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Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#261

Post by steve19 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #69
steve19 wrote: post #25

Still no pull to refresh. They really don't want users to adopt their browser. Literally every single other mobile Web browser supports it. Yet Mozilla has some ideological stance that it breaks web interaction (with what, the 0.0001% of browser that target Firefox above Safari or Chrome on mobile).

Pull to refresh is why I want to move away from Chrome. It keeps going off as I scroll down a page, changing my page position or losing content. Unfortunately it cannot be disabled. The flag to disable it was removed. https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/8152831?hl=en

How does it go off when you scroll down? Does chrome refresh when you also hit the bottom?

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#262

Post by saagarjha »

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.

> That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel.

What "native look and feel" are you talking about?

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#263

Post by GuB-42 »

abdulmuhaimin wrote: post #29

I dont envy Mozilla. The demographic that they're targeting are really hard to please.

Hard to please but influential.

Among that group are sysadmins, webmasters and people who get called by friend or family members for anything tech-related.

If they do things right, like they did when IE was dominant, these guys will definitely give back.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#264

Post by torben-friis »

dmix wrote: post #260
torben-friis wrote: post #252

I'm aware that I'm reaching a Cartago-delenda-est situation here, but since I see some mozilla devs here I must ask: Is there any news about the deal breaker bugs that are still keeping thousands of people from moving to firefox on OSX? I'm referring to the bugs that cause extreme CPU usage and as a consequence extreme heating and battery usage, mainly on macbooks with retina screens set to "more space" resolution. I…

Oh, that's why that kept happening on my Macbook pro? I thought I was loading a broken site or had too many tabs open like I always do. For me adding "Auto Tab Disard" [1] (a Firefox equivalent of The Great Suspender for Chrome) has reduced my FF memory/CPU footprint by 10x. It defaults to 10 minutes which is usually long enough where you've mostly forgotten about the tab, then it will refresh when you focus on it. A…

> Oh, that's why that kept happening on my Macbook pro? I thought I was loading a broken site or had too many tabs open like I always do.

That's what I thought as well, but apparently it's something to do with the compositor and FF redrawing the whole window instead of just relevant pixels or areas - which provokes a lot of unneeded calculations -something specially damaging for users that have scaling set to more space (effectively a higher resolution).

That was my understanding at least, when I first learned about the bug many months ago. I followed the development for a while with no (public) improvements and now I just wait for news about the issue or something, but all FF related news so far have been about new features or products.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#265

Post by alias_neo »

afarviral wrote: post #259
mncolinlee wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're certainly aware of how significant ad blocking extensions are. This release required a great quantity of features with only a six month timeline until now. We already support a very limited set of the WebExtensions API to offer features like Reader Mode. Rest assured that more features will land in the coming months. If you're a developer and you want to help us, our Github site is at this link. We mark easier…

> We're certainly aware of how significant ad blocking extensions are. This release required a great quantity of features with only a six month timeline until now. A usable night mode e.g. invert the topbar icons and change the white screen you see before the page loads combined with an existing dark theme would be an easy feature to implement and would put it miles ahead of other mobile browsers too. I presently hav…

I'm sending this from it right now using the dark theme it comes with, dark bar (at the bottom), it has exactly what you're asking for! I'm really happy about this; dark with bar at bottom is what I've always wanted.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#266

Post by squiggleblaz »

Barrin92 wrote: post #207
SXX wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of this. Too bad many people who love Firefox don't get how important that Apple decision is for survival for non-Chromium browsers..

non-chromium browsers only matter if the owner in question actually has any incentive to give users more control. Apple exercises even tighter control over their software than Google. Firefox matters not because it's "not chromium" but because it's firefox, a non-profit dedicated to an open web.

Firefox matters because they're dedicated to an open web, but Firefox is usable by the general public because web developers are forced to support multiple engines if they want to work on iOS. These are two different things and both are important.

(Note: I've been running Gecko based browsers almost since the beginning. I guess in those days it was probably easier to use a browser that isn't perfectly supported, but I'd probably do it again if it came to it. But I can recommend Firefox to whoever I want, since it works on every site except Linked In. I couldn't do that if it only worked well on one in two or three or four sites.)

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#267

Post by zmmmmm »

I keep using Opera because of a few small affordances that any browser could implement (and some do, but only Opera does all of them). The main one is text-reflow on zoom. It seems so ridiculous that I have to either stare at microscopic text or pan back and forwards just to be able to read things. Surely actually reading the contents of pages is a primary feature of a browser?

The other one I just can't understand is why not implement pull-to-refresh? Surely that can't be hard?

I know this is just ranting, but it's weird to see browser makers completely re-inventing their products when small, basic things could be fixed in their current versions.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#270

Post by hieloz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #245
godelski wrote: post #129

To any Mozilla/Firefox developer reading this. I try to convert people to Firefox. The number one reason people switch, by far, is because mobile has add on support. So I say to push this front and center in marketing (I know this is a preview). People are reluctant to switch their desktop browser because chrome pretty much has the same features. But it they switch their mobile browsers they also switch their desktop…

Strongly seconding. The one and only reason I bothered to switch from Chrome to Firefox on Android was because I could install uBlock Origin on it. It's also the reason I installed Firefox on my wife's smartphone, and why I keep recommending it to friends and family members. (Of course, some time later I realized what "extensions enabled" truly means, and started using other extensions I have enabled on my desktop br…

kiwi browser,based on Chromium also supports for Chrome browser extensions now.
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