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Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#271

Post by driscoll42 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #216
godelski wrote: post #58

There's a lot of hate any Firefox and the "blessed apps." But come on, chrome and Safari don't sorry add-ons at all! I know there are other apps that support add-ons but the fact is that Firefox is __the only__ "mainstream" browser that does this (quotes because it's 0.25% in the US, as the 4th most popular, behind Samsung fucking Internet). It's popular to hate on Firefox, but this is the nerdiest of nerd issues and…

I see people hating on Mozilla, not Firefox. They absolutely deserve it too. They got one billion dollars and they're reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead. One would think they'd try to fix the web by making Firefox the dominant browser.

Can someone elaborate why Mozilla gets hate? I don't pay much attention to that and just use Firefox.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#272

Post by donkeybeer »

jamienicol wrote: post #252
donkeybeer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their constant user hostile redesigns. Suddenly tabs are floating separately from their pages. And now if a page is playing audio you can no longer see its favicon, etc Speaking of mobile firefox where did Save as PDF vanish and why? and so on edit: I have been told in a reply the save pdf feature still exists but has been changed for no reason to a different location in the menu

you can save as PDF from the "share" menu

Ah I see so it went into the "useless UI shifting" bucket rather than the "deleted features" bin. But I am happy to know it still exists thankfully.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#273

Post by PurpleRamen »

godelski wrote: post #153
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- They lost focus with just about every other project other than Firefox & Thunderbird which were the actual products I donated money for - They are (recently) very top heavy for a non-profit foundation and are spending non-negligible amounts of money on C-level and execs - Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet - (Personally) their recent trends of UX with 'dummyfication'…

Have you considered that they are doing some of these things to survive? That Chrome nearly killed them? Literally the strings attached from Alphabet are that they give you Google as a default search engine. Default, as in... you can change it... trivially. This isn't like they are installing a keylogger into your browser and using it to learn about your behaviors. It isn't like they are making their browser the defa…

> Have you considered that they are doing some of these things to survive?

How many Managers does one need to negotiate prices for VPN and Pocket? So far, the excessive management does not make the impression to be very valuable for making money, or even let Mozilla survive one day longer.

Of course do they need to make money, but at no point so far did they make the impression that they made any serious attempt beyond some lip service. Well, except VPN, which is just a resale of a popular service, with a natural chemistry for their philosophy.. And I'm not sure how much money their VPN really made so far.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#274

Post by kibwen »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #236
mgbmtl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox lost power-users because 1) performance was bad 2) Chrome does very aggressive marketing and various Google sites break randomly on Firefox. And performance was very often bad because of extensions. Perhaps anecdotal, but whenever I ask a Chrome user why they don't use Firefox, that's the main two reasons they cite. I do ask often though. What "certain features" do non-tech-savvy people need? I know lots of d…

Firefox randomly broke all my extensions and workflows one day in the pursuit of some obscure technical goal, via forced update that I couldn’t roll back. I asked about it, and they banned me from their subreddit, so I deleted that stupid browser and never went back

> some obscure technical goal

A multi-process architecture is not an obscure technical goal, it's an essential for modern browsing, and something that Chrome had from the outset, and is a large part of the reason that Chrome originally clobbered Firefox in both security and perceived speed.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#275

Post by dralley »

snird wrote: post #270

Firefox for Android is lacking on so many basic features, it's amazing that they prioritize anything else before fixing those. E.g deep links. Which is very, very basic feature for mobile. Firefox on Android is unusable without it - and it seems like no one prioritize this, so excuse me for not being excited by any other feature. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54653641/app-links-not-w... https://github.com/mozil…

The bugzilla issue you linked was fixed 3 months ago. So it would seem that they did, in fact, prioritize it.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#276

Post by Nextgrid »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #143
Zuiii wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one (contrary to their claims, most extensions worked fine). I would be really interested in reading the rationale behind their decision. The real one.

Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share. We have extensions on desktop and they are still being squeezed out there. And judging by some other comments here there is apparently a fork of Firefox for Android that allows extensions - which even I had never heard of until now.

> Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share

It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors.

If Firefox doesn't actually bring anything tangible to the table, why would people pick it over whatever they're currently using (which is likely to be Chrome)?

The average user doesn't hate Google like some people do, so a purely ideological argument of "it isn't Chrome" won't work (and didn't work as its marketshare kept declining). Users need tangible, non-niche features to switch.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#277

Post by riskable »

oracle2025 wrote: post #195

Looking forward to finally have the i-dont-care-about-cookies add-on for my phone.

You can already do this with uBlock Origin: Just go into the (uBlock Origin) settings and enable the AdGuard and EasyList stuff under "Annoyances".

"AdGuard – Cookie Notices" and "EasyList – Cookie Notices"

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#278

Post by mardifoufs »

Springtime wrote: post #190
_njyk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The permissions are the Chromium ones. There is literally no ads nor external SDK or ad-tech or whatever you are referring to (before there was AdMob, but it didn't make much money anyway). https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.kiwibro... The way Kiwi makes money is by partnering with Bing / Yahoo. You launch the browser, it starts with Bing or Yahoo (depending on your country), and... that's it. Bing…

I've never tried Kiwi Browser but had similarly come across it while searching. The dev themselves refers to them as ads[1] (2022), though prior to being accepted properly into Bing's referral program Kiwi redirected all search queries through their own servers[2][3] (2021) (the original Kiwi repo's issues tab has been deleted since). Tbf the dev always sounds reasonable in their responses but was a little off-puttin…

Fyi, I'm pretty sure you're talking to kiwi's main dev :)

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#279

Post by donkeybeer »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #133
veave wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Firefox's publicity is based on the fact that they are "on your side". That means that they are held to a much higher standard. Pretending to be on the side of the user and then screwing users up over and over seems like wanting their cake and eating it too? It's funny because, you know, I expect chrome to screw me over while I expect firefox not to screw me over but chrome has screwed me over fewer times tha…

I've yet to notice any event where firefox "screw users over" that was not vastly overblown, especially compared to the competitors. People tend to just judge Mozilla way more harshly. It's very unfair: they do good, and we ask even more of them.

This opinion might differ from others but my main complaint is with their useless and sometimes hostile UI changes rather than the occasional ad for other Mozilla services. For example recently the change to tabs floating disconnected from the pages, which I had to use userchrome to override. Next problem I am trying to tackle right now is favicon being hidden when the audio playing icon is on a tab that seems to have been done in a recent update.

Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release

#280

Post by dralley »

timtom39 wrote: post #263
afavour wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They got one billion dollars and they're reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead Where have they announced that they're focusing on "agenda pushing"? Mozilla's "agenda" feels like a very tiny part of what they do, it's just that people talk about it endlessly.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/ Just read their blog. Latest three: - EU's AI Act - Fakespot school supplies? - Making trustworthy chatbots to support women plagued by violence and abuse The first one might make sense? Second one WTF? And third is disgusting (I know people effected and the LAST thing they want is some chatbot). None of these are related strongly to Firefox. I quit donating to them years ago after it was…

The third one isn't something they're doing, it's the winner they selected in a "responsible AI challenge" competition.
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