Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021) • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by sbernecchia » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

ropeladder wrote: post #17

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

"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.

yes, you're probably right, they have no intention of continuing. I think mozilla is not really committed to firefox on android. after all they have a minuscule market share on mobile, almost not existent. they probably think that most users will install just an adblocker, so they don't want to "waste" money enabling other extensions. so sad.

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

#22

Post by TrianguloY » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

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 fixed, but basically they killed Firefox on android.

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

#23

Post by sbcd » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

mmmrk wrote: post #5

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.

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.

>Speak for yourself

Haha. Firefox went from above 20% marketshare in its early days, to below 4% today, and the number is continually dwindling. At this point it's the few defensive, aggressive fanboys left who are "speaking for themselves". We'll probably still hear this kind of comment from the likes of you even when usage drops below 0.01%.

And I don't want to hear the "it's chrome's fault" again from the FF brigade, IE had more marketshare in the IE vs Netscape days than Chrome has today, and it didn't stop Firefox from eating at IE's shares.

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

#24

Post by causi » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

For those who think Mozilla did a good job with Firefox for Android, how do you justify the fact there's still no way to change the User Agent without swapping to Beta? Sure, there's a "desktop mode" button, but not only does that break and force you to reset the browser if you hit the back button but it doesn't actually change the user agent. Sites that bar mobile devices can still tell you're on mobile and stop you from seeing the page.

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

#25

Post by thinkingemote » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

I was writing an extension for Firefox mobile to improve HN a bit to make it work nicer on mobile. Then whoops Firefox no longer does extensions really. *

Such a wasted missed opportunity for the mobile web. FF could and still might be able to recognise the utility.

(* Yes I can install it via developer mode I think, but it was for you too)

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

#26

Post by sbernecchia » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #9

I use bypass-paywalls-clean addon and I'm forced to use Firefox Nightly and deal with all its weird bugs (it's nightly so that's expected) because of this. Things have improved quite a bit though. They finally fixed that stupid scrolling bug that cuts off a part of the page below the nav bar. That finally got me off Kiwi Browser. Eagerly waiting for all add-ons to be allowed in stable.

you can use fennec from f-droid too. it's compiled from stable, not nightly.

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

#27

Post by causi » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #9

I use bypass-paywalls-clean addon and I'm forced to use Firefox Nightly and deal with all its weird bugs (it's nightly so that's expected) because of this. Things have improved quite a bit though. They finally fixed that stupid scrolling bug that cuts off a part of the page below the nav bar. That finally got me off Kiwi Browser. Eagerly waiting for all add-ons to be allowed in stable.

They haven't added any extensions in a year and a half. It's not going to happen.

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

#28

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

TrianguloY wrote: post #22

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.

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

#29

Post by dblohm7 » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

(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 understandably wanted to restrict the selection of addons only to those that exercised APIs that we knew were ready for production. Since that time, however, the WebExtensions work was essentially completed -- since that time it has entirely been a business decision to continue restricting the selection of addons available.

I didn't personally work on the WebExtensions bits, but I know that those who did were frustrated that their work to finish fleshing out full extension support was being held back for seemingly arbitrary reasons (that were never explained to engineering).

[1] https://geckoview.dev

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

#30

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

mmmrk wrote: post #5

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.

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.

If you compare the marketshare of firefox a decade ago to the marketshare of firefox now, you can determine pretty precisely how extreme a minority you are in that.