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Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

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361–370 of 395 posts

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#361

Post by pps »

callahad wrote: post #350
pps wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea why after sync I can see history from my desktop browser, but no bookmarks? There are only 3 clean folders on Firefox Preview.

It looks like that should have been resolved a month ago with build 1.0.1921 ( https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2252 )... are you sure your bookmarks are set to sync (check in about:preferences on desktop)? If so, try forcing a new sync Firefox Preview by hitting Settings -> Sync -> Sync Now.

I removed FP and installed it again, this time with pairing through QR code, it again looks like it's working perfectly, but I can't see bookmarks, only history. And there is no mobile session under devices in https://accounts.firefox.com/

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#362

Post by aerique »

mncolinlee wrote: post #61
dsr_ wrote: post #3

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

It's a preview release. Addons are coming as well as ad blocking. It's not the same thing, but the built-in tracking protection incidentally blocks a portion of ads.

I would love to know whether Mozilla has resources available to port Firefox to SailfishOS (SFOS) and other non-iOS & non-Android mobile platforms. We could really use a good native browser here. I'm currently running it through SFOS' Android emulation but that has issues.

Lacking a port I would be interested in a solid, maintained Firefox-without-the-GUI base so people could port it somewhat easily.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#364

Post by sirfz »

jddj wrote: post #185
sirfz wrote: post #181

Does anyone suffer from degrading image/video quality on some websites while using Firefox Android? I have this issue with Facebook. I don't want the Facebook app installed on my phone (mostly to block notifications and for privacy reasons) so I access FB via Firefox but images look terrible and every video I click opens in a separate tab instead of in-page (at least I can download it tho). Only solution I have is us…

One option is to attempt (despite of all of the obstacles they might put in place..) to increase Firefox's market share, perhaps by spreading the word about privacy concerns and/or ux benefits. Another might be adblocker-esque trusted and shared community-maintained lists along with an add-on (does this exist?) for per-domain user agent mocking. Hopefully with enough adoption (i.e integrated into ublock) that it redu…

But why would market share matter if the browser is more than capable of handling whatever content a site serves. I don't see this relevant to the issue.

I think the fact that Firefox doesn't announce the device's model in its UA could be a factor so some sites fall back to their lower quality version by default but it sucks that we can't force the higher quality version.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#365

Post by V-2 »

First impressions:

1. It doesn't properly "Follow device theme" (as per Settings) - I had to switch it to Dark manually;

2. Zooming text doesn't work on some pages, and on others it doesn't make the text rewrap. That's a pet peeve of mine as far as mobile browsers go. Only a handful gets this right (Opera, Yandex).

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#366

Post by kevin_b_er »

thisisitnownow wrote: post #84

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.

Watch carefully: Noone will actually commit to extension support in the new firefox for android. They're going to roll their own adblocker, probably with the same inferior capabilities as manifest v3, to try to assuage all the people who use uBlock, while leaving everyone else to rot.

Will it be continually "improving" when they drop extension support?

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#367

Post by franole »

Grumbledour wrote: post #336
lucb1e wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

Interesting point about reflowing text: Why don't browsers reflow text on mobile when zooming the same way they do on the desktop? This is a mayor annoyance for me since, well, forever. As a visually impaired user, forcing me to swipe text left to right the whole time after I zoomed to a comfortable font size makes reading on smaller screens really bad. And before you mention it, changing default font size in browser…

Im using this add on on Firefox for Android: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/text-reflow-w.... Maybe it can help you. Be aware it's not perfect: >This add-on is my attempt to provide the "reflow" option for text in Firefox Android. Warning: It is very limited. It will only reflow one paragraph at a time. You will have to tap/click on every single paragraph that you want to reflow.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#368

Post by amenod »

lucideer wrote: post #222
Certhas wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until it's provided I would assume that it's a gross misrepresentation/exaggeration.

Other than putting Google Analytics on all Mozilla properties as sibling commenters have already mentioned (link to info on that here [0]), there is also the following: - as I mentioned in another comment, Firefox Preview comes with Google as a default search engine (not a huge issue) and with "search suggestions" enabled by default (which sends everything you ever type to Google). - Even if you disable search sugges…

Thanks for the clarification - this is all acceptable in my eyes then. Of course I never use Google Search (prefer Qwant, StartPage and DDG) and location services are never running in my browser. Safe Browsing - I prefer not to have it enabled, but it's not such a risk if it is.

This is quite a different thing from using Chrome(-ish browsers) with the "phone home".

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#369

Post by Simon_says »

Qub3d wrote: post #167
rando9297 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, Raymond Hill's website didn't even have a donation button. This is an incredibly generous stance for him to take but if he doesn't want money himself maybe he could collect funds for a charity. I really feel I owe someone for this software.

Raymond outlines his reasons for refusing donations on the ublock wiki, if anyone is curious: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-... One thing he (rightfully) points out is that the real power of ad-blocking solutions comes from the community-maintained blocking lists. In theory one could manually block every url they run across, but in practice we can use these tools (or a tool like pi-hole)…

In theory I could do every computation my CPU does, but I don't want to.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#370

Post by cmurf »

I now have Firefox Preview, Firefox Focus, and Firefox, on my Android phone. I'm not really clear what the strategy is, and future deliverable? I read that Firefox Focus development has stopped, and Firefox Preview will become Firefox on Android. But is Firefox Preview a whole new thing or is it based on what's been learned about Focus? Or?

Also, it's kinda odd but I always have Twitter not fully loading on Firefox (on Android), where Firefox Focus always works fine. Typical is it hangs with spinners, if I reload it'll say "something went wrong" and the in-line retry/reload button doesn't work, same error, but reloading the whole page sometimes works. So far I haven't had this problem with Preview.

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