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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)

#161
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a decade-long user and am perfectly fine with modern Firefox (plus uBlock), both on the desktop and on Android. In fact, I don't want to go back to the before-times. Speak for yourself.

Don't worry, he's speaking for the majority of long term firefox users. You're the exception. I started using Firefox when it was Gecko/Phoenix in 2002, then Firebird, then Firefox. I started using it because it was so customizable. I stopped using it at version 37 in 2015 because that was when Mozilla destroyed the browser by removing user freedoms to install their own add-ons without Mozilla's approval. And no, usi…

> There's plenty of users who just want Chrome that's not labeled Chrome and Firefox modern gives it to them.

Firefox isn't Chrome that's not labeled Chrome, though. Less customization doesn't mean it's necessarily more Chrome-like, especially lately where Chrome's implementing things like tab groups and keeping more or less the same UI design. The new Firefox looks more Safari-ish than Chrome-ish. to me.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 use…

I suspect that this actually explains a lot of Mozilla's decision making that seems utterly disconnected from their userbase. They don't seem to realize that compared to Chrome, their userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry. They talk about the importance of privacy and security and whatnot, but then make all their decisions based around the behavior of the people that don't care about th…

"userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry"

You need data to support that claim. To me, it sounds unlikely. My guess, most users accept telemetry, tech savvy or not.

For instance, I'm tech savvy, and explicitly choose telemetry when on non-work computers because I want to enable companies to understand my behaviors so they can in the best cases deliver better features to me.

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

#163

Fenix is basically a whole new browser, and that means that all features need to be implemented again (which takes a lot of time, and I don't think Firefox developers have much of it). Lots of Fennec features are still missing (view source code, save as pdf, install general addons, the whole about:config...). Why they changed is a mystery, maybe the old browser had a core privacy bug or something that couldn't be fix…

Another fun missing feature is the ability to delete cookies for a site.

[deleted]

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

#164
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, people that want to run extensions can either use Fennec (the F-Droid fork, not the old Firefox for Android) or Nightly versions. There are developers targeting this stuff - I wrote about some here: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...

It does require creating a Firefox account and creating a "collection" so it's definitely not out of the box.

Didn't know about this before. While reading about the process, does this expose publicly what extensions a person uses?

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the whitelist has a purpose" doesn't really capture what's going on, though. It's more like they whitelisted some of the most popular extensions and then just stopped completely with no intention of continuing. With the much more limited plugin API (and simple html plug-in config pages) of the new browsers you'd think it would be easier to build and vet secure, cross platform add-ons.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Mozilla just let all the plugins claim compatability, and vaguely fascist users who dont like their politics are complaining that the instability of Mozilla on Android is the reason they hate them. And further along, in a universe where they poured a lot of time energy and money into fixing the whole plugin ecosystem and succeeded, they're complaining about something that didn't get…

Let's talk about forging hammers for a moment: I could just be a blacksmith forging nice hammers to put nails into stuff and try to make them high quality - nicely weighted, comfortable handles, durable, repairable etc, make some decisions about quality/price etc.

I could also sing Erika or the Internationale at the top of my lungs or rant about the modern art market at the same time. These aren't very related at all to my actual job of forging hammers. I could also have opinions about something at least somewhat related, like constantly telling people they shouldn't use my hammers to build modern architecture because it's a steaming pile of ugly garbage. Let's say modern buildings use a specific kind of nail. I could make the hammers so they're by default kinda garbage for working with those nails, though adjustable to work with them if the user so wishes.

This evaluation of modern architecture is a valid opinion! But it's still really unsightly to advocate for simple tools to not be used for general purposes, or to try to build features into the hammer to make them a pain to use for making ugly buildings. It's simply not really my job as a hammersmith to do that.

And it's that attitude that we've generally losing as a society - a craftsman's attitude to just do our jobs well and leave the unrelated politics elsewhere. We literally have spice merchants' websites with menus that go "Spices - Gift bags - About Republicans". Your job was to sell me chili and nutmeg so I don't end up in those plain toast meme pictures and not political commentary about how one party is the source of most everything wrong in America.

Think about something like Christian rock. Most of it is pretty dull. Why? It tries to be Christian first, good music second.

I'd like there to be more craftsmanship-type organizations and less political activism with a job on the side.

Sincerely, one of your "vaguely fascist users".

EDIT: Apologies to dang for talking about hammers and pepper sellers.

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

#167
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another fun missing feature is the ability to delete cookies for a site.

Click on the lock in the URL bar then "Clear cookies and site data"

Oh, you're right, they got that in in April.

Very slow progress but nonzero progress.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mozilla PMs seem hell bent on dictating where the market goes, and it's not working.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 antitrack…

> if California would stay in California, that would be great

Then you wouldn't have most of the IT industry and especially FOSS.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right, I think it's pretty close to parity! I vaguely recall seeing some odd API that wasn't supported in Fenix that was in Fennec, but they're pretty rare. Fairly sure you could access history in Fennec via a webextension, and I think that's not supported in Fenix. I think what's generally missing in these discussions is that the whole project to bring extensions into Fenix was extremely user-driven - whatever peopl…

> If you purely look at it from the "most value for most users" perspective, Fenix extensions are a great success.

Except for the part where so many extensions that already have the needed APIs implemented still can't be installed.

Changing that setting would move the needle with minimal developer effort.

> But it's not clear that "mobile-browser-as-a-developer-platform" is a sustainable long-term pitch for an organization as small and as resource constrained as Mozilla.

They were trying to make an entire OS, and now they can't keep the browser shell updated?

There's correction and then there's overcorrection.

Also I want my desktop and phone browser to work together well, so failure to make the phone work pushes me away from everything.

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