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Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#191

Post by robbyking »

golergka wrote: post #185
st3fan wrote: post #54

We just pushed the button on stage at the Mozilla All-hands. It should by live in most countries now. https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1055677337 Ask us anything you want to know about this product. Also, keep an eye on the Github repo. https://github.com/mozilla/focus We are still watching the Keynote but will flip the switch soon.

So much Swift! All iOS developers I know are hopeful about Swift, but say that they wouldn't use it for a serious, large-scale project yet. (I'm a Unity developer that only occasionally touches native iOS or Android code). What was your experience with it?

That's interesting, I've had almost the opposite experience. The team I work on is slowing migrating over (new classes and classes that need refactoring are done in Swift), and most of my friends who are iOS developers have told me they're doing the same.

FWIW, I work at a medium sized company (~300 employees) who is owned by a larger company (15k employees).

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#192

Post by coldpie »

Rotten194 wrote: post #180
212d1d wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a curiosity I have found: why does no ad blocker, Focus included, block ads on 4chan (4chan-ads.org, IMC)?

Also, on a more technical level 4chan's ads aren't served from a well known ad host like Google, so they wouldn't be blocked by a typical blacklist without filtering URLs containing ad -- which some adblockers do, causing [all kinds of problems] [0]. [0]: https://medium.com/medium-eng/the-unluckiest-paragraphs-751d...

> On most webpages, if you click a link, the browser automatically handles loading a new page. On Medium, we speed this up a bit with JavaScript.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH

You really don't need to reimplement the tag in javascript. You really don't. You really don't. Ever. Stop. Argh. Fuck. Fucking web developers.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#194

Post by coldpie »

srameshc wrote: post #168
TeMPOraL wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small businesses aren't kittens, to be loved and protected regardless of anything. We fight shoplifting even though it disproportionately hurts individuals who rely on this business model - as opposed to big companies that have other, often legal, ways of stealing. We fight it because, like ads, it's a crappy business model .

Imagine if you Twitter ask you to pay per post or per view. Will you still use it ? Would that still be the Twitter we know of ? Many startups have for in their early stage considered ad money as one of their essential revenue stream and have built on it. Imagine if you have to pay everytime a dollar if you want to do a search and a lot more.

You're setting up a false dichotomy. Like advertising, your suggestion is one potential business model, but there are others. Thinking up another business model is a difficult problem, yes. But you can't stop ad blocking. Just like structural engineers have to deal with the fact that metals rust, website maintainers will have to deal with the fact that ad blocking is on its way towards ubiquity.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#195

Post by needmoreram »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #181
viach wrote: post #41

> This was not our choice — Apple has chosen to make content blocking unavailable to third party browsers on iOS Like, the Firefox authors can't block content in their browser because Apple?

Apple won't let full third party web browsers into iOS, all web browsers have to use the Mobile Safari engine underneath. Apple added ad blockers to iOS but will only permit them in Mobile Safari proper. Third party "browsers" aren't permitted to use the ad blockers you can install in iOS.

Admittedly, I'm quite ignorant of the laws related, but wouldn't this be grounds for an anti-competitive lawsuit (even if the App Store terms specifically say so)?

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#196

Post by byoogle »

As the original developer of Disconnect, on which Focus’s blocking is said to be based, I (with my development team) created a new, open-source ad blocker for Chrome, Opera, and iOS called Adblock Fast (http://adblockfast.com/ and https://github.com/rocketshipapps/adblockfast on GitHub) because I think Disconnect became abandonware after I left the project a year and a half ago – there was one commit made to Disconnect in 2015 (https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect/commits/master).

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#197

Post by HaloZero »

golergka wrote: post #185
st3fan wrote: post #54

We just pushed the button on stage at the Mozilla All-hands. It should by live in most countries now. https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1055677337 Ask us anything you want to know about this product. Also, keep an eye on the Github repo. https://github.com/mozilla/focus We are still watching the Keynote but will flip the switch soon.

So much Swift! All iOS developers I know are hopeful about Swift, but say that they wouldn't use it for a serious, large-scale project yet. (I'm a Unity developer that only occasionally touches native iOS or Android code). What was your experience with it?

I'm a small development team (there are only 5-6 engineers, and I'm the only iOS one right now). I've gotten the go ahead to move to Swift as well. It's been fairly easy with only one strange crash so far.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#198

Post by splouk »

byoogle wrote: post #196

As the original developer of Disconnect, on which Focus’s blocking is said to be based, I (with my development team) created a new, open-source ad blocker for Chrome, Opera, and iOS called Adblock Fast ( http://adblockfast.com/ and https://github.com/rocketshipapps/adblockfast on GitHub) because I think Disconnect became abandonware after I left the project a year and a half ago – there was one commit made to Disconn…

Is there any reason I should switch to this from AdBlock Plus?

Edit: I see the chart comparing the two on your github page. Are you planning a firefox version?

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#199

Post by steveklabnik »

jakejake wrote: post #171
hardwaresofton wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wording makes it sound like you pushed a button and an app was on the app store globally in less than a week... Are you a magician?

When you submit your app you can opt for Apple to release it immediately upon approval, or wait for you to manually release it. Mozilla likely submitted the app a couple of weeks ago and just hit the release button today.

There was a joke made on stage about how it was submitted weeks ago, and they were sweating bullets, because it still hadn't quite gotten approval, and then finally, it came through yesterday.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#200

Post by sp332 »

srameshc wrote: post #168
TeMPOraL wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small businesses aren't kittens, to be loved and protected regardless of anything. We fight shoplifting even though it disproportionately hurts individuals who rely on this business model - as opposed to big companies that have other, often legal, ways of stealing. We fight it because, like ads, it's a crappy business model .

Imagine if you Twitter ask you to pay per post or per view. Will you still use it ? Would that still be the Twitter we know of ? Many startups have for in their early stage considered ad money as one of their essential revenue stream and have built on it. Imagine if you have to pay everytime a dollar if you want to do a search and a lot more.

I would absolutely pay a monthly subscription for ad-free Twitter or Facebook and some basic analytics.

Edit: well I didn't expect downvotes, it's just an opinion... What's wrong?

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