
| and enable extension experiments
| (extensions.experiments.enabled) in a developer edition
| version (or nightly) version of the browser.
| doix wrote:
| I feel like if it was that simple, someone would have
| written instructions somewhere at the time. I remember
| having to set xpinstall.signatures.required before FF 57.
| I am not sure about extensions.expirements.enabled.
|
| Unfortunately, I'm now at a point where I can't be
| bothered constantly fucking around with my setup and have
| resigned myself to just accepting whatever Mozilla wants
| to shove down my throat.
|
| From what I can tell, the community has forked
| pentadactyl[0] and are using it on Palemoon[1]. I'm
| guessing if it could still run on Firefox today, they
| would do that instead of using Palemoon (but I could be
| wrong). Anyway, I still hate that they killed what made
| Firefox unique. Trying to beat Chrome at it's own game
| seems like a pointless battle.
|
| [0] https://github.com/pentadactyl/pentadactyl
|
| [1] https://www.palemoon.org/
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| they know it.
|
| that's why they've killed XUL. that's why they're going even
| further by enforcing an inferior extension standard from their
| supposed competitor. that's why they've killed off the
| extensions and about:config for the android version. that's why
| you can't even use a private extension on desktop without
| jumping through the hoops. that's why usercss
| (toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets - _legacy_
| and disabled by default - the writing is on the wall already)
| and userjs will get axed. that 's why about:config will get
| axed on the desktop version as well.
|
| all of that is just off the top of my head. and in the end,
| Firefox will be a clunky and inferior alternative for Chrome
| with not 2%, but 0.2% of the market. which is the goal.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > which is the goal
|
| I don't think so. There's many more ways and decisions they
| could have gotten away with to make Firefox worse without
| outright killing it, that they haven't done (yet).
|
| Rather, I think it's more likely that Firefox, the browser
| application, is a bit of an albatross to the Mozilla
| foundation. Something they begrudgingly have to live with, at
| least in the short term. It's their organization's 'product',
| but to a certain layer of leadership and above, it's just
| another vehicle for their broader mission which could be
| accomplished much easier by just being a chrome fork instead.
| It'd also remove the need to hire and retain so many pesky
| and annoying engineers.
|
| Such that the Mozilla corp. is something they have to keep
| around, but definitely not something they want to keep
| around.
|
| It is an attractive way of rationalizing the astonishing and
| bewildering decision making at Mozilla.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| No.
|
| > that's why they've killed XUL
|
| We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.
|
| > about:config for the android version
|
| I completely supported this and continue to do so. GeckoView
| on Android works completely differently than desktop Firefox,
| and about:config's semantics are not identical between the
| two. A few of us were interested in offering an alternative
| that gave users a way to make adjustments in a way that was
| "safe," but as you can imagine that has never been a
| management priority.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing
| it.
|
| So uh. What was that whole thing about making all the
| extensions rewrite their code to support multiprocess?
|
| Which many extensions did, putting in huge amounts of work,
| only to be told shortly after that XUL was going away.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20191220054834/https://develope
| r...
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing
| it.
|
| even if the management understood that advanced extensions
| were a major factor for choosing Firefox over the
| alternatives and were willing to dedicate enough
| time/people/money to tackling the issue?
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Yes. It was an intractable problem.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| well, shit. I concede that particular point then.
|
| my presumption of malice was primarily based on what
| followed - crippled android addons, forced addon signing
| on non-Nightly, upcoming adoption of manifest v3. put
| together, the poweruser experience we had in 2015 is
| better than the one we have now. and unlike XUL, the only
| explanation I see for all of these is either malice or
| stupidity.
| mmmrk wrote:
| I'm a decade-long user and am perfectly fine with modern
| Firefox (plus uBlock), both on the desktop and on Android. In
| fact, I don't want to go back to the before-times. Speak for
| yourself.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you compare the marketshare of firefox a decade ago to the
| marketshare of firefox now, you can determine pretty
| precisely how extreme a minority you are in that.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| As if that has anything to do with it, Chrome is even worse
| in that regard and it's market share has only grown.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Even worse in what regard? Did you reply to the right
| comment?
|
| Chrome imitates Chrome far better than Firefox does. I
| just don't think they can catch up at this point.
|
| edit: maybe you meant addons? Chrome has more addons,
| with more users, updated more often. Chrome fails at
| ublock because it wants to, but as long as you're not
| messing with Google's core business, Chrome is (of
| course) going to be better off than the product of the
| endangered company that solely survives from Google's
| donations.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| More addons on mobile and an more flexible add-on api on
| desktop. Chrome's API does what Google wants it to do,
| and it doesn't cost them any users which proves that's
| not what's the issue with Firefox.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| More addons on mobile?
| krzyk wrote:
| Chrome has any addons on mobile?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Kiwi browser is basically chrome but with full
| extension/dev tools support. Nothing custom, all stock
| chrome. But I know the devs behind that browser rely on
| data collection themselves, so it's less than ideal (you
| can I think turn all of that off but I'm not sure). But
| it shows that it is possible to have full add-on support
| on mobile chromium. Especially considering Kiwi was
| developed by a single dev initially.
|
| Most open source chromium forks on Android don't have
| add-ons though, so kiwi is the best option. I guess it's
| usually because those forks are usually very privacy
| centric so add-on support is far from a priority. Kiwi on
| the other hand is basically stock desktop chrome
|
| Edit: apparently they don't outright collect user data!
|
| >The browser is getting paid by search engines for every
| search done using Kiwi Browser.
|
| >Depending on the search engine choice, requests may go
| via Kiwibrowser / Kiwisearchservices servers. This is for
| invoicing our search partners and provide alternative
| search results (e.g. bangs aka "shortcuts").
|
| >In some countries, the browser displays sponsored tiles
| or news on the homepage.
|
| >User data (browsing, navigation, passwords, accounts) is
| not collected because we have no interest to know what
| you do in the browser. Our main goal is to convince you
| to use a search engine partner, and this search engine
| makes money / new partnerships and shares revenue with
| us.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| No, so even though Firefox barely has any, it's still
| more than Chrome.
| mmmrk wrote:
| Am I the minority? To establish that, you'd need to survey
| a sizable part of the previously FF-using population and
| determine why they stopped using it. Going from "lost most
| marketshare" to "it's because techies were forsaken" does
| not seem logical to me.
|
| And you know, even if I was indeed the minority, so what? I
| stand by liking FF and I will continue to use it until it's
| defunct. Because I can :)
| throw10920 wrote:
| I'm also a decades-long user, and am _very_ unhappy with many
| of the changes that Mozilla has made to Firefox (both on the
| desktop and on Android), and I _do_ want to go back to the
| before-times.
|
| I feel like it should be obvious that, at least in the case
| of addons, some users want addons and some users don't care
| about addons, but very _very_ few users explicitly don 't
| want addons to be available _at all_ , and that consequently
| the correct approach is to make addons available.
| sbcd wrote:
| >Speak for yourself
|
| Haha. Firefox went from above 20% marketshare in its early
| days, to below 4% today, and the number is continually
| dwindling. At this point it's the few defensive, aggressive
| fanboys left who are "speaking for themselves". We'll
| probably still hear this kind of comment from the likes of
| you even when usage drops below 0.01%.
|
| And I don't want to hear the "it's chrome's fault" again from
| the FF brigade, IE had more marketshare in the IE vs Netscape
| days than Chrome has today, and it didn't stop Firefox from
| eating at IE's shares.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Firefox decline started long before they switched the
| extensions-system, In fact they lost majority of their
| share before that point, and seem to have gained a bit
| momentum back because of it, temporary.
|
| > And I don't want to hear the "it's chrome's fault" again
| from the FF brigade,
|
| Sure, who cares about facts when you can have guts-
| feeling...
|
| > IE had more marketshare in the IE vs Netscape days than
| Chrome has today, and it didn't stop Firefox from eating at
| IE's shares.
|
| IE had no marketing at that point, while Firefox did had
| significant marketing at the time. Chrome then started also
| with big marketing, while Firefox was busy with dying
| projects. Coincidence? Seems like marketing is a major
| factor for success even here.
| superkuh wrote:
| Don't worry, he's speaking for the majority of long term
| firefox users. You're the exception. I started using Firefox
| when it was Gecko/Phoenix in 2002, then Firebird, then
| Firefox. I started using it because it was so customizable. I
| stopped using it at version 37 in 2015 because that was when
| Mozilla destroyed the browser by removing user freedoms to
| install their own add-ons without Mozilla's approval. And no,
| using Nightly (alpha renamed aurora renamed nightly) is not
| an option because it is extremely crashy on non-standard
| OS/Distros.
|
| Since 2015 Firefox has become rapidly less capable and
| rapidly more 'secure' for non-technical users. It's just not
| what I or the original userbase want. But like with all
| things Mozilla (including the original employees and CEO)
| we've been replaced. There's plenty of users who just want
| Chrome that's not labeled Chrome and Firefox modern gives it
| to them.
| seszett wrote:
| Just to chime in, I also started using Phoenix in 2002, but
| it wasn't because it was customizable. I've never used more
| than a couple of extensions and I actually have every
| extension I need on Android, so I'm fully satisfied for my
| particular use case.
|
| I still think most of what Mozilla does with Firefox is
| absolutely stupid and I wish it was different because
| attracting or retaining more users would make Firefox less
| likely to die, and generally help the web.
| soundnote wrote:
| > There's plenty of users who just want Chrome that's not
| labeled Chrome and Firefox modern gives it to them.
|
| Firefox isn't Chrome that's not labeled Chrome, though.
| Less customization doesn't mean it's necessarily more
| Chrome-like, especially lately where Chrome's implementing
| things like tab groups and keeping more or less the same UI
| design. The new Firefox looks more Safari-ish than Chrome-
| ish. to me.
| Arnavion wrote:
| FWIW my distro's firefox package allows installing my own
| extensions. I wouldn't be using it if it didn't.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| then you're not a poweruser. you'd be perfectly fine with
| stock Chrome too.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Speaking for myself, I wish I could run more addons in
| Firefox for Android than just uBlock Origin.
|
| (I'm a 15+ year user, I started using it when I discovered I
| could run it off a flash drive on locked-down shared
| computers.)
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Ditto... For example. They allow NoScript, but they blocked
| Custom Style Script, Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey, Old Reddit
| Redirect all of which I used for small tweaks to common
| sites with poor non-JS CSS defaults to make NoScript more
| usable.
|
| They also blocked about:config (fixed by using F-Droid
| Fennec). I also lost functionality that I had relied on
| (not going to turn this into a rant on that - and that's
| probably due to the rewrite, but it's still unfortunate).
|
| Here are the addons I'm still miss post change. There's
| been no modifications to the list since. "View Source"
| "Tampermonkey" "Old Reddit Redirect" "Custom Style Script"
| "Android PDF.js" "uMatrix" "Alt Text Viewer"
|
| The only one they had an adequate replacement for was "Dark
| Mode" - "Dark Reader" does basically same job with slightly
| less convenient UI. "Dark Reader" is also an extremely
| crude alternative for custom CSS.
| paol wrote:
| ...and that's why I'm still running FF 68 on my phone. Well that
| and a bunch of UI regressions.
| itvision wrote:
| I've closely been following Mobile Firefox development over the
| past year - this browser is dead, like totally dead.
|
| Bug reports pile up, nothing is really fixed, a ton of commits
| about telemetry, some commits here and there changing certain UI
| elements, some refactoring, almost nothing else. Go check its
| revision history all you want: https://github.com/mozilla-
| mobile/fenix/commits/main
|
| Mozilla has seemingly totally given up on it. It's incredibly
| sad.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| That's because actual browser development doesn't happen there
| - that's at https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/.
|
| Rereading your comment, you're referring more specifically to
| mobile; I suppose you might have a point there, but when almost
| everything is in mozilla-central, I'm not sure what you expect
| to see there (well, extensions, but beyond that) other than UI
| work.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm starting to think that maybe browsers on Android and iOS
| just don't matter much anymore, other than as the foundation
| for in-app web views.
|
| I have a fairly new phone on a 5G network and the browser is
| soooo much better than it was even ten years ago yet I use it
| far, far less than I did back then. Part of it is that my phone
| just didn't do as much back then and so I spent more time in
| the browser, but I think the other part is that the web has
| turned into a garbage fire.
|
| I used to browse the web the same way I used to channel surf in
| 1984. It was what I did for fun. Today, I go to five sites 99%
| of the time and I kind of dread having to use my browser on my
| phone outside of that.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Works pretty well for me
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