And still, no extension sync and extension data sync on mobiles.
Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
191–200 of 251 posts
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is speculation based only on press releases but: - Google pays Mozilla more than 400m per year. - Its in Google's interests to not have good Firefox add-ons. (For both Ads and Chrome's market share). Google's negotiator could easily added some incentive for Mozilla's management to set the focus somewhere else. In fact, given what Google's team is likely earning, they wouldn't be doing a good job if Firefox's mob…
This is just silly. Firefox on Android has had uBlock Origin, the world's most effective ad blocker, since day one. But sure, go invent conspiracies rather than do a little research.
That can just be an indication that the conspiracy failed as some internal people countered it by a hack.
I.e. having unlock origin available at launch might have been a conspiracy.
E.g. the yes men types tried to sabotage it, while the unsung heroes did it anyway.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is speculation based only on press releases but: - Google pays Mozilla more than 400m per year. - Its in Google's interests to not have good Firefox add-ons. (For both Ads and Chrome's market share). Google's negotiator could easily added some incentive for Mozilla's management to set the focus somewhere else. In fact, given what Google's team is likely earning, they wouldn't be doing a good job if Firefox's mob…
The idea that Google has some secret underhanded deal with Mozilla to sabotage Firefox comes up here repeatedly and makes no sense. If Google wanted to prevent ad blocking on Android it would be much simpler to just ban ad blockers from the Play Store outright. There is a much simpler potential explanation for such a product management decision. Suppose Mozilla determines that 90% (made-up number) of users want addon…
Why does Firefox still not ship with adblocking by default? Other browsers do, and Firefox touts itself as a privacy browser yet lacks this important defaut. Advanced users can install adblocking themselves, but having it on by default would draw in new novice users.
I already know the answer; it would have to whitelist Google or Google would stop paying Firefox to be the default search engine. And if it whitelisted Google, that would only confirm what people say about Firefox being a pet on Google's leash. All the denials of this are laughably unconvincing, people know how the money flows.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#194This is good. Now, all extensions marked by the developer as being compatible with Android are shown on AMO. (If you toggle to Desktop mode, you can actually install any other extension on AMO, too.) The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. FF for Android supported add-ons from the beginning. That's the best thing about Firefox for Android! They decided to rewrite the UI in 2020, and there were fair reasons…
Mozilla isn’t an independent entity and hasn’t been for some time now. Sorry, but if one company is responsible for 87% of your revenue and your CEO receives a $7 million salary, then they are a puppet and therefore so is the entity as a whole.
I won’t be surprised if at some point in the future we learn that Google had a discreet veto over any aspect of Mozilla’s software roadmap, as a condition of the money faucet continuing to flow.
Google is known to make underhanded deals (just Google “Epic v Google” for details); they provide the funding that allows Mozilla to exist; and a Firefox with a capable extension model is indeed a serious threat to Chrome’s marketability and Google’s strategic interests.
Given all that, it’s difficult to believe that a key differentiating feature was legitimately starved of resources for a decade.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like they intentionally under-provisioned you all to draw it out, which isn't surprising given their biggest source of funding is Google, and the last thing Google wants is ad/tracker blocking, privacy extensions, and, well, a major reason for people to set their default browser to 'not chrome'. Lord knows there's enough money floating around that place. What a shame - but thank you. Hopefully plugins come…
I am desperately looking for an extension that takes over godawful js video players and gives something standard. Some have click to pause, some forward backward, all don't have volume control.
Might not be exactly what you are looking for but I use an extenstion [0] to open videos in an external video player (mpv). That way the controls are consistend and playback does not depend on where I browse.
mpv uses youtube-dl (or yt-dlp) to fetch the stream URLs and that supports many sites.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/send-to-mpv-play...
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Importantly, during this entire multi-year gap, nearly all of them worked just fine but it was gated behind an AMO account for... I don't know what reason. If it was just an experience issue because like 5% failed weirdly or had bad performance but they couldn't validate them all: that's basically fine! Hide it behind an about:config flag! The AMO requirement was a privacy-invading piece of nonsense that had no busin…
Privacy-invading requirements that delay implementation of plugins that would enable plugins providing better privacy and ad-blocking functionality? Hmmmmmmm, now what major Mozilla sugar daddy would be interested in that /s
Why the sarcasm tag?
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Again, Mozilla had a long time to answer these questions (if they had a good answer). If you leave people to imagine things then don't be surprised if they don't follow your PR-sanitized version of events.
If mozilla cared about the open web they would immediately distance themselves from Google and reallocate funding from their CEO's family to things that actually matter for their mission.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate on the product management motivations? It seems to me projects like Iceraven demonstrated years ago that a great many extensions were usable without any changes. Why not just slap a "here there be dragons" warning on untested extensions and let users have at it? To be clear, I'm not asking you to justify decisions you didn't make, just to provide some visibility into the process if you can. Mozilla…
Probably fear that bad extensions would tank performance, tarnishing the reputation of the overall browser. Now that such reputation is more or less established (i.e. people use FF on Android without big problems, it's not considered particularly slow etc), they can dare a bit more.
afaik this is why android chrome never supported extensions.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is speculation based only on press releases but: - Google pays Mozilla more than 400m per year. - Its in Google's interests to not have good Firefox add-ons. (For both Ads and Chrome's market share). Google's negotiator could easily added some incentive for Mozilla's management to set the focus somewhere else. In fact, given what Google's team is likely earning, they wouldn't be doing a good job if Firefox's mob…
The idea that Google has some secret underhanded deal with Mozilla to sabotage Firefox comes up here repeatedly and makes no sense. If Google wanted to prevent ad blocking on Android it would be much simpler to just ban ad blockers from the Play Store outright. There is a much simpler potential explanation for such a product management decision. Suppose Mozilla determines that 90% (made-up number) of users want addon…
It's not unusual. MSFT funded apple mainly to not appear to be a monopoly.
Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
My follow-up question then is why treat mobile significantly differently from desktop? Stable desktop Firefox has about:config and access to horribly broken extensions. Perhaps some would argue that it should not.
I cannot speak for Mozilla, but just from my gut feeling: That probably got grandfathered in and since people are used to it for a "long time" no one would change it. But if Firefox was rereleased today I wouldn't bet on it being there. Expectations have changed.
> Expectations have changed.
Yes, people have come to accept shitty software. You'd think that software developed for the public good would try to be better though and at least retain the old standards for power user tools.