Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

blog.nori.moe

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 111 posts

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#41

Post by hammyhavoc »

lasc4r wrote: post #16
marak830 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit harsh. Every point they raised is valid: the UX changes have been weird and inconsistent, the lack of history searching is frustrating etc I still use ff, I certainly won't be using Chrome as I appreciate my add-ons too much.

Calling ff a mess is worse, as someone that absolutely hates ads it's a godsend.

Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I've tried all the major browsers on Android, Windows, and Linux, and I've always come back to Firefox, even if there are minor caveats.

If Firefox on Android is a "mess", what does that make Microsoft Edge? :- )

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#42

Post by commoner »

rozab wrote: post #37

I have an even more infuriating issue with the urlbar suggestions. About 50% of the time I type something in, it will find an url suggestion for the first letter or so but keep that suggestion at the end as I keep typing, unless I press backspace before enter. e.g. "hot tubs for salettps://news.ycombinator.com"

I experienced that too, but I wrote it off as a keyboard issue since it stopped happening after I switched from AnySoftKeyboard to FlorisBoard. Which keyboard are you using?

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#43

Post by yata69420 »

I use https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ as my preferred firefox android fork.

I use the addon collection from account 16201230 named "What-I-want-on-Fenix".

This gives me uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, I Don't Care About Cookies, SponsorBlock, ViolentMonkey, etc.

The stewardship of Firefox and Fennec are a real concern, but for now, this works.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#44

Post by hammyhavoc »

quaintdev wrote: post #13
PostOnce wrote: post #2

I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but…

> I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention. And here I was thinking the post missed a lot of issues maybe I should create another blog post. Stop defending something that really has issues. This fanboy behaviour ends up hurting the very thing we love.

Constructive criticism is important. However, praising things that are working well when everybody else is layering on the negativity with a trowel regarding the "death" of Firefox, and how it is a "mess" is important so that we don't end up with more undesirable changes made.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#45

Post by hammyhavoc »

tomrod wrote: post #22
quaintdev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention. And here I was thinking the post missed a lot of issues maybe I should create another blog post. Stop defending something that really has issues. This fanboy behaviour ends up hurting the very thing we love.

Agreed with you. FF was my main mobile browser when I could -block ads -modify default text size (so I could read websites like old.reddit.com without having to zoom in) There were a whole lot of other great features that weren't dealbreakers without. Now? It's just weird.

What's weird about it? Works how I would expect.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#46

Post by puppet-master »

commoner wrote: post #15

Mozilla would instantly recover a ton of goodwill by allowing users to install any WebExtension on Firefox for Android without having to go through a strange activation ritual that only works on the Nightly channel.* Considering how stable the extensions have been for me, I'm baffled at how Mozilla is not even letting the Beta channel test them. * https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

original promise: Firefox for Android, like Chrome but with infinite extensions written by people just like you for people just like you

new promise: Firefox for Android, underinvestment in UX you'll definitely hate and 12 potential extensions exclusively approved by a committee of parasitic boomers too far gone to be competitive on the contemporary labour market.

Absolute garbage. However way this cut, one team or otherwise, they clearly didn't have the SLIGHTEST clue about the primary value prop of their main product for its users. Today's Mozilla is organizationally incompetent, and I genuinely worry (user for decades) that this time it truly is beyond rescue. That the situation on Android has persisted for almost a year already tells you all you need to know: Mozilla appears not to even possess the nervous system to respond to the obvious pain and misery of its users from that disastrous Android UI rewrite. They seem utterly deaf and dumb, almost like it were already a cadaver. Reminds me of Yahoo

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#47

Post by ljm »

As an aside, I notice "let me preface this..." introductions more often than I used to.

I don't know what to make of it but I've found myself writing it some times, and when I do it, it's because I'm imagining a specific audience and trying to mitigate their backlash. Or I'm being too self-aware in the writing and assuming things readers don't.

The article starts off better without the apologetic rationalisation of something I haven't even read yet.

See for yourself, copy my post and add "Let me preface this by saying I don't have a problem with what I'm about to mention, but I am going to point out something I find frustrating, I've found it frustrating for a while, and I need to talk about it."

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#48

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

bfdm wrote: post #17

It can't print. It doesn't support printing. If I need to print (to paper or PDF) something like an order receipt for an insurance claim or a shipping label to return something, I need to use another browser. I still use it, but this annoys me ~weekly.

why not screenshot or save it? It's not like the content is different.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#49

Post by commoner »

bfdm wrote: post #17

It can't print. It doesn't support printing. If I need to print (to paper or PDF) something like an order receipt for an insurance claim or a shipping label to return something, I need to use another browser. I still use it, but this annoys me ~weekly.

Yeah, the Save as PDF feature was handy and its absence from the current Firefox for Android feels like a regression. I hope they add it back.

- GitHub issue for printing: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217

- GitHub issue for Save as PDF: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3709

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#50

Post by dheera »

PostOnce wrote: post #2

I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but…

I've found the Firefox tabbing experience much nicer on mobile. Chrome wrecked their UX recently, sometimes new tabs become circles at the bottom (that don't obey the tab button) and sometimes they become big squares at the top that are under the tab button. The two types of tabs are confusing as hell.

And sometimes the big square tabs have little squares inside them so you now have tiny circles inside little squares inside big squares and this 3-dimensional tabbing is just nuts. 1 dimension is enough.

Post reply on HN