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Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#171

Post by throwawaymoz28 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #56
emestifs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Firefox paradox: People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format) Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs FFS, something good happen…

> s*t on Firefox devs The nerd rage is targeted at Mozilla's dishonest and incompetent managers, no? The actual dev work is top notch.

I worked at Mozilla as an engineer for 6 years and this was not how it came across to me; there was, in fact, quite a lot of hostility towards engineers specifically.

I would also note that "managers" runs quite a wide gamut and my experience with engineering managers at Mozilla was generally positive; upper management was not so great.

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#173

Post by esperent »

dredmorbius wrote: post #158
Night_Thastus wrote: post #38

I'm so grateful that FF for Android exists with addon support. Using it with uBlock is the only way to make mobile not an awful experience for me.

There are other mobile browsers which incorporate adblocking directly (though not extensions generally). The Einkbro browser, optimised for e-ink devices (as the name suggests) is one. I believe Brave does as well. As much as I'm a fan of Firefox (using it now on desktop), on my mobile e-ink device, Einkbro's optimisations make for a vastly superior browsing experience.

There's also Kiwi browser which directly supports most Chrome addons and has for many years. I can never understand why it doesn't get more attention.

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#174

Post by eco »

insin wrote: post #163

One of the newly-available extensions is mine for Hacker News [0] - it highlights new comments when you revisit an item and somewhat improves some of the UX on mobile: [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hn-comments-owl/

Amusingly I returned to this comments section and was scrolling down looking at the time stamps for new comments and this was the first new comment I hit. Thanks. It's clearly going to come in handy.

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#176

Post by aqfamnzc »

replete wrote: post #137

Excellent, finally in stable. Have been using Nightly and more recently Mull specifically for extensions like 'I still don't care about cookies', 'ublock origin' and 'dark reader' which make the web on mobile at all practical. Firefox browser share is like 2-3%. Please consider using it, the internet will be a lot shittier without Firefox as an option, and it is the best option for privacy and ad-blocking.

Heads up re: IDCAC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36233068

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#177

Post by SushiHippie »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #176
replete wrote: post #137

Excellent, finally in stable. Have been using Nightly and more recently Mull specifically for extensions like 'I still don't care about cookies', 'ublock origin' and 'dark reader' which make the web on mobile at all practical. Firefox browser share is like 2-3%. Please consider using it, the internet will be a lot shittier without Firefox as an option, and it is the best option for privacy and ad-blocking.

Heads up re: IDCAC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36233068

That's why GP is using "I *still* don't care about cookies" ;) https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#178

Post by SushiHippie »

lxgr wrote: post #39
tiltowait wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orion on desktop supports Firefox extensions, so is integration possible? (Not all are compatible.)

Browsers on macOS can use custom rendering engines. On iOS, they have to all use Apple's provided version of it (which does not support WebExtensions by itself), so the two are not comparable at all.

Orion supports some extensions on IOS too https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#179

Post by wolverine876 »

dopa42365 wrote: post #138
wolverine876 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. I'm surprised it's baffling in a community of developers and other IT professionals. It's not baffling to me that two significantly (wholly?) different applications on different platforms and form factors would require quite a bit of work to both be generally compatible with the same third-party software via the same API - and all while maintaining the same compatib…

Firefox android extension support went from "all" to like "5 chosen ones, but we'll enable all of them very soon" in mid 2019. How and why those were handpicked, who knows, clearly extensions weren't enabled by supported functions at the time. In the usual mozilla fashion that "very soon" turned out to be multiple years.

Again, it's easy to imagine answers to these questions and to grasp what is happening. Instead people choose to play the sport of tearing things down, no matter the effect on the people involved, Mozilla, the open web, etc.

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#180

Post by glandium »

asadotzler wrote: post #147
st3fan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people may remember this differently. Some things are a bit of a blur. My brain selectively blocks some of this - It was basically an exhausting two/three year crunch to rewrite Fennec as a modern Android app.

That's how I remember it. I was on desktop projects but following closely and the rewrite was a death march and people working on it moved or left along the way too. We should have listened to Hyatt back in 2003-ish when he basically said of XUL, "it's never gonna be great on *nix or Mac but it's good enough on Windows." Because of solid desktop horsepower growth over the 2000s, we were able to make XUL go for the th…

XUL is not the whole story, though. There was an Android native Firefox before the current Fenix and after the XUL Fennec, and it had Web Extensions, IIRC. From that perspective, that people complained is understandable.
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