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

Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 482 posts

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#21

Post by friend_and_foe »

Zuiii wrote: post #16
gary_0 wrote: post #3

Better late than never!

While true, Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one (contrary to their claims, most extensions worked fine). I would be really interested in reading the rationale behind their decision. The real one.

You'll never get the real one unfortunately, because corpos (profit and non profit alike) do everything in marketingpseak and think their customers and users are stupid children that have to be bullshitted into behaving.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#22

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Out of curiosity I recently did an experiment to investigate Add-Ons in Firefox for Android.

Some facts:

One does not need Firefox Nightly to run more extensions than the "supported" ones.

Creating a "custom" collection of Add-Ons on addons.mozilla.org can be done using a disposable email address.

There is no visible Settings option to add a custom collection in Fennec from F-Droid. To make it visible, one has to go the About page under Settings and tap the Firefox logo three or more times.

One needs to enter an "ID" in Fennec to add a "custom" collection. The addons.mozilla.org site does not tell the user her ID, it's in the URL that points to her collection.

After a custom collection is added, one loses the default collection of Add-Ons "supported" by Mozilla. No way to easily switch between collections. Need to remove the current collection.

After installing a custom collection, whenever the user access the Add-Ons menu in Fennec, Firefox tries to connect to addons.mozilla.org. Mozilla's definition of user privacy excludes telemetry and data collection by Mozilla.

As another commenter mentioned, many of the Add-Ons that are not "supported" by Mozilla work just fine. They work just as well as uBblock origin, NoScript and the other "supporteed" ones.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#23

Post by friend_and_foe »

vsskanth wrote: post #13

Finally I can get off Firefox Nightly and move to the stable release

Or you can get off Firefox and stop feeling like a kicked dog all the time. It doesn't have to be a chromium fork either, there's iceraven.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#24

Post by Zuiii »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #21
Zuiii wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one (contrary to their claims, most extensions worked fine). I would be really interested in reading the rationale behind their decision. The real one.

You'll never get the real one unfortunately, because corpos (profit and non profit alike) do everything in marketingpseak and think their customers and users are stupid children that have to be bullshitted into behaving.

Tangentially related, but your comment reminded me of this classic: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#25

Post by plorg »

38 wrote: post #4

> Once you’re ready to test the mobile version of your extension, create a collection on AMO and test it on Firefox for Android Nightly Just in case anyone missed this, it seems that Android Firefox STILL will not allow anonymous installation of extensions. Even if you wrote the extension yourself, and want to install on your own device. Only workaround is to only install approved extensions, or be forced into regist…

AMO account isn't actually required for the user, it's required for some entity to create the "collection", but you don't actually have to have an account to use whichever collection with FF on your phone. Certainly most people who are using this method now correspond 1:1 to AMO account holders, but that isn't a necessity of the software. Any sufficiently motivated person could make a collection called "Too Cool For Mozilla Extensions" and tweet out the user name and collection name, and anyone who wanted could use that collection instead.

You also can sideload apps in Nightly, although I understand that is not ideal.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#27

Post by lolinder »

sfmike wrote: post #19

Would it be possible to inject chrome extensions somehow into firefox that is the final piece where some websites force to just use chrome and it's really annoying and the singular time you have to switch for their chrome based widget/extension to do that websites functionality?

I have never run into this. What websites are you referring to?

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#29

Post by kome »

xs83 wrote: post #26

If Adblock works on this then I will switch to Firefox from Chrome - the internet is unusable without it

ublock origin already works on firefox on mobile (android). it's already supported, it's already available. and it's awesome.

i don't know why and how people still use chrome on mobile. it is an awful web experience.

Post reply on HN