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Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

blog.mozilla.org

181–190 of 210 posts

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#181
post #3

It's been days (weeks?) and I'm still waiting for the option to appear for me. These "experiments" are super annoying when you are on what I'm assuming is the long tail of a rollout but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched. If there's someone at Mozilla reading this: turn it on already! I want to get off Orion, it's so buggy, but the internet is unusable without an ad blocker.

> the internet is unusable without an ad blocker

As someone who successfully uses the internet day in and day out with zero ad blockers, this stance always amuses me. It's not hard to just ignore ads.

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But consider what the alternative looks like: People randomly see unexpected options in their apps, go to look for information about them, and don't find anything, or find some random Reddit discussion where no one is sure what's going on.

Yeah release notes, in-app help, intuitive UIs, and version documentation hosted on your own website are definitely not possible. Gotta instead cater to the LCD of people who won't be using Firefox in the first place, it's reddit spam or nothing.

My point is that you need to put out that documentation before the start of the rollout, or people won't find it when they look for it.

I guess you could quietly update documentation at the start of the rollout, then make the blog post at the end.

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#183
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orion is webkit-based though, not a whole independent browser like FFox.

To be fair, Firefox on iOS is also WebKit based thanks to Apples’s rules. Much of a muchness in this aspect.

I'm not criticizing Orion for that; I actually enjoy it quite a lot (and will do even more when they will have ironed out all the UI bugs).

Also I'm eager to see how it will behave on Linux when they will have finished their port; I hope we will finally have a really low-energy consumption browser then.

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#184

Would someone smarter than me mind explaining why FF on iOS can't use extensions? I know every browser has to use WebKit but I've heard Orion is able to use FF and Chrome extensions.

Apple doesn’t allow other apps to use Safari extensions (edit: on iOS or iPadOS) Orion offers custom support for WebExtensions but it’s basically requiring them to manually check and port WebExtensions to work well with WebKit, one by one. Check out: https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensi... https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/ios-ipados-ex...

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#185
post #3

It's been days (weeks?) and I'm still waiting for the option to appear for me. These "experiments" are super annoying when you are on what I'm assuming is the long tail of a rollout but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched. If there's someone at Mozilla reading this: turn it on already! I want to get off Orion, it's so buggy, but the internet is unusable without an ad blocker.

Same here. Why do they do it do it this way?

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#186
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my knowledge. It would be hard to have the same amount of funding as they have now from Google.

especially when you pay your executives 7 figure salaries

That’s what a good executive costs these days. You could try to hire a CEO for $100,000/yr with the expected quality of applicants.

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#187
post #106

Why would you use Firefox on iOS when it’s just a wrapper around WebKit? I don’t really get it?

Sync, mainly.

You can send a tab to/from your Firefox desktop instance. Also synced passwords. Those aren't the only reasons -- Firefox on iOS has a lot of code in that wrapper -- but sync is the main one for me.

(There are also reasons why it's significantly worse than Safari, which has special privileges, so your question is valid.)

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#188
post #62

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios#w... > Does ad blocking affect search engine ads? > No. Ads shown on search engine results pages are not blocked. A lot of the search results on top of Google are there to scam you, providing phone numbers for pass through services that charge $ for it, like flight cancellation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1p6h81i/beware_fake_... So this omission…

If only we could pay for Firefox so they could get rid of that Google funding…

Just.. use different search engine? Startpage if you still want the Google's search results but with vastly superior privacy

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

especially when you pay your executives 7 figure salaries

That’s what a good executive costs these days. You could try to hire a CEO for $100,000/yr with the expected quality of applicants.

> That’s what a good executive costs these days.

maybe they should go get some then

Re: Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS

#190
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Linux kernel is not riddled with ads? And Firefox is not riddled with ads. The websites it loads are. If you run a program that shows ads on your Linux distro, the Linux kernel won't block them, will it?

Does your hypothetical kernel make it easy or difficult for you to install add-ons that block ads? Does the organization that build it have a conflict of interest regarding advertisting/surveillance interests such as Google/Meta/...?

Not sure what your point is. My comparison was not made to be stretched infinitely. Next question may be "does your kernel render web pages?", but I don't see where it is going.

But to give an answer: if you wanted to bake an ad-blocker in the Linux kernel that would prevent programs from showing ads in a transparent way (the ads just don't show and the programs still work and look fine), I think it would not be trivial at all.

But I don't see the point of going down that discussion.

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