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Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

111–120 of 395 posts

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#111
post #38
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.

uBlock Origin and uMatrix in particular are fantastic addons, but I think the UX is still too much for the average casual non-technical user.

I wish they'd focus more on getting the UX of containers up to snuff. They are almost there, but still far enough away to make addons like Multi-Account Containers (MAC) something I cannot recommend to my parents.

Here is what I mean: Suppose I want to keep my use of example.com separate in it's own Example container. How do I do that?

1) Click the MAC icon in the toolbar, then click the "+" button.

2) Enter 'Example', pick an icon or color, then click okay.

3) Open a new Example container.

4) Navigate to example.com in the Example container

5) Click the MAC icon in the toolbar, then check "Always open in Example"

6) Close the tab.

7) Open a new tab, and browse to example.com

8) Click "Remember my decision"

9) Click "Open in Example container"

This is nuts. I can't recommend this workflow to anybody.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#112

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 F…

It should probably be noted that this Firefox Preview they are announcing doesn't yet have Add-On support.

But I agree, uBlock Origin makes the mobile web far less painful. Also, I'll point out that you want to be using uBlock Origin, not uBlock. As I recall, Raymond Hill (the creator of uBlock) decided to hand over uBlock Firefox to one of the contributors to offload some of the maintenance burden but then the new owner immediately started trying to monetize it which prompted him to create uBlock Origin.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#113
I'm a huge fan of the navigation bar on the bottom. I've missed it since I had to give up Windows Phone. It's hard to believe that neither Apple or Google ever added the option. I can't think of a single reason it would be better on top, It's simply harder to reach and less usable.

This also goes for all other apps...

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Anyone remember when Firefox extensions broke recently? I thought it was a rather horrible experience. If the new Firefox Preview can natively block advertisements, whitelist sites, disable third party cookies, prevent and hide social trackers, block anti-ad-blockers, etc. etc. then I agree that extensions are kind of useless, and I understand Mozilla's point. However, I see the lack of extension support det…

This is still a preview, it's nowhere near a finished product. Extensions come after MVP https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/662#issuecomm...

(minimum viable product)

Isn't it strange that the big flash announcement comes before MVP?

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#115
post #76

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 oth…

Memory management on Android is awful. My music player routinely gets killed; I've tried all options available to me to prevent this.. It's just too difficult for Android to work out "you're listening to music, even though there's no visible ui, so I won't kill it". I understand that there is a whitelist of music apps which don't get killed - so intractable is this problem - but the one I use (Rocket Player) isn't on…

The killing isn't actually the fault of Android itself, but the smartphone vendors that try to push the battery time metrics to the max. Battery management from Android isn't that bad actually, but the vendors will always find a way to fuck it up. I really liked this insight from "Zombies, Run!" developer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18901006#18902273

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#116
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't used android in a couple of years but firefox used to support addons (and it looks like it still does).

GeckoView doesn't support addons yet. This is pending discussion, but it looks like the goal is to focus on mobile optimization first. As a tester of Firefox Preview: WebRender has been a godsend for mobile browsing -- I have yet to see it choke!

WebRender doesn't work for me, "Unsupported Vendor" :(

Moto G4, Qualcomm Adreno 405, OpenGL ES 3.2

about:config doesn't work either

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#117
post #106
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Not really. Advanced users can selectively disable Javascript/frames/media etc on a per-site basis. Also the user has the control to allow trackers on site they care about and know the consequences. I am sorry but tracking protection on mozilla as it is now (only enabled by default on private windows, and hapening with no user knowledge/information/learning oportunities) is a lame clutch.

It's actually on by default now as of this month.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#118

I have been using Firefox on Android since 2013. It's been constantly improving. I am so glad that it exists so that I am not forced to use a browser (Chrome) that doesn't respect me or my privacy and has every incentive to fuck me over.

I used it in 2013 and found it constantly degrading with each update. They removed a major feature to reflow text to fit your screen nicely, worsened the UI, and other things I don't remember anymore. After using an old version for a while, I tried another browser, and holy crap that was 10 times faster as well as being customizable the way I was used to from Firefox desktop. Not open source, not as featureful (no add-ons), but that was so much better. Since then I switched to Lightning: even fewer features, but open source, very lightweight, and great UX.

Whenever I raised issues with Mozilla about things that degraded, it was always either talking to a brick wall or a wontfix. They made the decision based on one person complaining about it being the old way, implemented the change, and no matter that other people liked the old way, it wouldn't be changed back or made configurable.

I then tried to compile Firefox for Android myself and cherry pick only security updates, but that was enough of a pain in the ass that I gave up on it.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#119

I'm a huge fan of the navigation bar on the bottom. I've missed it since I had to give up Windows Phone. It's hard to believe that neither Apple or Google ever added the option. I can't think of a single reason it would be better on top, It's simply harder to reach and less usable. This also goes for all other apps...

Exactly I also find the same, opera touch does it so well, but then it's opera and privacy things and also want to support firefox.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#120
Wow. Just tried it out and it is fast! It feels more than just 2x as fast as the regular firefox mobile on the same device.

Now just add proper settings (no settings menu yet to disable thirdparty cookies) and add addon support (ublock, skip redirect, cookie autodelete) and I will switch immediately even with smaller bugs

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