[HN Gopher] Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey
Author : 2Gkashmiri
Score : 639 points
Date : 2023-02-17 04:07 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.mozilla.org)
| remram wrote:
| Did they change their mind? I can't find it in the addons site
| (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/android/search/?promoted=re...), and it is not listed in the
| linked blog post
| (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/these-3-new-firefox-andr...)
|
| The "Add to Firefox" button on this page is disabled for me:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/
|
| I am on 110.0.1 from Google Play.
| shultays wrote:
| [flagged]
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| I use Fennec, and it allows adding any Desktop extension
| (idontcareaboutcookies, privacyredirect etc.).
| 2h wrote:
| Only if you register with AMO.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| It seems like Iceraven doesn't have this restriction, and
| works like Firefox on Android originally used to?
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Thanks! Did not know about the Iceraven project [1], which
| looks like a good replacement for Fenix.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
| nfriedly wrote:
| Iceraven still has a list of allowed extensions, but they
| added several hundred extensions to the default list rather
| than Mozilla's dozen or so.
|
| (It also supports custom lists like Fennec and FF Nightly.)
| 2h wrote:
| > Iceraven still has a list of allowed extensions
|
| where is that list?
| nfriedly wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/collections/1620123...
|
| (It's linked to from Iceravens readme:
| https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser )
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Yes, you are correct (forgot about that!). I had to create my
| own collection of accepted extensions [1] and reference this
| in Fennec.
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/collections/1693474...
| MaxMatti wrote:
| What's amo?
| ptman wrote:
| addons.mozilla.org
| Groxx wrote:
| In the same way as Beta and Nightly does, yes. Though I don't
| know which (or Stable) Fennec tracks.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Is there a version of Fennec with up to date HTML rendering
| engine? Where to get it?
|
| AFAIK fennec is the code name for mobile firefox when mozilla
| had the very good android app that supported extensions,
| about:config and sane tab/bookmark management, and fenix is
| when mozilla ended fennec and replaced it with the much worse
| and clunky android app around 2020 that's still the only
| official one today, right?
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| You are right, according to this [1] Fennec is discontinued
| in favor of Fenix! I only use it for very simple stuff (HN,
| selfhosted apps etc.), so I did not notice. Yet, looking at
| the F-Droid store [2], Fennec indeed is available in a recent
| version (109.2.0) and it is being bumped by Mozilla [3].
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ih9vmb/firefox
| _for_android_fenix_79_release_fennec_is/ [2]:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
| [3]: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/commit/0861f91fd3
| 9e56a13a7664e588fcf53860e0d7ba
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Are you using a recent version of F-Droid fennec (which may
| be fenix instead), and if so does this one support
| arbitrary plugins? Did F-droid manage to modify it for
| that?
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| What do you mean with Plugins? It works with custom
| extension lists (e.g. I have idontcareaboutcookies and
| privacy redirect installed).
| fisian wrote:
| Confusingly, Fennec F-Droid is Fenix.
|
| In the description on the F-Droid page it says "Fennec
| F-Droid is based on the latest Firefox release (codenamed
| Fenix).".
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification! This is what I suspected,
| too. What matters to me is that it works with custom
| extension lists. I am not sure I understood what was
| special about the original "2020 Fennec".
|
| There's also a note from someone on Reddit [1]:
|
| > Fennec is also F-Droid's firefox version. It differs
| from official ones by having proprietary bits and all
| telemetry removed as well as unlocked about:config at the
| moment.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nff8sv/com
| ment/gyl...
| benatkin wrote:
| Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it
| and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what.
|
| The same repeated with Tampermonkey. It now has telemetry built
| into it, at one time w/ no privacy policy.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6hs59w/tampermonke...
|
| The good one now is Violentmonkey. Has been for some time.
|
| Does Mozilla have an allowlist for these? If so I don't like it.
| jraph wrote:
| A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source.
|
| And yes, Firefox on Android has an allowlist of "known working
| good" extensions, the reason given being that Firefox for
| Android doesn't implement everything the Desktop version
| implements and IIUC, want to a avoid users blaming the browser
| when something breaks because of it.
| saghm wrote:
| > A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source.
|
| How does that even work? I assumed that Firefox extensions
| were implemented in frontend web technologies (JavaScript,
| CSS, etc.)? Do they use WebAssembly or something, or is it
| just obfuscated to the point that trying to read it isn't
| worthwhile?
| charles_f wrote:
| The latter afaik, but also since they have analytics
| there's a backend bit you can't see
| can_center_divs wrote:
| Website's source code is not open source, even though you
| can inspect it.
|
| If you have a public repository with your code on GitHub,
| everyone can see the code. But they do not have the right
| to use the same code in a commercial manner, without you
| specifying a license for your code, that says they can.
| tech2 wrote:
| CoPilot sticks its fingers in its ears, scrunches its
| eyes closed, and shouts "Not Listening!" repeatedly...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| being in cleartext does not mean the code itself is "open
| source" or proprietary. the license defines that,
| pmontra wrote:
| Check the EULA at https://www.tampermonkey.net/eula.php
|
| Excerpt from point 4
|
| > 4. NON-ALLOWABLE USES OF TAMPERMONKEY
|
| > You are strictly prohibited from, and agree that you will
| not, adapt, edit, change, modify, transform, publish,
| republish, distribute, or redistribute Tampermonkey or any
| elements, portions, or parts thereof, including without
| limitation, to any elements, portions, or parts of
| Tampermonkey software (in any form or media) without the
| Company's prior written consent. [...]
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blob/master/
| COP...
|
| this says GPL so unless they update their license file
| here, this stays
| L3viathan wrote:
| > This repository contains the source of the Tampermonkey
| extension up to version 2.9. All newer versions are
| distributed under a proprietary license.
|
| You can of course do whatever GPL allows you to the code
| in the repository (so up to version 2.9).
| crashmat wrote:
| so the newer version isn't even at all based on the one
| before 2.9? seems unlikely
| tsbinz wrote:
| If you own the rights to software, you previously
| releasing something under the GPL does not mean you have
| to make derived versions of the thing you released under
| the GPL available under the GPL too. If you take someone
| else's code under the terms of the GPL you have to do
| that, but that does not seem to have happened here.
| dTal wrote:
| That assumes that nobody contributed to the software
| while it was GPL, unless there was an explicit
| contractual copyright transfer.
| account42 wrote:
| It only assumes that there were no copyrightable
| contributions that weren't replaced as before the license
| change. Not all code changes meet the criteria for
| copyright.
| xPaw wrote:
| It really is bizzare, old Firefox used to support all addons,
| then they shipped a new version and only allowed like 10
| addons, and to this day they don't allow any more. It's
| already been years.
|
| I know my addon works fine on mobile, but they provide no
| means of specifying that*. I tried to email them for it to
| become "recommended" but never heard back.
|
| The fact that they allow tampermonkey which allows any kind
| of script just adds insult to the injury.
|
| * when uploading a new version, it does ask to specify which
| Firefox desktop/android versions are supported, but this
| existed before the new Firefox and doesn't do anything.
| jkonline wrote:
| The Mozilla blog recently covered some of this IIRC:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/extensions-
| addo...
| moralestapia wrote:
| Unfortunately, everything at Firefox has become political
| in nature and it's been downhill ever since.
|
| With an already low (and diminishing) market share, it's
| just a matter of time before Google cuts their search
| engine deal with them, then poof they're gone!
| no_wizard wrote:
| I suspect this won't happen. They cut deals with even
| smaller browsers. Its about proportional revenue though,
| so dropping market share may net Mozilla less on the next
| contract negotiation.
|
| I also don't think its in Google's best interest to let
| Mozilla fall out, if anything, it gives them some lever
| against anti trust.
| outadoc wrote:
| > It really is bizzare, old Firefox used to support all
| addons
|
| It never did though? In my recollection the old version had
| an Android-only extensions API, and only a few extensions
| ever supported it. At least now, in theory, any extension
| can run on Android, which is great.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > and only a few extensions ever supported it
|
| Compared to desktop certainly, but in absolute numbers it
| still weren't actually that few, and certainly _much_
| more than the mere 22 (!) add-ons (as of today) that can
| currently be installed.
|
| > At least now, in theory, any extension can run on
| Android, which is great.
|
| What good is that theory if in practice I actually can't
| make use of it?
|
| Besides, the transition to webextensions happened with
| Firefox _57_ , and support for webextensions was added to
| the old Fennec-based Android Firefox, too. True, not the
| full API available on Desktop was ported, but that's no
| different from the situation today, and yet at that time
| there were _no_ artificial restrictions on what add-ons
| were able to be installed on Android.
|
| And even with the webextension API, to some extent
| extensions still need to be specifically designed to
| properly work on Android, too (especially if they need to
| display any sort of UI)...
| Laaas wrote:
| Mozilla has been going down a bizarre path for a while. If
| only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of
| getting excommunicated, then we'd have the best of Brave
| and Firefox.
|
| (What _really_ showed me Mozilla is going crazy is when
| they fired sunfishcode (IIRC) and the Servo team! Both were
| essential to their success. It makes little sense.)
| fhd2 wrote:
| I agree, Mozilla has been on a very weird path since
| then.
|
| Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference
| though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took
| Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they
| dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the
| shady things I know about.
|
| I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-
| compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this
| pretty publicly.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be
| any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a
| nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was
| that enough companies and individuals would donate to
| support its development as a common interest, because
| obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now
| the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making
| money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source
| components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a
| consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly.
|
| Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.
| Laaas wrote:
| Much in this world would be better if we donated to what
| ought be a public service. If browser vendors didn't have
| to chase profits, perhaps they wouldn't be so user-
| hostile, and the same principle applies to most software
| I'd say.
|
| That we don't have a world where this is possible is in
| my opinion both a cultural and political failure. What if
| every person on HN gave 1% of their income to various
| open source projects they use? What if we made this a
| cultural norm, and you'd be shamed if you didn't?
| fnimick wrote:
| > If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla
| instead of getting excommunicated
|
| I find it amusing that you're blaming Mozilla for this,
| rather than Eich for being bigoted and unwelcoming.
| jraph wrote:
| > If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla
| instead of getting excommunicated
|
| Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the
| role of CEO. He decided to step out.
|
| > First, though, there's a matter that we should all be
| clear about: Brendan Eich was not fired. After his
| appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla
| Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did.
| The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his
| donation; they did not "remove him because of his views."
| If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have
| given him the job in the first place
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-
| mozilla-ce...
|
| I guess we could point out that the Mozilla Board should
| have seen this coming and not encouraged him to be the
| CEO, but they could also have been criticized for this.
|
| > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox
|
| I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with
| Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do
| privacy wise. Unfortunately.
|
| The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can
| achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium
| and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off
| installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-
| works-b...
| tripleo1 wrote:
| > > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox
|
| > I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with
| Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do
| privacy wise. Unfortunately.
|
| > The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you
| can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled
| chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are
| better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]
|
| And LibreWolf is pretty much Firefox with uBlock origin.
| But Brave is popular and Vivaldi is popular (among some).
| A successful mega project is supposed to have (gently)
| knockoffs.
| [deleted]
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him
| the role of CEO. He decided to step out.
|
| Sure, but for those that don't know the story, Brendan
| was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of
| the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do,
| btw). Brendan's resignation was his way of saying "f*ck
| this crap, I have better stuff to do", and he showed.
|
| >they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first
| place.
|
| LOL, are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla? HE
| was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate
| because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal
| thing to do, btw).
|
| Im not sure why you posted this as it has never been
| suggested that his donation was illegal.
|
| The campaign against his appointment as CTO was on the
| basis that his financial support for proposition 8 showed
| him to be hostile to the protection of civil rights for
| some members of society, including Mozilla personnel, and
| that this was incompatible with his leadership role.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> The campaign
|
| And this really is the crux, isn't it:
|
| 1. a political campaign inside Mozilla
|
| 2. by some employees that interpreted risk that
|
| 3. his donations were an attack on what they perceived as
| their rights
|
| 4. and this made him unable to fulfill the role of CTO
|
| That's a whole lot of one-side conclusions to get to
| "he's unfit to be the CTO". No wonder he left.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| What do you think "they" should have done?
|
| This was all discussed at the time: the campaign against
| his appointment was far from just being "inside Mozilla".
| And "what they perceived as their rights" are now
| _actual_ civil and legal rights because US society
| decided that was the right thing to do.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| You mean because five unelected judges decided
| pxc wrote:
| That's a good point-- gay rights are pretty precariously
| situated and it seems a bit premature to celebrate their
| status as set in stone at this point.
|
| But Democrats who run in elections and appoint judges
| seem to generally like being able to point to the courts
| as a risk, and show little interest in legally bolstering
| civil rights when they have the power to, so it'll
| probably stay as it is... until it doesn't, just like
| with Roe and Casey.
| jraph wrote:
| > a political campaign inside Mozilla
|
| And outside too. I read that OKCupid invited Firefox
| users to switch browsers, and CREDO mobile gathered 50K
| signatures for a petition. So nothing specific to Mozilla
| in the end.
|
| > No wonder he left.
|
| He indeed wrote on his blog "under the present
| circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader" and he
| was probably right about this.
| mozman wrote:
| Is there or has there ever been any evidence that Brendan
| did not separate his personal views from professional
| views?
| jraph wrote:
| He might have separated his personal views from his
| professional views. He probably did, actually. But I
| don't think it matters.
|
| People still didn't like it. His right to have these
| views, their right too.
|
| It would only have been worse if he hadn't.
|
| The world is not neutral, organizations neither.
| moralestapia wrote:
| But organizations _should_ be, at least I 'm on that
| camp.
|
| Edit: Well actually, I can think of some orgs. that
| should be polarized by nature, like those meant to
| promote change. But a foundation that _" works to ensure
| the internet remains a public resource that is open and
| accessible to us all"_ should be quite neutral on all
| others topics beyond that.
| jraph wrote:
| I think I understand this opinion, but I'm not sure this
| is actually possible. I don't think political neutrality
| really exists. The closest thing that exists is status
| quo and mainstream / widespread opinions / beliefs.
|
| On any subject that's not the main mission of the org,
| people will have any sort of opinions, on one side or
| another. Sometimes biased towards one of the sides
| depending on the mission or the actual people it
| attracts.
|
| (sometimes on the main mission too actually, but in this
| case the org is in trouble / needs to adapt the mission -
| it can be an existential crisis)
|
| And if for some idea, the mainstream / status quo outside
| the org is biased toward one side, this bias might also
| affect the org because the org lives in this world.
|
| Let's take an (imperfect?) example: about
| veganism/vegetarianism/non-vegetarianism, what is the
| neutral stance? If the org needs to organize a dinner,
| some side will need to be taken. Allowing everything to
| accommodate the preferences of every person is not
| neutral. That's the status quo however, usually. You can
| only have "presence of animal-based food" or "absence of
| animal-based food". Nothing in between. You need to pick
| a side, take a non neutral-decision.
|
| In the case of Brendan being rejected, people were going
| to be pissed either way. If he stayed, it would have
| pissed people who thought Brendan was not desirable as a
| CEO of an organization like Mozilla which is supposed to
| be inclusive because of his anti same-sex wedding
| actions. Because he left, it pissed people who thought
| his personal opinions should not matter. And both sides
| have a point, which is the hardest part.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >Allowing everything to accommodate the preferences of
| every person is not neutral.
|
| What do you mean that is not neutral?
|
| Not being neural would be either forcing everyone to get
| meat with their meals or not allowing people to get meat
| with their meals.
|
| By allowing choice you are taking a neutral path.
| [deleted]
| jraph wrote:
| > are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla?
|
| Yep.
|
| > HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
|
| Yeah, no. Being co-founder is not everything. He was CTO
| back then. He pretty much didn't give them their jobs,
| alone anyway. And of course, to go from CTO to CEO, the
| board gave him the job. I don't know how that can be
| wrong.
|
| And in any case it does not give him any specific kind of
| immunity against criticism.
|
| Note that I didn't write this sentence, I'm quoting the
| linked article.
|
| > which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw
|
| Of course. But legal [?] good. Not speaking about Brendan
| because my opinion on this is irrelevant, but I'm sure
| you can find something legal that you don't like. For
| Brendan homosexual wedding is one example of something
| legal that's bad, if his opinion on this matter hasn't
| changed.
| asddubs wrote:
| I don't think anyone questioned the legality, but you
| seem to be conflating that with morality. evil (to use
| your term) is a moral judgement, not a legal one.
| moralestapia wrote:
| What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that
| or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with
| that let me remind you that people have different points
| of view and that shouldn't be an issue.
|
| Since morality is subjective in the end, the only
| discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was
| legal, which it was.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that
| or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with
| that let me remind you that people have different points
| of view and that shouldn't be an issue.
|
| > Since morality is subjective in the end, the only
| discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was
| legal, which it was.
|
| That's a philosophical point, a student's thought
| experiment taking the (positivist?) requirement for
| objectivity to a logical extreme - and it's a very
| incomplete experiment that takes only the first step.
|
| Reality doesn't work that way: Most information and
| decisions in life are subjective and we have many tools
| for doing it that way. Subjectivity doesn't make
| something arbitrary or meaningless or infinitely
| relative. Almost everything important is subjective,
| including morality.
| asoneth wrote:
| > What he did wasn't immoral ... Since morality is
| subjective
|
| I agree that morality is subjective -- what he did was
| immoral to some and moral to others. Similarly there are
| people who considered it immoral when CEOs were publicly
| voicing support for pro-choice policies.
|
| For a leader it probably hinges on the perspectives of
| the people they lead. You won't have a healthy
| organization if a significantly large number of people
| believe you are behaving immorally, especially at a
| nonprofit paying below-market rates.
| jraph wrote:
| > What he did wasn't immoral
|
| ... to you. Like you say in this very comment, morality /
| ethics is personal / specific to each person.
|
| If you did something legal I despise (I might even think
| what you did was moral, but still strongly disagree), I
| understand that you did something legal but still might
| reject the idea to have you near me or representing
| something I like and might employ legal means to try to
| get rid of you, too. By protesting for instance. I have
| the right to do so as long as I respect the law.
|
| The fact that what he did is legal is settled but he
| still decided to step out, as a consequence of people
| protesting against him being the CEO because of his past
| actions. Since legality is settled and everyone agrees
| about this, it's not a discussion worth having, actually.
| Only the rest remains. This is absolutely non-legal
| concerns that people don't agree on.
|
| Law does not settle everything. Legality is not
| sufficient for something to be moral. It might not even
| be necessary.
|
| Now, the rest has also been discussed at length, so it's
| not clear it's worth keeping discussing this neither.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > morality / ethics is personal / specific to each person
|
| It's not. Almost all of humanity, every culture now or
| historical, has agreed on many of these things. Others
| have very wide support, including universal human rights
| (which include your rights). You can find many arguments
| supporting these things, throughout human history.
| Societies and much of the world agree on them (including
| universal human rights). Research shows evolutionary
| advantages and connections to these things, and that
| animals share them with us.
|
| Ethics and morality are not some arbitrary things we each
| make up.
| [deleted]
| MasterYoda wrote:
| As far as I know you can install any addons you want, you
| just have to create your own collection. Those default
| addons you see are only Mozillas standard collection.
|
| Even do I would like there were more addons to choose from
| as default I can understand Mozillas choice here. And that
| is that most addons are not design for android and they
| would not work or give a very bad UX. So for many non tech
| savvy standard users, that just would be frustrated and
| blame Firefox, this decision can make sense to select god
| and popular addons they know works well.
|
| But it would be great if more addons could be added
| ofcourse, and that Mozilla could have some design
| guidelines for new addons that they should work for both
| desktop and mobile (where it make sense). And mark in the
| addon store which addons that are design for both. Or maybe
| have a simple setting in Firefox for android that is for
| advanced users, there they could add any addon, but first
| they have to check a box that they understand that the
| addon may not work correctly on a smartphone.
| ashwagary wrote:
| >As far as I know you can install any addons you want,
| you just have to create your own collection.
|
| I'm also very interested in bypassing the mobile
| limitation. Does creating a custom collection require an
| account? Ive never seen the option and have tried
| everything to back to 2019-2020 Firefox plugin
| capabilities.
|
| Update: For anyone in the same position, I just saw this
| solution in another comment. Its unfortunate that such
| basic functionality requires a whole user account.
|
| >For reference, to work around mozilla's artificial
| restrictions, you have to use nightly. Once you activate
| the debug menu (about firefox > tap logo 5 times) there's
| the option to set a "custom add-on collection". You can
| make a custom collection on addons.mozilla.org using a
| firefox account. The two fields are the last two parts of
| the URL on your custom collection.
| gxvwb wrote:
| You have to jump through several hoops, but it is worth
| it. https://gxvwb.dev/how-to-install-firefox-add-ons-on-
| android/
| neop1x wrote:
| I had to stop using Firefox mobile due to this (and removal
| of about:config). I switched to Kiwi browser and I have
| been using Violentmonkey for several years. It doesn't work
| perfectly but it has been good enough for me.
| drtgh wrote:
| I remember that update, suddenly they disabled Cookie
| AutoDelete, what left me with a bad feeling.
|
| PS: Meanwhile I do not understand why is Ghostery included
| in that tinny allowed addons list (and now Tampermonkey).
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Do you mean there's something wrong with Ghostery?
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| For a while Ghostery was owned by an ad company, and for
| a while Ghostery would add ads to browsers (IIRC). The
| first is no longer the case, not sure about the second.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| Ghostery? I've been using it for years, with complete
| satisfaction. Hardly ever that I see adverts.
| officeplant wrote:
| As soon as it got bought up by an ad company it just felt
| like a poisoned well so I stopped using it / recommending
| it to friends. Their reputation suffered so I stopped
| paying attention to see if they got any better.
| jerryzh wrote:
| You can enable in about:config and install all plugin with
| Firefox Nightly
| bentcorner wrote:
| This feature is also supported in beta, you don't need
| nightly anymore.
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-
| android-n...
| [deleted]
| superkuh wrote:
| Asking people to run nightly (essentially modern
| alpha/aurora) or beta is asking people to use an insecure
| browser with bugs.
|
| Firefox not allowing people to control their own browser
| and install add-ons, enable features, etc without their
| permission was the end of Firefox for me (back in version
| 37). This move to trade freedom for "security" for the
| technologically ignorant ended up providing neither.
| Especially considering the security theater that is the
| automated signing portal. The only benefit to all this is
| the ability to revoke _after_ the damage is done
| widescale enough to be known.
|
| There are the un-branded builds of Firefox that are not
| buggy and do not restrict your software freedoms for no
| purpose. Unfortunately Mozilla has disabled auto-updates
| in the unbranded builds so you have to manually install
| the a new full browser for every little update.
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-
| ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
| benatkin wrote:
| Yes, just like having people run Tampermonkey instead of
| Violentmonkey. Mozilla is making things less secure with
| this whole extension policy.
| LightHugger wrote:
| Ah yes, an addon whitelist. How very community friendly of
| Mozilla...
|
| And they wonder why their market share plummets the way it
| does, making such extremely user hostile decisions like that.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate here, don't they need to protect
| their users from nefarious add ons that could steal data?
| [deleted]
| ok123456 wrote:
| Then don't use addons.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| my data is on my computer which has also access to my
| phone because they are connected
| krono wrote:
| Doesn't seem very high up their list of priorities,
| seeing as how their desktop extensions - including the
| "Recommended" ones - are allowed to break all the rules.
|
| A surprising amount of them comes with unlisted and
| uncontrollable connections to snooping services like
| Google Analytics or Sentry, I've seen unexpected
| redirects / tab hijacks - mostly to advertise the
| developer's new other extension, even fetching and
| executing external scripts and other resources from
| various CDNs is not uncommon... essentially everything
| their extension policies disallow.
|
| All these violations are hardcoded into the extensions'
| source and rather easily scanned for automatically mind
| you, it almost takes more effort to not notice them.
|
| I've stopped reporting the ones I encountered, they were
| never taken down, never lost their recommended badge, and
| all the violations remained in every next version that I
| checked.
| krono wrote:
| Here are some examples anyone can download to verify I'm
| not talking out of my arse:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/giphy-for-
| fir...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabliss/
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-
| subsc...
|
| To get the source as its distributed to the browser you
| click "See all versions" in the "More information" panel
| on the left hand side of the extension page, then right
| click the "Add to Firefox" button and save to disk (don't
| left click the button if you're using FF or the extension
| will auto-install!), and then just unpack the XPI
| archive.
|
| Don't forget to send in those abuse reports, maybe
| that'll finally get Mozilla to look at them.
|
| Bonus link:
| https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/add-
| on-p...
| Jach wrote:
| Going down the path to eventually having no users is an
| interesting way to accomplish that.
|
| But really, no, they don't. Put up enough disclaimers
| (this is the secret to compromising with security teams
| on usability) and let me do what I want at my own risk.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's what Apple would do, and in a lesser measure,
| Google.
|
| Walled gardens have value for the user, Apple made tons
| of money and happy customers doing this.
|
| But Mozilla is neither Apple nor Google, and Firefox is
| supposed to be an alternative to Chrome, in fact that's
| what annoys me the most with Firefox since last years:
| they copy Chrome for many things, but they don't have the
| means of Google, so it almost guarantees their position
| as a second choice. They did great things with Quantum,
| but they also lost most of their identity.
|
| It is great that they support some extensions on their
| mobile version (uBlock Origin alone makes it worth it),
| but the wall garden approach is, I think, too much like
| what they are competing against. They could give the user
| an option.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Yeah if FF just becomes Chrome I might as well switch to
| the original.
|
| I think Mozilla just has to bite the bullet and accept
| that they'll never be a mainstream browser (the majority
| of internet users don't even use ad blockers). The public
| is staying with Google and Apple.
| krageon wrote:
| If I protect you by taking away your house keys so you
| can't have them stolen and abused, does that make me a
| good person? Is it a good reason to begin with?
| bloppe wrote:
| The we need a nanny argument really irks me in all it's
| forms. I appreciate guardrails, not a straightjacket.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Sure but give them a choice. I don't want to be
| 'protected' from myself.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| And the people that do, probably aren't running firefox
| for _android_
| Semaphor wrote:
| Yeah, I remember before they removed all addons, they had
| over 20% market share on mobile. Those were the days.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| What did those people switch to? I can't imagine browsing
| without ubo, what other options do I have?
| jsnell wrote:
| I think Semaphor was being sarcastic; Firefox never had
| any meaningful usage on mobile, certainly not 20%.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Ah, I was hoping there was some amazing little known fork
| with lots of promise. My wildly optimistic hope is that
| servo takes flight now it appears it isn't just a
| research project. I'd love to help, but I know nothing
| about web or UI stuff, all my code is cli or embedded
| rust/cuda.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It never did, I was being sarcastic. Most users on phones
| use chrome or safarIE, as those come preinstalled.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Kiwi can run ubo and pretty much any chrome extension.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| And also, why do they block loading XPI extensions on
| mobile :(
| Zuiii wrote:
| And also also, why they block the ability to run devtools
| directly on mobile. It's an incredibly sad state of
| affairs that I have to use a chromium fork to do
| something that was pioneered on Firefox. Why do Mozilla
| keep shooting themselves in the foot like this?
| cma wrote:
| And why is mouse/keyboard and stylus support so bad on
| mobile? Most of the normal browsing hotkeys don't work,
| even though people can use that setup a good bit with
| tablets and foldables.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Feel free to implement this in HomeActivity::onKeyDown.
| (https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-
| android/blob/ce68e...).
|
| Check for the appropriate modifiers on your key event +
| R, and call
| components.useCases.sessionUseCases.reloadUrl().
|
| Why is it so bad ? Because noone uses a keyboard on
| mobile. Because if they had spent time implementing any
| other features that are used by 0.0001% of users, you'd
| have been complaining that Mozilla is wasting their money
| on not making a better browser.
| Zak wrote:
| Web developers are, indeed a tiny fraction of the overall
| userbase for web browsers. Why browser makers might want
| to cater to their needs anyway is left as an exercise for
| the reader.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Why browser makers might not want to cater to web
| developers wanting to use a keyboard on a platform that
| is used at 99.9% through touch controls, platform on
| which we both know they neither develop on (when is the
| last time you made a website on your tablet?) or even
| test on, is indeed left as an exercise for the reader.
| Zak wrote:
| Testing websites on actual mobile devices is generally
| advisable. Testing them in a niche browser, perhaps not
| so much, but more people will if that browser makes it
| easy.
| cma wrote:
| Tablets often come with keyboards.
| ecef9-8c0f-4374 wrote:
| I know for sure I could enforce the use of my desktop addons
| by installing them manually. They were missing dialogs boxen
| and touch problems, but for the most part they worked and I
| was OK with the problems. Of course we can't have nice things
| and not even bad things. Personal freedom is overrated after
| all. At some point Mozilla invested time and money to take my
| freedom. This reminds me of the time of XPI and XUL, when I
| used to hack my own Addons together. Then they enforced
| addon-signing. Until this point you could disable it and
| switch to "developer mode". I hate Mozilla and guess they
| hate me.
| [deleted]
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| I agree with most of your comment, but just a quick note that
| whether or not a service provides a privacy policy doesn't mean
| they necessarily do anything to protect users' privacy. (Mostly
| in the sense that if they _did_ have one, that fact wouldn 't
| mean much on its own.)
| Fnoord wrote:
| I just checked the addon in its settings. Yes, it has
| telemetry. No, it isn't enabled by default. Its opt-in. That's
| how I want such a feature implemented (e.g. Homebrew doesn't,
| it uses opt-out).
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Only a small subset of extensions are allowed on mobile. If you
| use the nightly version of the Firefox app there's an elaborate
| process you can go thru to allow access to all extensions.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| > Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened
| with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure
| what.
|
| ?????
| sp332 wrote:
| Wasn't this a casualty of the XUL addons being removed? The
| other monkey extensions were ported to the new Web Extension
| APIs.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Greasemonkey still works in recent Firefox versions.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| It does, now, but its developer took a _really_ long time
| in porting, in that time TamperMonkey was developed and
| had really gained popularity.
| IAmNotAFix wrote:
| So it might actually still be the best choice.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| IIRC, the developer initially resisted shifting to
| WebExtensions and then eventually (my assumption) half-
| heartedly did convert his extension to it, but in the
| meantime TamperMonkey developer got to it much sooner and
| worked hard for making it work equally well in both Chrome
| and Firefox. It is still not as feature rich as TamperMonkey
| and not even actively maintained anymore I think.
| sp332 wrote:
| For Android, yeah, they have a short list of allowed addons.
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re...
| You can get past it if you're willing to run Nightly and jump
| through these hoops:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
| mook wrote:
| I've landed on using the F-droid build instead of Nightly.
| That also allows custom extension collections, and I believe
| Mozilla's attitude was that they get more telemetry for
| Nightly as they consider that an opt-in somehow (or at least
| they did for the desktop app).
| dewy wrote:
| How do you install Firefox via F-droid? (I searched, but
| don't see it listed in my F-droid store directly.)
|
| Do you use the FFupdater app?
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Not the parent but from F-Droid I use Fennec, which is FF
| nightly with the branding and some of the more obnoxious
| anti-features removed:
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid
| /
| laurentlbm wrote:
| I recommend the fork Mull:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/
|
| It includes privacy-related improvements. See more:
| https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix
| plorg wrote:
| You can do this in Beta now as well.
| noirscape wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that this isn't truly "getting past
| it". It's still locked to Mozilla's add-on store (preventing
| you from testing or manually loading extension bundles) and
| all you're really doing is switching the collection that
| Fenix loads the extensions from to one you control instead.
|
| One of the bigger reasons to use Fennec instead (the old
| Firefox Android browser, still maintained as a community
| fork) for me has been the fact that you can also load in the
| XPI files yourself, which is needed for a few FOSS extensions
| that aren't submitted to the Firefox Add-On Store due to one
| reason or another.
| asddubs wrote:
| what's the difference between the old and new firefox
| android browser? is it a separate codebase? different UI?
| noirscape wrote:
| Completely new codebase yeah. The old codebase is known
| as Fennec and is directly based on Gecko (the browser
| engine that powers desktop Firefox). All the same
| advantages. The UI wasn't excellent, but it did the job
| perfectly well.
|
| The new codebase is known as Fenix and is instead based
| on GeckoView which isn't an actual browser but rather an
| library version of Gecko that is intended to replace
| Androids own System WebView (it was first used in Firefox
| Focus which was this tiny trackerblocking microbrowser
| that they offered).
|
| The difference sounds tiny but it feels just... way
| clunkier to use and there's a bunch of features missing
| since a WebView browser isn't made with those in mind the
| same way a regular browser is.
|
| There's just... loads of features missing or not
| available and the team working on Fenix is blatantly
| either mismanaged or underfunded. It's so feature-poor
| that you still can't actually set your homepage to a
| URL[0] among many other bugs and missing features. It
| appears to have gotten so bad that they moved the entire
| issue tracker over to Bugzilla and moved the repo to a
| new GitHub repo to hide just how feature poor this
| browser is.
|
| Firefox Fenix is terrible, has been terrible for the past
| 2 years and I don't understand why they're still
| developing it instead of shoring up Fennec properly.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7551
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Part 1 due to comment length:
|
| > but rather an library version of Gecko that is intended
| to replace Androids own System WebView
|
| Not literally, though. Yes, the idea of packaging up the
| rendering engine inside of an Android library with a
| proper Java API was likely modelled on the implementation
| of the system web view, but I don't think that offering a
| literal drop-in replacement was ever the goal. Literally
| replacing the system web view is impossible anyway unless
| you're building a custom version of Android, and even
| just offering an API-compatible replacement (which would
| mean probably having to emulate quite a bit of
| Chromium/Blink-specific behaviour with Gecko) seems of
| dubious value [1] compared to the additional effort
| required for building such a thing.
|
| > there's a bunch of features missing since a WebView
| browser isn't made with those in mind the same way a
| regular browser is.
|
| I think that's not so much the Webview-inspired technical
| design, but simply the fact that Firefox on Android
| always seemed chronically under-staffed. Even with the
| old Fennec codebase there were some comparatively and
| surprisingly major bugs and missing features (didn't
| remember your scroll position if the memory pressure
| evicted either background tabs or the whole Firefox
| process, under memory pressure session history would stop
| recording entirely for tabs that had been unloaded once
| [2], you couldn't re-order tabs in the tab list, and
| quite a few more) that remained open for sometimes years
| and were in quite a few cases only fixed because of
| outside contributions.
|
| So then they went and did the Thing You Should Never Do
| [3], i.e. throw away the existing codebase, which of
| course meant that all and every little feature and UI
| nicety that finally got added throughout the years (and
| sometimes only because of outside contributions) got
| thrown out, too, and had to be re-implemented from
| scratch. And what with the Android browser still not
| being all that generously staffed and having to re-write
| the whole browser from scratch, it means that any
| progress beyond the MVP state will necessarily be slow
| and very intermittent.
|
| > Firefox Fenix is terrible, has been terrible for the
| past 2 years and I don't understand why they're still
| developing it instead of shoring up Fennec properly.
|
| The problem was that due to being chronically under-
| staffed (and also because of Fennec's design with a
| native Java Android UI [4] meant that you got at least
| the UI responsiveness benefits of multi-process even
| without actual Gecko-side multi-process capability), they
| never got around to doing the whole work of making Gecko
| on Android multi-process ready and only finally did it as
| part of the GeckoView/Fenix total rewrite. Given the time
| that has passed since development on Fennec stopped (and
| as far as Gecko was concerned, it stopped even earlier
| because they eventually shunted off Fennec to the ESR
| branch, which coincidentally meant putting a relatively
| fixed termination date on Fennec, regardless of how good
| or bad Fenix would be coming along one year hence +/- a
| few weeks [5]).
|
| Much as I'm unhappy about Fenix and nostalgic for Fennec
| myself - if you somehow were able to drum up sufficient
| manpower for making a real dent in the bug backlog, I
| suppose that at this point it'd be more efficient finally
| re-implementing all those missing features back into the
| Fenix codebase, rather than attempting to get the old
| Fennec codebase working with a current Gecko build again.
|
| [1] Shipping a custom browser engine (i.e. Gecko) along
| with your app immediately bumps your APK size by dozens
| of MB, so unless your app is actually a browser itself,
| you probably need to have a really special use case and
| be quite desperate to start considering that option
| instead of using the system web view which comes at no
| size penalty.
|
| [2] Either the Firefox developers themselves didn't
| actually use their browser that intensively, or maybe
| they all had phones with much beefier specs and therefore
| never experienced the behaviour on a memory-constrained
| device. That particular bug got introduced in Firefox 16,
| got its first bug report for Firefox 24 and amassed seven
| duplicates before it was finally fixed in Firefox 46, but
| even that only because _I_ got so fed up with it that I
| finally investigated and then fixed the issue myself.
|
| Personally I'm not complaining that much about that turn
| of events, because it got me starting to contributing to
| Firefox for a while which was nice as a hobby, plus I got
| an invitation to the San Francisco all-hands out of it,
| which was nice, too (both meeting the Mozilla developers,
| as well as the trip itself), but for the management of
| the whole Firefox on Android project itself it doesn't
| speak quite that well...
|
| [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-
| should-...
|
| [4] The very first Firefox on Android actually did use a
| HTML/XUL-based interface just like Desktop Firefox does,
| but they found that on a phone the performance of that
| approach was terrible enough that they decided to rewrite
| the UI as a native Android app (codename "Native
| Fennec"), which then became Firefox on Android until
| version 68 and the replacement by the Fenix codebase.
|
| [5] I suppose in a real pinch they could have extended
| the life of the 68.x ESR branch a bit more, but only if
| Fenix would have been in a really catastrophic shape at
| that point.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Part 2 due to comment length:
|
| > It appears to have gotten so bad that they moved the
| entire issue tracker over to Bugzilla and moved the repo
| to a new GitHub repo to hide just how feature poor this
| browser is.
|
| The move to Github with Fenix probably happened because
| all the cool kids are hanging out on Github these days
| and they were hoping to gain some additional outside
| contributors that way. On the other hand, while Github's
| UI is in some ways possibly a bit slicker and more
| polished than Bugzilla's, Github's issue tracking is
| still lacking some notable features that are present in
| Bugzilla, like proper dependencies between individual
| bugs. Plus development of Gecko and GeckoView still
| happens in Bugzilla, so while using Github for Fenix
| might make things easier for outside contributors, it
| also introduces some additional friction for Mozilla's
| own developers.
|
| As for the repo move - from what I remember around the
| time that the whole GeckoView thing started, they (or at
| least certain product managers) were dreaming of being
| able to develop figuratively (or maybe even literally)
| dozens of little special-purpose browsers along the lines
| of Focus. Like one special privacy browser (i.e. Focus),
| one special browser for watching videos, one for... I
| can't remember actually, but maybe for online shopping,
| one for doing "research" or something like that, and so
| on, and so on, and so on.
|
| That's why the old Firefox actually got split up not just
| two-way, but actually three ways: GeckoView (Gecko
| packaged up with a proper Android API instead of the
| sprawling ad-hoc API in browser.js), Android Components
| (common UI components for web browsers as another
| separate library) and then the actual browser itself
| (because like I said the original idea was to have dozens
| of separate little browser apps, so they wanted to have
| as much re-usable code as possible - not just the browser
| engine itself, but also any other components that would
| be part of the native Android app - things like the URL
| bar, tab management, downloads, menus, sync, etc. etc.).
|
| It's an admirable goal, but it also introduces quite a
| bit of additional friction - instead of building the
| browser in one go, you now need to build three separate
| projects. I suppose for pure Android developers it's nice
| not having to directly deal with Gecko [1], but if you're
| doing things that straddle those component boundaries,
| it's rather annoying. You have three separate
| repositories that you need to keep in sync, you need to
| wrangle three separate builds, when landing new cross-
| component features you need to land them across those
| separate repositories in the right order and with the
| right timing, Gecko development is still tracked on
| Bugzilla while the two Android repositories used to use
| Github... [2] And what with the additional split of even
| the Android app into Android Components and the actual
| app, even pure Android developers who didn't work on
| Gecko/GeckoView couldn't entirely escape this additional
| friction.
|
| And of course (YAGNI was true this time), Mozilla never
| really got further than building the two browsers that
| are existing even now (Focus, which still seems to be
| hanging on, as well as the main Firefox itself [3]), so I
| guess that ultimately they themselves decided that having
| two separate repositories (or three, if you're counting
| Focus, too) wasn't actually worth the hassle, so they
| decided to merge them back together again in order to
| make the developer experience more seamless.
|
| [1] Though Firefox has been able to build in "artefact
| mode" for quite a while now (definitively pre-dating the
| Fenix rewrite), where it'll simply download a Gecko build
| from Mozilla so you don't have to compile the C++/Rust
| code yourself if you don't have any intentions on making
| any changes in that area. So from an Android developer
| point of view there's not much of a difference between
| building the old Firefox for Android with an artefact
| build, or building the new Firefox with a ready-made
| GeckoView package, though I suppose the new systems
| allows you to skip some "Mozillaisms" that are still
| required for building the full Firefox repository even in
| artefact mode, plus of course you no longer have to
| download the whole large mozilla-central repository.
|
| [2] Apart from the general annoyance of feeling that
| Spolsky was definitively right and throwing out the whole
| old codebase was a mistake, this was another reason why I
| stopped contributing to the frontend bits of Firefox on
| Android - I used to contribute both frontend and backend
| bits, and in conjunction with the general annoyance about
| the direction being taken, suddenly having to deal with
| three separate repositories didn't feel like fun any
| more.
|
| [3] Okay, so there was Firefox Rocket, too [4], which was
| supposed to be some sort of lite browser for developing
| countries, but with the release of the full new Firefox
| it was discontinued again. (And shipping it with
| Gecko(View) instead of using the system web view would
| have definitively taken it out of the "lite" category,
| too.)
|
| [4] And the "Reference Browser" I guess, but that was
| only ever intended as a demo project for Android
| Components and possibly to also aid in debugging without
| having to spin up a full Firefox for Android build, or
| before the new Fenix-Firefox was even in a really useable
| state.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > The old codebase is known as Fennec
|
| Note: So is the F-Droid build of the new codebase[1].
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fd
| roid/
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It was basically a complete rewrite. Mozilla moved from a
| bundled browser + UI to a GeckoView component with a
| browser UI on top.
|
| I'm not sure anyone else actually uses GeckoView. I only
| know about it because their argument for disabling
| about:config is that users could mess up the bindings
| between GeckoView and the browser, forcing you to clear
| the browser's data to get it working again if you mess up
| the internals.
|
| The old browser definitely could've used some refactoring
| but after the rewrite almost every feature that made
| Firefox interesting disappeared. They also changed how
| user-installed certificate authorities are handled (if
| you, as a user install your own CA, you need to tap the
| Firefox logo in the settings seven times to open up
| special secret settings and enable loading the CA in
| there).
|
| Firefox currently has two things going for it: their
| tracking prevention being built in, and a few useful
| addons. If you don't use those or don't care too much
| about them, you should switch to Chromium (I recommend
| Bromite as an alternative, which has ad blocking built in
| and even rudimentary user script support without addons)
| because Firefox is a lot slower in comparison.
| 2h wrote:
| Hmm I use F-droid Fennec daily, and it has the same
| whitelist of available extensions as regular Firefox. I
| don't see how to add your own, unless you go through the
| hoops of enabling debug mode (described elsewhere in
| another comment)
| benatkin wrote:
| Hmm, well they've chosen a known bad one. What gives. :(
|
| How is this ever cool, Mozilla?
|
| https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#iss.
| ..
| justinclift wrote:
| Reading further down that issue, it doesn't seem to be what
| it initially sounded like.
|
| ?
| benatkin wrote:
| Still wild to reserve permission to to that
| blibble wrote:
| doing that would be flat out unlawful under the GDPR,
| regardless of whatever crap they put into their EULA
|
| and enough to get that company into rather expensive
| trouble
| nfriedly wrote:
| Iceraven supports Violentmonkey - https://github.com/fork-
| maintainers/iceraven-browser
|
| (Iceraven is a fork of Firefox for Android with way more
| extensions enabled and several other annoyances fixed.)
|
| I just installed it and then added
| https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars - it works
| perfectly!
| benatkin wrote:
| Ooh, that's awesome!
|
| Similar to Kiwi Browser with Chromium.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| What exactly is better in ViolentMonkey? Just want to know
| because I keep working with userscripts and after
| GreaseMonkey's _collapse_ TamperMonkey has been my default
| userscript manager.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| In term of usability: its JS injector mechanism is _much_
| faster than TM last time I checked. Not that it 's a big deal
| for normal users, but I have a few huge global scripts that I
| can see very visible impact.
|
| And it's more "cleaner" as that you can clearly see each
| scripts you loaded in devtool and debug them, but and I think
| TM is catching up in this regard.
|
| Outside that, VM is totally open source, development seems to
| be much quicker (with the drawback of slightly less
| stability, I'd admit), devs are more responsive.
| onurtag wrote:
| I'll pinch in with Tampermonkey's upsides compared to
| Violentmonkey.
|
| Tampermonkey supports @connect [1] which lets you take an
| action whenever a script connects to a domain that isn't
| listed in its meta fields. Tampermonkey also warns you
| whenever a script modifies its @include/@match/@connect fiels
| with an update.
|
| [1]: https://www.tampermonkey.net/documentation.php?locale=en
| #met...
| blibble wrote:
| no popup every few days asking for money
| capitainenemo wrote:
| ViolentMonkey at least seemed to be the only one that worked
| in my Firefox with NoScript enabled on a site. And since I
| was occasionally writing script snippets to fix stupid uses
| of JS to unhide images/html, that was nice.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| My browsing's habit is the same as yours, just a bit
| different is I use noscript-mode and write my own scripts
| to fix the sites using ublock alone (so I won't need 2
| extensions for it).
|
| It was a bit (nice) surprised for me to see many sites is
| really usable in noscript-mode.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Heh. On a few (not all) my firefox profiles I actually
| use umatrix+noscript. :) This one I'm typing on right now
| actually.
|
| The reason is I like the simple toggle approach of
| noscript, but I like umatrix's granularity. So I set
| umatrix to block virtually all 3rd party things, but give
| it a full whitelist on the things noscript handles well
| (media/script/xhr/other). Then I whitelist selectively in
| noscript and expand slightly in umatrix if necessary
| (say, for temporarily whitelisting google's captcha
| images).
| silverwind wrote:
| I prefer ViolentMonkey's UI to Tampermonkey's, and it's open
| source and likely technically superior as others have
| mentioned.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| TamperMonkey has a terrible embedded editor. It assumes 4
| spaces formatting and some other shit that I don't like, but
| can't change. I'm also lazy to switch to something else. I
| just wish they would fix the editor.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Oh the days when user scripts were simply files on your
| hard disk and could simply be directly edited (and e.g.
| also globally searched) by the text editor of your
| choice...
| [deleted]
| 2h wrote:
| If this post title sounds weird to you, it should.
|
| Since Android Firefox 68, you cannot install custom extensions,
| unless you register on AMO. Even if you wrote the extension
| yourself.
| modzu wrote:
| well it already did for those willing to jump through the hoops.
| thanks for continuing to cripple all the rest of the extensions
| :)
| Chromer030 wrote:
| Great , Best alternative to Chrome Android.
| nfriedly wrote:
| This is a good thing, but it feels like Mozilla is putting a
| Band-Aid over the huge gaping wound they cut in Firefox for
| Android when they disabled nearly all the extensions.
| danuker wrote:
| My guess is they are afraid they might lose Google money if
| they enable too much freedom.
|
| But they have also been losing users, and without users they
| have no leverage.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I use some addons that weren't whitelisted trough the addon
| collection trick.
|
| Many addons plain don't work. The mobile browser doesn't have
| the UI these addons rely on and maybe there's some API
| coverage missing.
|
| I considered this a fair reason when the rewrite was
| released, you could still use the old Firefox for a while.
| But then time passed and nothing changed.
|
| It's clear the Fenix devs don't have the capacity or the
| interest to maintain addon support.
|
| There are many silly things about the browser rewrite. For
| instance, you can't enter an IPv6 address and navigate to it
| (i.e. http://[::1]/). Firefox will always Google it. You can
| click a link from another app and the page will load just
| fine, but the address bar just doesn't understand those
| addresses. Then there's the fact about:config is disabled in
| stable versions of Firefox. Or the fact that enabling user-
| installed certificate authorities requires you to go into
| debug settings.
|
| I don't think Mozilla has a clear idea what it wants with
| their browser, it feels so unfinished in so many ways.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > Many addons plain don't work. The mobile browser doesn't
| have the UI these addons rely on and maybe there's some API
| coverage missing.
|
| Even the old Fennec code base never fully supported all
| bits of the Webextension API, and yet there were no
| restrictions on add-on installation. Besides in any case it
| would have been up to add-on _developers_ to decide whether
| they could sensibly get their add-on to work on Android
| (and therefore mark it as officially compatible with
| Android on AMO), or whether some crucial API was missing
| (or they simply didn 't feel like re-designing the UI with
| small screens in mind) and therefore leave it as officially
| desktop-only.
|
| Simple page scripts don't require any APIs (and especially
| no UI!) beyond basic Webextension support at all, and yet
| e.g. the video-background-play-fix add-on was only
| whitelisted after comparatively ages and much user
| complaining.
|
| And even before Webextensions, when writing an Android add-
| on required quite a bit more separate code that couldn't
| directly be re-used from a desktop add-on (due to the UI
| and e.g. tab management being handled differently between
| Desktop Firefox and Fennec), AMO still had _much_ more
| Android add-ons available than the current measly 22 add-
| ons that can officially be installed.
| Zak wrote:
| There's no incentive for addon developers to fix the
| experience because only a tiny fraction of Firefox users
| will jump through the hoops to run them. It seems to me
| like Mozilla is actively trying to prevent there from being
| an addon ecosystem for the mobile version, and I do not
| understand their motivation.
| [deleted]
| sdwolfz wrote:
| More importantly for me at least, ClearURLs. Now I can share nice
| stripped down Amazon links.
|
| Never used Tampermonkey before.
| aembleton wrote:
| Another way to do this is to add
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/mas...
| to uBlockOrigin as a custom filter list.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| "this list can not bypass tracker redirects through third-
| party domains. This can be done by strict-blocking said
| domain and using the ability to view parameters on the
| strict-block page or tools to bypass it"
|
| I don't understand. Is there a video showing how to do this?
| yunchly wrote:
| [flagged]
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| > ...lets...
|
| The mindset of my enemy.
|
| This device is my property. And in fact, as a result of the
| licenses of the software AOSP and Firefox, the software is
| itself my property as well. You don't get to tell me what to do
| with my property, period. If you want to forbid me from
| interacting with you in light of that, that is your right. If I
| commit a crime, charge me with a crime.
|
| Software that deliberately disempowers it's users is evil.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| its not bizarre in the least. firefox has allowed this
| extension on their desktop browser since it existed (same as
| other browsers) so i don't see how adding mobile support for it
| could affect their brand in any way.
|
| also i can't imagine there is much of a cross section between
| people who do illegal stuff and people who use only phones.
| anyone doing anything seriously is going to be using a desktop
| os with a physical keyboard
| pprotas wrote:
| This is a very unique take. Why do you think that this sort of
| thing is bad for Mozilla's reputation? This makes me just like
| them more.
|
| Giving the user free reign over their phone is the one thing
| that Android does right. I can also pirate stuff and do illegal
| communications on my iPhone by the way.
| andybak wrote:
| How awful. Letting people run any software they choose on their
| own hardware.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| What do you expect? Firefox is open source. People in the open
| source community have long been supportive of seedy abusive
| software.
|
| The people developing Firefox today were probably teenagers
| using Lunix 20 years ago
|
| https://gwern.net/doc/cs/2001-12-02-treginaldgibbons-isyours...
| notpushkin wrote:
| Wow, it took me a minute to realise this is satire.
| elashri wrote:
| It was very funny reading the following sentence in the link
| you provided
|
| > Most American families use trusted and responsible Internet
| Service Providers, such as AOL
| mat_jack1 wrote:
| Very useful guide for proper parenting. Thank you!
| dkbrk wrote:
| I don't understand why Mozilla artificially limits what addons
| can be used on android.
|
| I've been using Tampermonkey on android for years, and it worked
| fine, just like other addons that don't happen to have yet been
| blessed so that users are granted the privilege of being able to
| choose to install them.
|
| For reference, to work around mozilla's artificial restrictions,
| you have to use nightly. Once you activate the debug menu (about
| firefox > tap logo 5 times) there's the option to set a "custom
| add-on collection". You can make a custom collection on
| addons.mozilla.org using a firefox account. The two fields are
| the last two parts of the URL on your custom collection.
|
| Not only is this very cumbersome (especially if you want to add
| another addon to your collection and have that propagate to your
| phone), but it's only available on nightly. And nightly has a
| nasty habit of breaking. It's not much fun when an update causes
| it to crash immediately on visiting certain websites; even worse
| when restarting causes it to try to load the tab that just caused
| it to crash.
|
| So, it ends up in a dilemma: you can either have a browser that
| doesn't catastrophically break every few updates; or you can have
| the freedom to install whatever addons you like. But not both.
|
| And that dilemma is entirely artificial and unnecessary. Mozilla
| could have a process of verifying that addons work correctly on
| android and warn if you try to install one that isn't so verified
| (like how Valve has "Deck Verified" but doesn't stop you
| installing anything you like). But that's not what they've done,
| and they don't show any sign of changing their minds.
| razor_router wrote:
| I find it very concerning that Mozilla has such an artificial
| limit on what addons can be used on Android. Do you know why
| they have set up such a limit?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Just FYI you can now use a custom addon collection on Firefox
| Beta for Android, if you want to use a slightly less cutting-
| edge version. Fennec from F-Droid is another option.
| 2h wrote:
| F-droid Fennec has the same whitelist of available extensions
| as regular Firefox
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Yes, but it supports the custom addon collection feature.
| This way you can use it in a browser that isn't based on
| the beta/nightly branches, and should be less crashy. I run
| Fennec to access a few privacy redirect extensions, largely
| to make reddit and twitter less awful to browse without
| their respective apps.
| progval wrote:
| I had been using Fennec for a while and had no idea!
| Instructions here: https://old.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/com
| ments/p7mgec/guide_usi... (also, collection names should
| not contain spaces, it seems)
| 2h wrote:
| Requires AMO registration
| Manfred wrote:
| It would be good if they explained this in their documentation.
| But I think you summed it up in your own message:
|
| > [...] you can either have a browser that doesn't
| catastrophically break every few updates; or you can have the
| freedom to install whatever addons you like [...]
|
| I think they don't want malicious and abandoned extensions to
| taint the Firefox experience. Users will only see "Firefox is
| broken" and not realize that it's caused by the extensions they
| installed.
| esperent wrote:
| I've been using Kiwi browser on Android for years. It
| supports like 80% of chrome extensions, never breaks on
| updates. The only major issue is that extension settings
| pages are rarely optimized for mobile.
|
| So I think this excuse is BS to be honest.
| anonymousab wrote:
| They could trivially bury full add-on market access under 5
| scary models and a password or something, but instead they
| use an absurdly cumbersome mechanism.
| Zak wrote:
| It seems like there should be four levels:
|
| Recommended extensions, those that are currently available
| are vetted by Mozilla staff, not only for safety, but for
| utility and alignment with Mozilla's goals. These require
| no warnings or disclaimers.
|
| Community approved extensions would be on AMO and approved
| by staff-selected community members for safety and policy
| compliance. No warnings, but a link/checkbox/toggle at the
| bottom of the extensions page.
|
| All of AMO - this should need a toggle to turn on, and a
| warning that extensions have not been tested and could be
| unstable or malicious with a second checkbox to
| acknowledge.
|
| Local install - this should be buried in the settings and
| called something like "I am an extension developer".
| Turning it on should pop up an additional warning about
| other peoples' code being dangerous. Actually installing an
| extension should require separate use of a file manager or
| command line, and _then_ enabling it inside the Firefox UI.
|
| The current approach reminds me of Apple's app store,
| except it's _much_ harder to get on the recommended list
| than to get an iOS app approved.
|
| All of which is why I use Kiwi Browser.
| Zak wrote:
| Then why isn't desktop Firefox constantly broken?
|
| In the days of XUL extensions, it _was_ for users who
| installed a lot of extensions, but that hasn 't been a
| problem for s long time.
| [deleted]
| BJxdr wrote:
| I wish they rather fixed the more important and basic web browser
| features like the very frustrating and completely nonsense tab
| "auto hoarding"...,
|
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/on-firefox-mobile-make-...
| tommica wrote:
| Userscripts are such an amazing thing
| IronWolve wrote:
| Just make sure you read every script and don't auto update.
| Back in the day, some changed to take over your facebook.
| keithnz wrote:
| I just use it for my own scripts. It's great for when you
| don't like something and think it should be done slightly
| different. I also re-layout news sites as they are mostly
| just horrendous.
| tommica wrote:
| That's a good tip - I need to check that it's not auto
| updating scripts.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I would never use somebody else's userscript - that just
| seems like asking for trouble
| medstrom wrote:
| You're using others' scripts from the firmware up all the
| way to the lite comment input box on HN, and you have just
| as much reason to trust any piece of that gigantic stack as
| you do a *Monkey script.
| causi wrote:
| Yet there's still no way on Firefox Mobile to change the
| UserAgent.
| Epskampie wrote:
| Awesome but i really really want "I don't care about cookies".
| Please please let us have it (without having to jump through
| strange hoops)
| bkor wrote:
| A nicer one is Consent-O-Magic
| SlackingOff123 wrote:
| Do you still want to use it was took over by Avast?
|
| https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/whats-new/acquisiti...
| ntp85 wrote:
| The extension has fortunately been forked:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/istilldontcar...
| weberer wrote:
| Doesn't Firefox for Android already support uBlock? If so, you
| can just enable the Easylist Cookie filter, which is disabled
| by default for whatever reason.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's not perfect but uBlock Origin has some annoyances lists
| that help with cookie nags.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Just get iceraven.
| remram wrote:
| Who is behind Iceraven? I feel uneasy using such a critical
| component from unknown Internet randos.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Get Fdroid and install Fennec, it can do any Firefox extension
| iirc.
| sphars wrote:
| Hmm I use F-droid Fennec daily, and it has the same whitelist
| of available extensions as regular Firefox. I don't see how
| to add your own, unless you go through the hoops of enabling
| debug mode (described elsewhere in another comment)
| fisian wrote:
| You can block many websites cookie banners by using ublock
| origin and enable some of the Annoyances filter lists in the
| settings.
|
| I use the "AdGuard annoyances" and "easylist cookie" lists and
| that blocks many cookie banners.
|
| Also, "I don't care about cookies" was recently bought by a
| company, which could mean bad things for the extension in the
| future.
| account-5 wrote:
| I love bookmarklets, use them all the time. Could never work out
| how to get started with userscripts. Any good guides about?
| khimaros wrote:
| why aren't more people just running Fennec? it supports all
| plugins which are supported by desktop and is available from
| F-droid.
| genpfault wrote:
| > it supports all plugins which are supported by desktop
|
| _Without_ faffing around with a Mozilla login or
| "collections" or anything like that? Just browse AMO[1] and hit
| "Add to Firefox"?
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org
| 2h wrote:
| F-droid Fennec has the same whitelist of available extensions
| as regular Firefox
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can install all addons in Fennec, but getting them to work
| is a whole different challenge. Always worth a shot, but many
| addons don't work or their UI is unusable.
| mg wrote:
| Personally, I prefer bookmarklets over extensions and
| Tampermonkey.
|
| They work the same on Desktop, Android and iOS. So I can write my
| bookmarklet once and use it everywhere. Without installing
| anything. I also like that bookmarklets only kick in when you
| click on them. Although some might find that too much work, it
| feels natural to me. It is already in my muscle memory, to click
| an "Increase Fontsize" bookmarklet when I start to read through a
| thread on Hacker News on a mobile device, for example.
| pmoleri wrote:
| Thanks, I had forgotten this even existed. I was looking for
| something like this to perform unit conversions on a website.
|
| Edit: And without giving excessive permissions to an extension.
| sp332 wrote:
| Wait, how do you use a bookmarklet like that on mobile Firefox?
| I have two that do this:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=%s
|
| javascript:void(location.href='http://web.archive.org/save/'+do
| cument.location.href)
|
| But neither of them work on mobile because it opens a new tab
| first before evaluating the bookmarklet.
| pwg wrote:
| For the few I have on FF Android, create the bookmarklet as
| normal, give it a name, and also give it a "keyword" string.
|
| Then, when you want to execute a bookmarklet on the current
| page, pull down to get to the URL bar (if it is hidden) and
| start typing the "keyword" string into the url bar. After a
| few characters the "suggestions" list should show the
| bookmarklet entry, when it does, tap on the entry and the
| bookmarklet will execute on the current page.
|
| I've not been able to find a way to "open" a list of
| bookmarklets to pick from, other than using keyword search
| via the URL bar, so this does also require remembering the
| "keywords" for each to be able to access them.
| sp332 wrote:
| That doesn't work for me at all. If I type the keyword, it
| doesn't show up in the URL suggestions. And it doesn't
| activate when I push go.
|
| But mg also says that it works, so I wonder what's wrong
| with mine.
| mg wrote:
| Is that void(...code...) syntax a good way to execute
| bookmarks? Also, your code is not urlencoded?
|
| I use javascript:(function(){...code...})() and urlencode the
| whole thing.
|
| I maintain this bookmarklet editor to easily convert code to
| bookmarklets:
|
| https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Nice! Bookmarked :)
| sp332 wrote:
| It's been sitting around a long time and I don't remember
| where I got it from. Thanks for the link though.
| mg wrote:
| You're welcome.
|
| By the way, in Chrome on Android, you can't execute
| bookmarklets from the bookmark menu. You need to give the
| bookmarklet a name. Say "Upsize". Then when you are on
| the page where you want to increase the font size, type
| "up" in the url bar and click on "Upsize" in the
| suggestions. Might be the same in Firefox?
| muxator wrote:
| I tried this in firefox for android and it did not work.
| What gets opened instead is a google search for
| "javascript:(function()...".
|
| Firefox used so be super useful on Android, but since its
| redesign almost all its customizability has been gone. So
| sad.
| mg wrote:
| I just tried it on Firefox on Android, and for me it
| works.
|
| In fact, it works both ways:
|
| I can click on "bookmarks" and then on the bookmarklet,
| and it gets executed on the current page.
|
| I can also start typing the bookmarklets name and then
| click on it in the suggestions. It then also gets
| executed on the current page.
| jhvkjhk wrote:
| Do bookmarklets still work on iOS? I wanted to try them but I
| found this post:
|
| > Apple no longer allows running JavaScript in either the
| Mobile Safari address bar or as a mobile Safari bookmark.
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253547618
| mg wrote:
| Yes, they work on iOS.
|
| Most browsers don't allow JavaScript in the address bar
| anymore.
|
| But in bookmarks, all browsers allow it.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| The benefit you say that bookmarklets have is in fact also the
| biggest drawback of bookmarklets as well - that you have to
| manually click on them - and you can't press that button in a
| loop like a script can do :). Personally for me userscripts are
| great - as instead of using tens of extensions I use one
| userscript manager and write many of these scripts myself - so
| the trust factor is always there.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Iceraven has had this capability forever, no big announcement
| required.
|
| If you want to use Firefox on android and don't want to deal with
| these artificial restrictions and excuses for bad behavior just
| get iceraven and call it a day.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Plus one for Iceraven - https://github.com/fork-
| maintainers/iceraven-browser
|
| And an additional shout out for FF Updater, which can keep
| Iceraven up to date - https://github.com/Tobi823/ffupdater
| 18571857 wrote:
| What's the difference between Iceraven and Fennec?
| ojosilva wrote:
| Iceraven is FF for Android, with tracking and telemetry
| removed, some redesigned features (ie tiles) and
| about:config, and mostly an attempt at supporting desktop
| add-ons which were removed when Fenix/GeckoView came to life
| in 2019.
|
| Stability and security is not a priority though. Updates are
| slow.
|
| I use it primarily for compatibility with my favorite add-ons
| not available on FF Android: I don't care about cookies,
| Cookie AutoDelete, Translate Web Pages, etc.
|
| Mull is another FF Android fork may be worth taking a look
| at.
| nelblu wrote:
| https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
|
| "Note that Iceraven Browser includes some unstable code
| written by Mozilla, with our own added modifications on top,
| all shipped with the stable version of GeckoView engine."
|
| I wouldn't use iceraven if security was a priority.
|
| Fennec on the other hand is much closer to FF , quoting their
| page :
|
| https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
|
| "Fennec F-Droid is based on the latest Firefox release
| (codenamed Fenix).
|
| It has proprietary bits and telemetry removed, but still
| connects to
|
| various Mozilla and Google services that can track users."
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| I'm using iceraven for months. only issue is i don't get
| regular version updates
| 2h wrote:
| IceRaven only allows from this list:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/1620123...
|
| so if you wrote yourself, too bad
| pugworthy wrote:
| I love the entire *Monkey family. I've been able to prototype so
| many, "And this is what our website could do if we..." things at
| work using it, plus create custom filters for selected online
| forums, etc.
|
| My favorite at the moment is one that can strip out long
| signatures from posts on mgexp.com, as well as let me selectively
| block/hide some threads.
|
| Also, not *Monkey script, but still running the custom HN avatar
| per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668137
| nfriedly wrote:
| It's too late to add comments to the original thread, but I put
| together a variation that incorporates all of the suggestions
| from the comments, plus a couple of tweaks of my own (run on
| all HN pages, add an avatar to your username in the top bar)
| and made it available here: https://github.com/nfriedly/hn-
| avatars/
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| what makes chrome "better" on android beyond the reason it comes
| preinstalled?
| Operative0198 wrote:
| better sandbox, "feels" faster, zero Mozilla telemetry ;)
| [deleted]
| vorticalbox wrote:
| you're just replacing Mozilla telemetry with Google
| telemetry.
| Operative0198 wrote:
| The difference is Chrome atleast gives you the choice
| (maybe illusion?) to opt-out of *some of the telemetry.
|
| Mozilla to-date refuses to build a one button switch to
| disable all telemetry [0] and there's calls to telemetry
| domains such as location.services.mozilla.com you cannot
| stop on some of their products like Firefox Focus (ironic
| for a privacy product).
|
| [0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/domains-allow-
| firefox
| vorticalbox wrote:
| honesty not all telemetry is bad. having it track cashes
| and upload that data is clearly good for usability.
| testTED wrote:
| Changing goalposts.
| Operative0198 wrote:
| True. However Mozilla's Firefox has some of the worst
| telemetry possible.
|
| https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-
| has-...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| so you are willing to accept chrome on android that does
| not have any extensions so you cant have UBO and you have
| ads and scripts and all the BS of unprotected interent
| but you fear firefox telemetry. nice
| Operative0198 wrote:
| I do not fear telemetry. What I refuse to accept from
| Firefox is a FOSS product being as bad if not worse as
| Chrome on the telemetry and data collection front.
|
| I like uBO but you can replace it with a dns filtering
| service for 95% of its use case (ad blocking).
|
| It could just be me but I do not see browser extensions
| on mobile as a killer feature. Moreso, when the same
| extensions are primarily developed for desktop.
| testTED wrote:
| Security and privacy both matter.
|
| This entire thread has omitted discussion of either.
| BJxdr wrote:
| sane tab management
|
| https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/on-firefox-mobile-make-...
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Idk, I use FF daily on P3 and it's slow AF compared to chrome,
| at least for first launch I need to wait ~5-10 sec for a
| website to open
| risho wrote:
| it would be nice if it could support all extensions like kiwi
| browser does for chromium on android.
| Springtime wrote:
| From what I've read Firefox for Android Nightly doesn't
| restrict which addons are allowed to be installed[1] but does
| require a really byzantine method to get them installed, by
| first creating a Mozilla account, creating a collection of
| addons, then using the collection URL to install them.
|
| It's unfortunate that both being able to install any addon and
| access about:config on mobile isn't just some checkbox away or
| at least more accessible without having to install Nightly. A
| few years ago both were available in the regular version.
|
| One alternative is the F-Droid Fennec fork, which is said to
| enable both out of the box[2].
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
|
| [2]
| https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/wu4g0s/mozilla_firefox...
| muxator wrote:
| I am on Fennec f-droid.
|
| About:config is there, but the absurd whitelist on extensions
| is still there. I cannot confirm what the reddit thread says.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's so byzantine that I was never able to make it work. I
| attempted twice, probably making the same mistake both times.
| pieter_mj wrote:
| I was unable to access my addon collection when using
| underscores in the collection name, hth.
| philonoist wrote:
| Which Firefox? Oh I remember...the one being puppet of Google's
| donations.
| [deleted]
| user3939382 wrote:
| One of my favorite uses for it so far is adding keyboard
| shortcuts to SAAS systems I use frequently. It's easy once you
| get the first couple working. I guess that doesn't help on mobile
| but, I'm happy Firefox is getting the boost.
| proc_guts_fan wrote:
| If anyone needs a "monkey" not for web pages but for any process
| on your computer system, may I recommend Frida:
|
| https://frida.re
|
| https://github.com/frida/frida
|
| With Frida, you write JavaScript programs and then inject them
| into arbitrary processes, to hook and modify and call whatever
| you please.
|
| It gets a lot of use in the reverse engineering and vulnerability
| research communities, but has broader scope too.
|
| For instance, I used it recently to automate the UI of a video
| production program on Windows, by sending window messages to the
| main message loop from an injected thread, and hooking into
| various system dialog functions to override them.
| alin23 wrote:
| Second that, I love Frida! I recently wrote about how I used it
| to reverse engineer the MacBook's clamshell mode, and add it in
| Lunar (https://lunar.fyi)
|
| There's a few extra steps in allowing Frida to work on macOS so
| leaving that here in case others might be interested in how to
| do it: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-
| clams...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| is this a fancy pants cheat engine?
| underdeserver wrote:
| It is, for rather exotic meanings of "cheat".
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