111–120 of 220 posts
For a year now, I began using DuckDuckGo's (DDG) "Privacy Browser" on Android. By default it removes ads and third-party trackers; no need for add-ons. So far DDG's browser works roughly on par with my older setup of stock Android Firefox plus a couple of usual extensions. I wonder why DDG's Android browser isn't more well-known.
I use ff almost exlusively both on my laptop and the phone. The existing gap between even the core features has been puzzling for a while. On mobile I can add a current page to home screen, collections and the top sites. Neither is available on desktop (with the same profile). WTF mozilla? What kind of usability is this? I am totally not looking forward switching to another browser but it looks inevitable...
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> It was always the extensibility. Going by the numbers, that's far from the truth. Majority of user never used addons, not even adblockers. Even the most popular addons are only used by a small minority of users. I'm also a big addon-user and complain what firefox has lost over time. But we should also admit that we are a minority, and addons are simply not the major selling point for a mainstream product's success.
I think it's hard to tease out the size of effect. Extensions are only used by a minority of users, but that's mostly the set of vocal power users that are likely to be the go-to tech person within their social circles. I'm sure I'm far from the only HNer that has recommended or installed Firefox for many friends and family. I mean, I used to recommend and install Firefox before their terrible management turned the o…
If there's a better (more accurate and neutral) title that uses representative language from the article itself, we can change it again.
Mozilla doesn't seem to have a clue why people prefer firefox. It's not because of privacy or security, though that's nice. It's certainly not because it behaves similarly to chrome. It was always the extensibility. The power of plugins that allowed adblocking to be invented on firefox. They threw that away in the name of security and supposed clean code. Clean code doesn't get you users.
they know it. that's why they've killed XUL. that's why they're going even further by enforcing an inferior extension standard from their supposed competitor. that's why they've killed off the extensions and about:config for the android version. that's why you can't even use a private extension on desktop without jumping through the hoops. that's why usercss (toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets - lega…
I don't think so. There's many more ways and decisions they could have gotten away with to make Firefox worse without outright killing it, that they haven't done (yet).
Rather, I think it's more likely that Firefox, the browser application, is a bit of an albatross to the Mozilla foundation. Something they begrudgingly have to live with, at least in the short term. It's their organization's 'product', but to a certain layer of leadership and above, it's just another vehicle for their broader mission which could be accomplished much easier by just being a chrome fork instead. It'd also remove the need to hire and retain so many pesky and annoying engineers.
Such that the Mozilla corp. is something they have to keep around, but definitely not something they want to keep around.
It is an attractive way of rationalizing the astonishing and bewildering decision making at Mozilla.
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This pretty much feels to me what is happening to Mozilla as an organization from an outsider perspective. Engineering is no longer as important as the evangelism and management is making strange decisions that lack focus on what the target audience really is.
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I've closely been following Mobile Firefox development over the past year - this browser is dead, like totally dead. Bug reports pile up, nothing is really fixed, a ton of commits about telemetry, some commits here and there changing certain UI elements, some refactoring, almost nothing else. Go check its revision history all you want: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/commits/main Mozilla has seemingly totally…
I have a fairly new phone on a 5G network and the browser is soooo much better than it was even ten years ago yet I use it far, far less than I did back then. Part of it is that my phone just didn't do as much back then and so I spent more time in the browser, but I think the other part is that the web has turned into a garbage fire.
I used to browse the web the same way I used to channel surf in 1984. It was what I did for fun. Today, I go to five sites 99% of the time and I kind of dread having to use my browser on my phone outside of that.
also fennec from f-droid is able to use custom extensions (and also about:config) it is compiled from firefox stable, with minimal changes, and mozilla telemetry disabled. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
Yep, Fennec has been my solution to Mozilla abandoning FF on Android.
Your statement is akin to saying: "Firefox on Debian is my solution to Mozilla abandoning FF on desktop"
If FF on Android _were_ abandoned, then so would Fennec.
I use Fennec, but because I know that it the well-supported, actively developed Firefox on Android, but available on F-Droid.
which sadly Mozilla doesn't provide or allow F-Droid maintainers to publish it as "Firefox"
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> so e.g. I can listen to youtube playlists even if the phone is locked NewPipe on F-Droid is a killer app.
Every video, I get errors in the UI. I once powered through, it seems eventually the video does play normally. Perhaps that is because of blocked ads(by newpipe then - I have no other restrictions on mobile)