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A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#41

Post by hd4 »

geek-advised wrote: post #16

Is it me or this article is really vague? What's the new experience, exactly? Also, I started using Firefox on my Android phone because of 2 reasons: block ads and Google seems to be more and more for-profit and not for-users. And I love Firefox with one exception: when I press a link on another app Firefox doesn't open but gives me a small notification on the bottom the screen saying the tab opened in Firefox. I fin…

It's not you, I only opened the article to see if they had dealt with input lag and just lag in general and I get 6 paragraphs of unwanted marketing speak until I even get close to something resembling actual changes.

If anyone from Mozilla is reading this, just get to the facts next time, don't insult us by throwing a ton of marketing babble at us, we don't care.

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#42

Post by mcjiggerlog »

jonny383 wrote: post #9

If Firefox pushes this before implementing support for extensions (namely uBlock or other ad-blocking / privacy extensions) then Firefox is well and truly toast on Android. Correct me if I am wrong but the only reason non-tech people use Firefox on Android is to block ads. Perhaps this is a push from Mozilla to try and get some search revenue flowing again?

WebExtension support in theory is coming in Q1 - https://github.com/orgs/mozilla-mobile/projects/44

Regardless, Firefox Preview already blocks ads and trackers perfectly fine the built-in tracking protection. I've not seen an ad in the months I've been using it.

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#43

Post by severine »

Koffiepoeder wrote: post #38
severine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. I don't understand how Mozilla doesn't understand that extensions, particularly content blocking (and specifically Ublock Origin) are definitional of what Firefox is and should be.

No this is definitely not a regression. Firefox launched a new app called "Firefox Preview Nightly", so as of right now both Nightly and Preview Nightly exist side by side; regular nightly users are not impacted at this point in time.

You are technically correct, but from a more general point of view I'd consider it a regression. A Mozilla regression, if you will.

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#44

Post by Zhyl »

Quite a lot of negativity from HN so far, so I'll add some counter.

I've been using the Firefox preview since it was announced and overall have found it to be a vast improvement on the previous incarnation. Tab management is much more intuitive and easier on the thumbs, the URL bar being at the bottom is jarring at first but soon becomes much easier to use, the performance is similar to the Firefox Focus which I had previously switched to from the main Firefox app.

Between this version of Firefox and the improvements to servo and webview brought in with v57 on the desktop side, we've seen a massive leap in terms of user experience across the Mozilla portfolio. Granted, addons and notably adblock is an omission, but really when I reflect on what I felt was missing from the Firefoxes of yore, I would always come back to 'look and feel' and 'performance' and I feel like these new releases go a long way to redressing the balance with the competition in my books.

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#46

Post by squiggleblaz »

vanderZwan wrote: post #30
theon144 wrote: post #14

Wow, I am pretty surprised by this decision. I've been using Firefox Preview for a while, and while I do enjoy the new approach, I still regularly encounter bugs, including those that make me lose open tabs or other regressions for which I need to keep Firefox ("regular"?) installed. Not to mention the lack of addons (ad-blockers) and the fact that this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Br…

Note that this is about Firefox Nightly, not Firefox regular: > A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly So related to this decision I would say: nothing special, as far as I can see. They're just moving Firefox Preview to Firefox Unstable. > while I do enjoy the new approach (...) this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Brand new experience", whoa.) You're mentionin…

> So related to this decision I would say: nothing special, as far as I can see. They're just moving Firefox Preview to Firefox Unstable.

But the implication is that Preview is becoming the trunk from which future releases will be cut. If Preview lacks critical features like ad blocking and is as unstable as the previous commenter implies, it's probably not ready for that yet. (I can't comment on the bugginess, since my Preview was stuck in private mode until like five minutes ago — losing tabs was just part of the deal.)

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#47

Post by chrismorgan »

vanderZwan wrote: post #30
theon144 wrote: post #14

Wow, I am pretty surprised by this decision. I've been using Firefox Preview for a while, and while I do enjoy the new approach, I still regularly encounter bugs, including those that make me lose open tabs or other regressions for which I need to keep Firefox ("regular"?) installed. Not to mention the lack of addons (ad-blockers) and the fact that this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Br…

Note that this is about Firefox Nightly, not Firefox regular: > A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly So related to this decision I would say: nothing special, as far as I can see. They're just moving Firefox Preview to Firefox Unstable. > while I do enjoy the new approach (...) this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Brand new experience", whoa.) You're mentionin…

But they’re not stopping there:

> As for next milestones, the brand new Firefox for Android will go into Beta in Spring 2020 and land in the main release later in the first half of this year.

What state it will all be in by then remains to be seen, of course.

(Aside: ugh, “Spring” as though everyone lived in temperate and subarctic northern hemisphere. Most of the world doesn’t. This is a very American/European way of expressing things.)

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#48

Post by dmos62 »

ohazi wrote: post #20
geek-advised wrote: post #16

Is it me or this article is really vague? What's the new experience, exactly? Also, I started using Firefox on my Android phone because of 2 reasons: block ads and Google seems to be more and more for-profit and not for-users. And I love Firefox with one exception: when I press a link on another app Firefox doesn't open but gives me a small notification on the bottom the screen saying the tab opened in Firefox. I fin…

That feature is called tab queue, and it can be disabled in settings.

I personally find this feature brilliant.

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#49

Post by pmontra »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #17
lol768 wrote: post #3

Given https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315 and https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5630 are still open, does this represent a regression in supported functionality for nightly users?

Reading the faults, particularly the second one, it seems that uBO will be supported, but the issues they're having is with how to sync settings between desktop and mobile if you don't use sync...

If one doesn't use sync (I don't) it means that settings are not synced, by choice of the user. Or am I missing something?

Re: A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

#50

Post by severine »

myrion wrote: post #15
severine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because millions of people are using it and can't change easily? It's not that I don't get your point, but the amount of Android 4.x that I encounter is really big, maybe it's my humble environment, but still.

All of the 4.x versions together make up just over 10% of Androids used, according to Google. Pretty much every single 5.x version has a bigger share. It's reasonable to give that up if it makes development easier / the end result more secure, imo. Edited to ask: why is switching not easy? Even cheap phones come with far newer versions these days...

Only about 250 million Android 4.x users, mostly relatively poor, then: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/android-statistics/

I thought Mozilla would consider us important if only for that 10%. You know, 10% is quite important: Firefox has less than 10% of the desktop/laptop users, less than 1% of mobile users.

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