- How far away from a release is this? - Given that Apple does not allow other render engines. What makes this Firefox?
Maybe this will be for the jailbroken platform (probably not though :/)
I wouldn't count on it.
Firefox for iOS on GitHub
21–30 of 145 posts
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#22Anyone manage to get it to build? Lots of errors, assumably very far away from being usable.
They're mainly just warnings stemming from dependencies—it compiles just fine in Xcode 6.1.1 after running git submodule update --init and force-unwrapping a bunch of optionals. Interestingly, it appears to do everything BUT display web pages at this point! Looks very preliminary. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5kmot2fg6i7wmx/Screenshot%202014-...
Without entering the details (which I don't have anyway, I'm not involved in this version of Firefox), yeah, it's very preliminary.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#23It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…
They have no other choice; Apple won't accept apps with custom web rendering engines.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#24It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…
> It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView.
They don't have a choice, I'm glad to see them do something pragmatic here. On iOS you can ship a WKWebView browser or nothing. Given how big mobile has become it's sad that it took them 6+ years to do this. Lots of people use Chrome on iOS but that only came out 2 years ago. It could have been Firefox.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#25It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…
They have no other choice; Apple won't accept apps with custom web rendering engines.
How can Apple get away with that? I am genuine interested! Sounds pretty much like the same thing Microsoft did with Internet Explore back in the day, except they didn't force you to use their rendering engine, but shipped the OS with their browser as default?
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have no other choice; Apple won't accept apps with custom web rendering engines.
How can Apple get away with that? I am genuine interested! Sounds pretty much like the same thing Microsoft did with Internet Explore back in the day, except they didn't force you to use their rendering engine, but shipped the OS with their browser as default?
Microsoft was a monopoly. Apple is a niche player. Antitrust laws don't apply to companies with 20% of the market.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can Apple get away with that? I am genuine interested! Sounds pretty much like the same thing Microsoft did with Internet Explore back in the day, except they didn't force you to use their rendering engine, but shipped the OS with their browser as default?
Microsoft was a monopoly. Apple is a niche player. Antitrust laws don't apply to companies with 20% of the market.
Actually, iOS has 42.4% of the smartphone market in the U.S. according to http://www.cnet.com/news/android-loses-some-us-market-share-...
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have no other choice; Apple won't accept apps with custom web rendering engines.
How can Apple get away with that? I am genuine interested! Sounds pretty much like the same thing Microsoft did with Internet Explore back in the day, except they didn't force you to use their rendering engine, but shipped the OS with their browser as default?
I am equally surprised.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft was a monopoly. Apple is a niche player. Antitrust laws don't apply to companies with 20% of the market.
Actually, iOS has 42.4% of the smartphone market in the U.S. according to http://www.cnet.com/news/android-loses-some-us-market-share-...
There are other markets than the US and the antitrust laws were employed against Microsoft in the EU.
Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub
#30Anyone manage to get it to build? Lots of errors, assumably very far away from being usable.
They're mainly just warnings stemming from dependencies—it compiles just fine in Xcode 6.1.1 after running git submodule update --init and force-unwrapping a bunch of optionals. Interestingly, it appears to do everything BUT display web pages at this point! Looks very preliminary. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5kmot2fg6i7wmx/Screenshot%202014-...
They are probably trying to get the bookmark synchronization to work first.
Displaying web pages is easy with the build in UIWebView (or WKWebView) component