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Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#71

Post by samueloph »

vast wrote: post #65

Just yesterday I thought it is really annoying that mobile browsers put the address bar on top, even worse if it is moving in and out. That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel. Now FF puts the address bar on bottom. Quite a suprise but I think it is a pretty smart change.

I can't understand how UX designers come up with the idea that putting stuff on the top of the screen* is a good thing, and even keep reiterating through that. That's an honest question, anybody knows what's the motivation behind that?

* or, places that are hard to reach for most users

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#72

Post by callahad »

mintplant wrote: post #37

> In order to have a strong foundation for the next generation of mobile Firefox browsers and put all our efforts and resources in GeckoView, work on Firefox Focus will currently be on hold. Don’t worry though, you can still keep using our privacy browser, Focus, as well as our current Firefox for Android. I think this is a typo, and meant to say that Firefox for Android development is on hold, not Focus.

Not a typo; we had not formally announced that Focus was on hold while we bootstrap the Firefox Preview / GeckoView / Mozilla Android Components ecosystem. Now we have. :)

If you're interested in community maintainership of Focus, please fill out this survey: https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5022894/Firefox-Focus-Survey

(Linked from https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/)

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#73

Post by SilasX »

dsr_ wrote: post #3

Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

I would also appreciate if they worked on restoring the original addon capability they had up to 2016 (where you add keyboard shortcuts) before they go showboating.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#74

Post by bombledmonk »

I just switched to the current Android Firefox a few weeks ago and I must say I find it very hard to go back to Chrome. uBlock and Dark Reader make the phone browsing experience a remarkable amount more pleasant.

Chrome's general UI interaction is definitely more polished and snappier all around, but browsing mobile with good ad blocking, and not getting blasted in the face by stark white pages more than covers for Firefox's warts.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#75

Post by sciurus »

Roritharr wrote: post #66
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

I really don't understand why Mozilla doesn't put ad-blocking & tracking protection front & center the way other orgs do. Winning their userbase back is the only way to win back the leverage they once had...

Out of curiosity, what orgs are you comparing us to?

When you install Firefox Preview, tracking protection is enabled by default. This is recently true for Firefox Desktop as well.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/when-it-comes-to-pr...

This post below by our CEO explains how we're thinking about the issue broadly. Your privacy and agency are definitely front and center.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/the-web-the-world-n...

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#76

Post by beiller »

I've been using Firefox on Android for about a year now, and it is great, except one major problem. Google news site (news.google.com). News I believe uses my entire phone's RAM and starts swapping (I am totally guessing, does Android use swap?) because the app will become unresponsive for about 2 full minutes while the page is rendering. Closing and re-opening a tab in this state actually breaks the app FYI (all other tabs freeze as well). Scrolling will give low resolution visuals below the fold. Horrible experience on google news. Actually all google properties are PAINFULLY slow. Is that on purpose Google? I got around it by installing Firefox Focus, and that seems to load google news quite fast, but Focus is like a permanent incognito mode, so that is quite inconvenient in itself. So now I just use Focus for google news and regular Firefox for everything else. Hopefully there will be performance improvements to come. My phone is an older Huawei Honor 8 so maybe I should just buy a new one... but the infrared on it is so great!

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#77

Post by sciurus »

gcbw2 wrote: post #38
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox. Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.

I think the better comparison than SafeBrowsing for uBlock would be Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default. This uses data maintained by Disconnect.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#78

Post by inanutshellus »

samueloph wrote: post #71
vast wrote: post #65

Just yesterday I thought it is really annoying that mobile browsers put the address bar on top, even worse if it is moving in and out. That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel. Now FF puts the address bar on bottom. Quite a suprise but I think it is a pretty smart change.

I can't understand how UX designers come up with the idea that putting stuff on the top of the screen* is a good thing, and even keep reiterating through that. That's an honest question, anybody knows what's the motivation behind that? * or, places that are hard to reach for most users

1) It's entirely rational on a desktop to have the URL at the top.

2) same browser gets put on a mobile phone, wants to "feel natural"

3) url bar goes in the "familiar" place.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#79

Post by zamalek »

Roritharr wrote: post #66
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

I really don't understand why Mozilla doesn't put ad-blocking & tracking protection front & center the way other orgs do. Winning their userbase back is the only way to win back the leverage they once had...

Agreed. I hastily installed FF Preview and then immediately uninstalled it when I couldn't find where to install uBlock. They shouldn't have launched, or made an announcement, without some form of adblocking (native or plugin).

I understand that it's a testing release, but they stand to lose out on many testers and users. While I am perfectly willing to be a guinea pig and use this as my daily driver, I am passionately unwilling to browse with ads (especially on a mobile device where data is more expensive).

I am likely part of the vast majority of potential testers/users. There probably won't be a "hey, we support plugins/blocking now" announcement and, even if there will be, it probably won't be as visible as this announcement.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#80

Post by Nagyman »

samueloph wrote: post #71
vast wrote: post #65

Just yesterday I thought it is really annoying that mobile browsers put the address bar on top, even worse if it is moving in and out. That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel. Now FF puts the address bar on bottom. Quite a suprise but I think it is a pretty smart change.

I can't understand how UX designers come up with the idea that putting stuff on the top of the screen* is a good thing, and even keep reiterating through that. That's an honest question, anybody knows what's the motivation behind that? * or, places that are hard to reach for most users

Legacy design and use patterns. The top of the screen used to make more sense than today.

Mobile-first design really hasn't taken hold for many UX web designers (and/or the organizations haven't adapted). Relatively speaking, large phones where it's difficult to reach the top weren't popular until recently. Even mobile apps are just starting to put navigation towards the bottom.

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