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Firefox 68.0

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Re: Firefox 68.0

#151

Post by orthecreedence »

_delirium wrote: post #130
hu3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock Origin is the only reason I use Firefox on Android. Mozilla broke extensions on desktop Firefox before and lost many users. Can't help but wonder what the hell are their product managers thinking? How can I recommend Firefox if they keep breaking it with little regard for users? Is there another browser that supports uBlock Origin for Android? I'm not talking about biased half baked built-in ad blockers, I wan…

I was skeptical of the move to Firefox Quantum originally because of the extension-breaking, but after it happened, I can see the motivation: after upgrading, Firefox got a lot faster and less prone to memory leaks for me, at least on macOS. As I understand it, the performance improvements in the new Quantum engine were incompatible with the way the old extension API worked, so a new one needed to be introduced. To m…

This was my exact experience as well. I had to kill/restart FF every few days because it would randomly start eating CPU (this was on Win 10). Because of this I used Chrome until they disabled back navigation via backspace and forced alt-left instead. This pissed me off enough to try FF again, which was right around when Quantum came out. I've never looked back.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#152

Post by sp332 »

JadeNB wrote: post #110
iamnotacrook wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they "break" - ie some bug caused a problem - or did they change the framework add-ons used after giving months of notice? Most users use no add-ons, and wouldn't notice the change, and many of those who do were aware of this ahead of time even if the add-on developers were slow to wake up to the reality.

> Most users use no add-ons Do you have the data for this? I know I live in a techie bubble, but it sure doesn't fit with my experience or the experiences of others I know who talk about it.

This is an old post, but in 2009 about 1/3 of FF users had extensions installed. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2009/08/11/how-many-firefox-... Without newer data, you'll have to guess whether the new addon model increased or decreased that fraction.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#153

Post by icebraining »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #144
StavrosK wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? Extensions are the biggest reason I'm using Firefox on my mobile and the only way I got people to switch to it. How can they just be removing them for any period of time?

I've honestly looked, and while there are several versions of Firefox in the play store. None of those I've tried seem to support extensions. Can you tell me where to find one that does?

The "Mozilla Firefox" app does: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi... (they call them "add-ons" in the description)

It's the new "Firefox Preview" that doesn't (yet).

Re: Firefox 68.0

#154

Post by wtallis »

callahad wrote: post #149
wtallis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linked bugs about the user agent seem irrelevant to this issue. They're relevant because that's what suggests that they aren't planning for a Fennec 69: addons.mozilla.org is currently interpreting version 69 to mean Fenix, so if Fennec gets updated to 69 they'll have broken extension support anyways. If Mozilla is abandoning Fennec at version 68 before Fenix is even close to having extension support, they probably…

Fennec is moving to an Extended Support Release model so we can focus on Preview. This means that the engine will remain at major version 68 for the next year, but it will still receive security updates and bugfixes. And it will continue to support add-ons.

Why hasn't Mozilla put out a clear statement that Fennec is EOL'd and that the replacement definitely won't be pushed out until it's ready (including support for extensions)? It would go a long way with users if Mozilla could just clearly state that Firefox for Android will be skipping versions 69 through at least ~73 due to Fenix not being ready for public consumption. Stating that extension support is not part of the MVP and failing to set a clear deadline for getting that feature back is not reassuring.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#155

Post by dorgo »

capitol_ wrote: post #49
basch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the blank white page is killer. inbetween page loads a bright flash of white.

This can be fixed with some user css. /* Put the content below into your /chrome/userChrome.css */ .browserContainer { background-color: #000000 !important; }

Nice one! I had to create the folder "chrome" and the file userChrome.css and restart firefox. How to find the profile-folder: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-...

Re: Firefox 68.0

#156

Post by ProAm »

gruez wrote: post #148
ProAm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give Kiwi Browser a shot on Android. It's a fork of Chrome with all the google tracking removed and fully supports Chrome Add-ons. I love it and it's fast (I was a long time Firefox on Android user but it just got to slow to use).

Chromium fork with closed source patches? No thanks.

You do you [1]

[1] https://github.com/kiwibrowser

Re: Firefox 68.0

#157

Post by sp332 »

catacombs wrote: post #100
mooreds wrote: post #4

I love Firefox. First thing I install on any new computer. Super happy they keep pushing the web forward. Not a fan of the chromium quasi monopoly (not that the folks behind it are bad, just that any monoculture is problematic). Thanks for pushing the web forward!

> Thanks for pushing the web forward! Making a browser that breaks extensions used by millions of people (Vimperator comes to mind) and making extension development harder is not pushing the web forward.

Vimium-FF, Tridactyl, and Vim Vixen adapted. It's true the APIs that allow this kind of thing lagged behind for a while, but there was enough interest to eventually develop those APIs.

P.S. Vimperator had 15,000 users according to https://web.archive.org/web/20171016205807/https://addons.mo... Vimium-FF alone has 26,000 now.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#158

Post by kevin_b_er »

callahad wrote: post #149
wtallis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linked bugs about the user agent seem irrelevant to this issue. They're relevant because that's what suggests that they aren't planning for a Fennec 69: addons.mozilla.org is currently interpreting version 69 to mean Fenix, so if Fennec gets updated to 69 they'll have broken extension support anyways. If Mozilla is abandoning Fennec at version 68 before Fenix is even close to having extension support, they probably…

Fennec is moving to an Extended Support Release model so we can focus on Preview. This means that the engine will remain at major version 68 for the next year, but it will still receive security updates and bugfixes. And it will continue to support add-ons.

I would like to point out you've not mentioned the state of Preview aka Fenix at all, only that the soon-to-be-ESR-only Fennec will continue to support add-ons.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#159

Post by dralley »

tssva wrote: post #48
untog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame it hasn't made it over to Mac yet - graphics card options are a lot more limited there so you'd figure it would be easier to support. But I suppose it's a much smaller market share.

There is a known severe performance issue on MacBooks with retina screens and integrated Intel graphics which this is suppose to be the solution to. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to have driven macOS to be a priority for the rollout.

MacOS uses an absolutely decrepit version of OpenGL and a special vendor-locked graphics API (Metal) that nobody else uses.

It's not surprising they get low-priority when Apple makes it a pain to do write a crossplatform app that is supported on their platform.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#160

Post by green-bottle »

hu3 wrote: post #122
_njyk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiwi Browser (Chromium-based) runs Nano Adblocker and uBlock Origin with full support (like on Firefox)

Thanks! I'm investigating it and sadly it seems a bit stale with last commit made 5 months ago: https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android For browsers this seems like a bit too long without updates. I can imagine maintaining such project is demanding but hopefully the project can gain more attention now with the new version of Firefox breaking extensions on Android.

Last I checked Kiwi is not open source. There are bits and pieces of code lying around in the Github repo, but not the full source code.

The browser seems to get regular enough updates on play store, has decent ad blocking (at least good enough for my purposes) and to date has the best night mode out of all android browsers I've tried.

No white flashes like I've faced in Firefox for Android. The dark mode applies to the whole of the browser UI.

I use Bromite, Firefox for Android or Fenix mostly equally during the day and Kiwi at night.

Though the fact that it is not open source may put some people off.

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