Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#181

Post by krono » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

krono wrote: post #73

Synaesthesia wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate here, don't they need to protect their users from nefarious add ons that could steal data?

Doesn't seem very high up their list of priorities, seeing as how their desktop extensions - including the "Recommended" ones - are allowed to break all the rules. A surprising amount of them comes with unlisted and uncontrollable connections to snooping services like Google Analytics or Sentry, I've seen unexpected redirects / tab hijacks - mostly to advertise the developer's new other extension, even fetching and e…

Here are some examples anyone can download to verify I'm not talking out of my arse:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/giphy-for-fir...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabliss/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-subsc...

To get the source as its distributed to the browser you click "See all versions" in the "More information" panel on the left hand side of the extension page, then right click the "Add to Firefox" button and save to disk (don't left click the button if you're using FF or the extension will auto-install!), and then just unpack the XPI archive.

Don't forget to send in those abuse reports, maybe that'll finally get Mozilla to look at them.

Bonus link: https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/add-on-p...

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#182

Post by Zak » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:06 PM UTC

ohgodplsno wrote: post #155

cma wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is mouse/keyboard and stylus support so bad on mobile? Most of the normal browsing hotkeys don't work, even though people can use that setup a good bit with tablets and foldables.

Feel free to implement this in HomeActivity::onKeyDown. ( https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/blob/ce68e... ). Check for the appropriate modifiers on your key event + R, and call components.useCases.sessionUseCases.reloadUrl(). Why is it so bad ? Because noone uses a keyboard on mobile. Because if they had spent time implementing any other features that are used by 0.0001% of users, you'd have been comp…

Web developers are, indeed a tiny fraction of the overall userbase for web browsers. Why browser makers might want to cater to their needs anyway is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#183

Post by galangalalgol » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #163

LightHugger wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, an addon whitelist. How very community friendly of Mozilla... And they wonder why their market share plummets the way it does, making such extremely user hostile decisions like that.

Yeah, I remember before they removed all addons, they had over 20% market share on mobile. Those were the days.

What did those people switch to? I can't imagine browsing without ubo, what other options do I have?

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#184

Post by Aardwolf » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

Helmut10001 wrote: post #159

Aardwolf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a version of Fennec with up to date HTML rendering engine? Where to get it? AFAIK fennec is the code name for mobile firefox when mozilla had the very good android app that supported extensions, about:config and sane tab/bookmark management, and fenix is when mozilla ended fennec and replaced it with the much worse and clunky android app around 2020 that's still the only official one today, right?

You are right, according to this [1] Fennec is discontinued in favor of Fenix! I only use it for very simple stuff (HN, selfhosted apps etc.), so I did not notice. Yet, looking at the F-Droid store [2], Fennec indeed is available in a recent version (109.2.0) and it is being bumped by Mozilla [3]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ih9vmb/firefox_for_android_fenix_79_release_fennec_is/ [2]: https://f-droi…

Are you using a recent version of F-Droid fennec (which may be fenix instead), and if so does this one support arbitrary plugins? Did F-droid manage to modify it for that?

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#185

Post by fumeux_fume » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #5

Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what. The same repeated with Tampermonkey. It now has telemetry built into it, at one time w/ no privacy policy. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6hs59w/tampermonke... The good one now is Violentmonkey. Has been for some time. Does Mozilla have an allowlist for these? If so I don't like it.

Only a small subset of extensions are allowed on mobile. If you use the nightly version of the Firefox app there's an elaborate process you can go thru to allow access to all extensions.

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#186

Post by seanw444 » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

fhd2 wrote: post #126

Laaas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has been going down a bizarre path for a while. If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated, then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox. (What _really_ showed me Mozilla is going crazy is when they fired sunfishcode (IIRC) and the Servo team! Both were essential to their success. It makes little sense.)

I agree, Mozilla has been on a very weird path since then. Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the shady things I know about. I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this p…

Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was that enough companies and individuals would donate to support its development as a common interest, because obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly.

Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#187

Post by noirscape » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

asddubs wrote: post #161

noirscape wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't truly "getting past it". It's still locked to Mozilla's add-on store (preventing you from testing or manually loading extension bundles) and all you're really doing is switching the collection that Fenix loads the extensions from to one you control instead. One of the bigger reasons to use Fennec instead (the old Firefox Android browser, still maintained as a community fork) fo…

what's the difference between the old and new firefox android browser? is it a separate codebase? different UI?

Completely new codebase yeah. The old codebase is known as Fennec and is directly based on Gecko (the browser engine that powers desktop Firefox). All the same advantages. The UI wasn't excellent, but it did the job perfectly well.

The new codebase is known as Fenix and is instead based on GeckoView which isn't an actual browser but rather an library version of Gecko that is intended to replace Androids own System WebView (it was first used in Firefox Focus which was this tiny trackerblocking microbrowser that they offered).

The difference sounds tiny but it feels just... way clunkier to use and there's a bunch of features missing since a WebView browser isn't made with those in mind the same way a regular browser is.

There's just... loads of features missing or not available and the team working on Fenix is blatantly either mismanaged or underfunded. It's so feature-poor that you still can't actually set your homepage to a URL[0] among many other bugs and missing features. It appears to have gotten so bad that they moved the entire issue tracker over to Bugzilla and moved the repo to a new GitHub repo to hide just how feature poor this browser is.

Firefox Fenix is terrible, has been terrible for the past 2 years and I don't understand why they're still developing it instead of shoring up Fennec properly.

[0]: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7551

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#188

Post by jeroenhd » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

asddubs wrote: post #161

noirscape wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't truly "getting past it". It's still locked to Mozilla's add-on store (preventing you from testing or manually loading extension bundles) and all you're really doing is switching the collection that Fenix loads the extensions from to one you control instead. One of the bigger reasons to use Fennec instead (the old Firefox Android browser, still maintained as a community fork) fo…

what's the difference between the old and new firefox android browser? is it a separate codebase? different UI?

It was basically a complete rewrite. Mozilla moved from a bundled browser + UI to a GeckoView component with a browser UI on top.

I'm not sure anyone else actually uses GeckoView. I only know about it because their argument for disabling about:config is that users could mess up the bindings between GeckoView and the browser, forcing you to clear the browser's data to get it working again if you mess up the internals.

The old browser definitely could've used some refactoring but after the rewrite almost every feature that made Firefox interesting disappeared. They also changed how user-installed certificate authorities are handled (if you, as a user install your own CA, you need to tap the Firefox logo in the settings seven times to open up special secret settings and enable loading the CA in there).

Firefox currently has two things going for it: their tracking prevention being built in, and a few useful addons. If you don't use those or don't care too much about them, you should switch to Chromium (I recommend Bromite as an alternative, which has ad blocking built in and even rudimentary user script support without addons) because Firefox is a lot slower in comparison.

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#189

Post by Zak » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

anonymousab wrote: post #171

Manfred wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be good if they explained this in their documentation. But I think you summed it up in your own message: > […] you can either have a browser that doesn't catastrophically break every few updates; or you can have the freedom to install whatever addons you like […] I think they don't want malicious and abandoned extensions to taint the Firefox experience. Users will only see "Firefox is broken" and not realize…

They could trivially bury full add-on market access under 5 scary models and a password or something, but instead they use an absurdly cumbersome mechanism.

It seems like there should be four levels:

Recommended extensions, those that are currently available are vetted by Mozilla staff, not only for safety, but for utility and alignment with Mozilla's goals. These require no warnings or disclaimers.

Community approved extensions would be on AMO and approved by staff-selected community members for safety and policy compliance. No warnings, but a link/checkbox/toggle at the bottom of the extensions page.

All of AMO - this should need a toggle to turn on, and a warning that extensions have not been tested and could be unstable or malicious with a second checkbox to acknowledge.

Local install - this should be buried in the settings and called something like "I am an extension developer". Turning it on should pop up an additional warning about other peoples' code being dangerous. Actually installing an extension should require separate use of a file manager or command line, and then enabling it inside the Firefox UI.

The current approach reminds me of Apple's app store, except it's much harder to get on the recommended list than to get an iOS app approved.

All of which is why I use Kiwi Browser.

Re: Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey

#190

Post by jsnell » Fri, Feb 17, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #183

Semaphor wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I remember before they removed all addons, they had over 20% market share on mobile. Those were the days.

What did those people switch to? I can't imagine browsing without ubo, what other options do I have?

I think Semaphor was being sarcastic; Firefox never had any meaningful usage on mobile, certainly not 20%.