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

Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 395 posts

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#101

Post by teekert »

piyush_soni wrote: post #93

Feedback : When you are making a new Firefox for Android, please fix this small problem but personally a big annoyance : I should not need to open a whole new page before trying to open a new tab. Just add a plus button next to the address bar, that's it. Currently the workflow just disturbs me in all Firefox browsers for mobile - you have to click the tabs button, then the 'Plus' button (or click the settings menu a…

Meh the + is on the same spot as the tabs symbol so it's just a fast double tap and that means one less button in the interface.

Edit: OK, the fact that you have to wait for the animation is annoying indeed.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#102

Post by throwupaway123 »

jnurmine wrote: post #92
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

Exactly. Anyone remember when Firefox extensions broke recently? I thought it was a rather horrible experience. If the new Firefox Preview can natively block advertisements, whitelist sites, disable third party cookies, prevent and hide social trackers, block anti-ad-blockers, etc. etc. then I agree that extensions are kind of useless, and I understand Mozilla's point. However, I see the lack of extension support det…

This is still a preview, it's nowhere near a finished product. Extensions come after MVP https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/662#issuecomm...

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#103

Post by frenchyatwork »

earenndil wrote: post #41
AgloeDreams wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, that is pretty non-standard and is only done on Android as I understand.

Android is the standard, more or less, for touch interfaces. They have significantly more devices than ios, and no other touch device is more than a blip compared to those two.

Is this actually part of some standard Android HIG, or is it just a few popular apps that do this?

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#104

Post by Deimorz »

vaer-k wrote: post #88
mncolinlee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a preview release. Addons are coming as well as ad blocking. It's not the same thing, but the built-in tracking protection incidentally blocks a portion of ads.

That's good to hear. Can you point to where Mozilla says they will support addons and ad blocking in Fenix?

This seems to be the relevant issue on GitHub: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574

There's not much solid or explicit info in it, but it does seem to be planned eventually.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#105

Post by gcbw2 »

bobajeff wrote: post #94
gcbw2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox. Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.

I'm pretty sure the main reason is that all websites with block them and tell you to install Chrome if they ever did. Outside of that I'm sure turning ad blocking on by default would break several sites. Also publicly, they've said that ads are an integral part of the web.

Fine. ship it off. This is not a valid excuse.

What's the difference of shipping a feature off, and shipping with support for an extension (on both firefox and Google's chrome store sites!) that can be installed? At this point we are just discussing semantics. Install vs Turn on.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#106

Post by gcbw2 »

sciurus wrote: post #77
gcbw2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox. Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.

I think the better comparison than SafeBrowsing for uBlock would be Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default. This uses data maintained by Disconnect. (Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

Not really. Advanced users can selectively disable Javascript/frames/media etc on a per-site basis. Also the user has the control to allow trackers on site they care about and know the consequences.

I am sorry but tracking protection on mozilla as it is now (only enabled by default on private windows, and hapening with no user knowledge/information/learning oportunities) is a lame clutch.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#107

Post by piyush_soni »

teekert wrote: post #101
piyush_soni wrote: post #93

Feedback : When you are making a new Firefox for Android, please fix this small problem but personally a big annoyance : I should not need to open a whole new page before trying to open a new tab. Just add a plus button next to the address bar, that's it. Currently the workflow just disturbs me in all Firefox browsers for mobile - you have to click the tabs button, then the 'Plus' button (or click the settings menu a…

Meh the + is on the same spot as the tabs symbol so it's just a fast double tap and that means one less button in the interface. Edit: OK, the fact that you have to wait for the animation is annoying indeed.

Yup. Even though in Firefox Android 'regular' that's at the same page, as you noted it's not always that fast, especially for low end phones. But with this new Firefox Preview even the Plus button is not at the same 'position', and the new page opening up with animation takes even more time.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#108

Post by gcbw2 »

silon42 wrote: post #68
gcbw2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox. Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.

plugins are better (I use uMatrix).

uBlock origin is turning into uMatrix, even on mobile (fenec) Firefox. Sneakily ;)

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#109

Post by cycomanic »

zamalek wrote: post #79
Roritharr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why Mozilla doesn't put ad-blocking & tracking protection front & center the way other orgs do. Winning their userbase back is the only way to win back the leverage they once had...

Agreed. I hastily installed FF Preview and then immediately uninstalled it when I couldn't find where to install uBlock. They shouldn't have launched, or made an announcement, without some form of adblocking (native or plugin). I understand that it's a testing release, but they stand to lose out on many testers and users. While I am perfectly willing to be a guinea pig and use this as my daily driver, I am passionate…

Did you actually try it on a website with lots of ads? I've been using focus for the last 6 months or so and the tracker blocking also blocks many ads for me. Also there is blockada which blocks ads system wide.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#110

Post by gloflo »

If there is one thing I miss from current mobile Firefox, it's text reflow. Opera mobile did it perfectly.

I want to be able to zoom in or out and have text reflowed to the screen width. This makes the web magnitudes nicer to use on a small screen. No cut off lines, no 10 lines per screen. Just convenient freedom over the primary tool we interact on the web: Text.

Post reply on HN