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Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

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Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#121

Post by pmontra »

contravariant wrote: post #38
therealmarv wrote: post #7

That's not true. It's more that Mozilla white lists only very few of the addons for the mobile browser. The fork Iceraven whitelists/allow all (?) of the addons (not all work fully, so the whitelist has a purpose): https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

There is in fact a way to plug in your own whitelist if you use Firefox Nightly [1]. It's a bit of a hassle though, and it's so obscure that I'm fairly sure almost nobody is aware of it. [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

I gave it a try weeks ago and it's not working for me. It keeps using only the addons I had before I attempted the suggested procedure.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#122

Post by sillystuff »

slightwinder wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #2

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.

> 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.

> Majority of user never used addons

Do they get those numbers via telemetry or from the server-side? If the former, those stats may be skewed by the overlap between the users who use several extensions and those who disable all telemetry.

In a mozilla bug report where they discuss removing user.js, they point to telemetry that indicates that no one uses this functionality. I'd argue that the Venn diagram between users of user.js and those who disable telemetry approximates a single circle.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#123

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

jonkoops wrote: post #34
dblohm7 wrote: post #29

(Former Mozilla developer here, who worked on GeckoView[1], the modern way to embed Gecko into Android apps, including all currently shipped Mozilla browsers on Android) From an engineering perspective, the sad thing about this is that the work to finish extensions in GeckoView was essentially completed in the months after the initial Fenix release. When GeckoView was still being rolled out into release, we understan…

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.

why should mozilla continue to pay for a CEO and "managerial staff"? i don't mean accountants and all, but bosses and "managers" who are not paid by the work done but instead based on "market rates" as i read in some mozilla report sometime ago?

what benefit does having a CEO to mozilla do when insiders and outsiders like me see no tangible benefit? its not like apple which has to pay their CEO top dollar to show they are so good. can the mozilla org not hire X number of developers who would be doing the actual work instead of a single CEO whose job, according to me at least seems to be doing everything in their power to ruin the good name of mozilla? its as if they are paid to take all the bad decisions. strange

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#124

Post by 331c8c71 »

kbrosnan wrote: post #112
331c8c71 wrote: post #102

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...

On Windows/Mac OS/Linux you can drag the lock icon to the desktop to create a desktop launcher/shortcut.

thank you for the suggestion.

i find collections super handy and use them but the fact they are not exposed (even in rudimemtary form) in desktop UI is appalling. the usefulness of collections drops by some 50% to me - i basically need to reopen a saved page in mobile, send it to the desktop browser (using "send to device" feature) and then, probably, save it again in bookmarks.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#125

Post by dblohm7 »

allendoerfer wrote: post #104
dblohm7 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2 cents: One of the reasons why I left is that there was no longer any symbiotic relationship between product management and engineering. Product makes unilateral decisions, throws them over the wall, and engineering is expected to quit whining and just do what they're told.

Can anyone defend product management to me? Shouldn't this basically be UX/UI designers working together with developers based on user input acquired in some scientific way (either quantitative or qualitative)? How do product managers provide additional value?

IMHO: Product managers are super important: it's their job to understand the market (where it was, where it is, and where it is going), the competitive landscape, and work with leadership on strategic planning.

However, all three groups (UX, PM, Eng) need to work symbiotically. Everybody needs to be sharing information and acting as partners in the work they're doing.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#126

Post by dblohm7 »

grigory wrote: post #95
dblohm7 wrote: post #29

(Former Mozilla developer here, who worked on GeckoView[1], the modern way to embed Gecko into Android apps, including all currently shipped Mozilla browsers on Android) From an engineering perspective, the sad thing about this is that the work to finish extensions in GeckoView was essentially completed in the months after the initial Fenix release. When GeckoView was still being rolled out into release, we understan…

(Also a former Mozilla developer, worked Fennec and Fenix) I think a more nuanced perspective here is that roughly 80% of the work was done, and the remaining 20% require significant effort and organizational energy. Not all of the WebExtension API surface is currently supported; there's a long tail of infrequently used extensions that require non-trivial engineering effort and often cross-team coordination to implem…

That's fair, I think in GV at the time we were more thinking about Fennec parity, so that's where my thoughts originate.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#127

Post by teddyh »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #103
akira2501 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Mozilla makes decisions to win over vaguely fascist users, or at least prevent them from having something negative to say? Or because in other universes there aren't perfect solutions? Do they have any desire to just.. make a good browser that fulfills peoples needs?

The point is, if you don't like an organisation for reason A, you'll easily find reason X, Y and Z why you don't like them. Ask someone who grew up supporting a certain sports team or religion why they don't like the rival team or religion, and they'll happily give you answers why. They may even believe some of them themselves. Some of them might even be valid criticisms, but they are almost certainly not why someone…

Yes. Humans make decisions based on feeling and intuition, and most people then check the decision for any glaring errors by using rules of thumb, and, in rare cases, reasoned logic. But nobody makes decisions based on logic. We all just have opinions, and later, when pressed, find “reasons” to keep them.

See also this discussion about how to choose a phone:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656790#21661157

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#128

Post by dblohm7 »

Santosh83 wrote: post #86
freemint wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how engineering on an open source product is prevented from doing the right thing™ by management?

Because the vast majority of engineers working on the code base are employed by the management. They can't just do their own thing & remain employees. Plus the FF code is controlled by Mozilla corp. You have full freedom (as an outside contributor) only in the sense you can always fork, not that you can somehow force Mozilla to accept your patches. Same as Android and all other major OSS controlled de facto by corpor…

This is correct. Full-time devs are going to spend their work time on what the people who pay them tell them they should be working on.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#129

Post by soundnote »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #47
jonkoops wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of that evangelism doesn't even make any sense to me as a non-USian. I understand the US has its own share of internal problems, but feeding that to the whole world when I just want to download the damn browser seems weird. I won't post any links here to avoid offending anyone, but they should be pretty obvious.

Not only does it not make sense, they presume they know better than their poor users what their users should see and what opinion on web content they should have. If I want activist browser developers, give me teams like Brave and Vivaldi, thankyouverymuch. Both actually do things that serve the end user in their own way. Insofar as the browsers have politics, they are politics about the browser itself like antitracking, privacy and user control.

Also not American and yeah, if California would stay in California, that would be great.

Re: Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

#130

Post by dblohm7 »

throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #73
guelo wrote: post #2

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…

No.

> that's why they've killed XUL

We couldn't deliver a multiprocess browser without doing it.

> about:config for the android version

I completely supported this and continue to do so. GeckoView on Android works completely differently than desktop Firefox, and about:config's semantics are not identical between the two. A few of us were interested in offering an alternative that gave users a way to make adjustments in a way that was "safe," but as you can imagine that has never been a management priority.

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