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Reinventing Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

191–200 of 395 posts

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#191
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right but, as a member of that demographic: - I use Firefox, and have done continuously for a long time. I don't intend to switch to anything else, despite being very unhappy with the experience in many ways, as I consider it to be the "least worst" - I genuinely believe there are very easily achievable low-hanging fruit that Mozilla could implement that would at least please a large swathe of their t…

> ...and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do... Huh, I must have missed that - if true, this is a huge breach of trust for me. Do you have a link?

They do use Google Analytics on their websites but they do have a contract with Google that explicitly states that Google cannot use any of that data for tracking ever for any reason at all. Would make Mozilla rich if Google violated that.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#192
Can they please provide a way to close all tabs instead of always having at least a blank one open. I'm probably just OCD on this but it's the most annoying thing I found about Firefox on Android compared to Chrome when I start using it.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#193
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right but, as a member of that demographic: - I use Firefox, and have done continuously for a long time. I don't intend to switch to anything else, despite being very unhappy with the experience in many ways, as I consider it to be the "least worst" - I genuinely believe there are very easily achievable low-hanging fruit that Mozilla could implement that would at least please a large swathe of their t…

> ...and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do... Huh, I must have missed that - if true, this is a huge breach of trust for me. Do you have a link?

E.g. this issue about Google Analytics on about:addons https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#194
Mozilla should do a deal with Huawei now when the trade war is raging. Hard Chinese money, desperate for a high quality Chrome alternative browser, might be better than wishing Google keeps paying for the default search engine spot.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#196

To any Mozilla/Firefox developer reading this. I try to convert people to Firefox. The number one reason people switch, by far, is because mobile has add on support. So I say to push this front and center in marketing (I know this is a preview). People are reluctant to switch their desktop browser because chrome pretty much has the same features. But it they switch their mobile browsers they also switch their desktop…

I use firefox on desktop. But on mobile one major blocker for me is that Google assistant does not work with firefox browser on android.

How do you mean? I wasn't aware the assistant really did anything with Chrome. Certainly it renders some search results using the android webview. But otherwise, it launches any pages you click in whatever browser you want. Inside of Chrome, what assistant features are there? The voice recognition is part of the keyboard so all apps have that. Genuinely not sure what you're referring to.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Horizontal space is somewhat of a premium though, especially if things like reader mode or buttons provided by addons as available in the current Firefox will return to the URL bar once more. And the current design for Fenix doesn't help in that regard by having quite a bit more white space - the tab counter and menu button take up approx. 50 % more width than they do in the current Firefox.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#198
post #42
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.

Pure speculation, I wonder if their contract with Google forbids them from having ad blocking as part of the browser. At least if I was a company paying another company millions of dollars I wouldn't let them block my income stream in their product.

Mozilla also didn't have ad blocking when their contract was with Yahoo.

Re: Reinventing Firefox for Android

#199

Mozilla should do a deal with Huawei now when the trade war is raging. Hard Chinese money, desperate for a high quality Chrome alternative browser, might be better than wishing Google keeps paying for the default search engine spot.

That's pretty damn risky. Not only would it draw the ire of the government, but they could have their entire company cut off at a whim.
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