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

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

#31

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

doix wrote: post #13

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.

Yeah, when they did the big performance rewrite(quantum?) and killed pentadactyl (vim mode), I was really upset. I remember using Firefox 52-esr for as long as I could to keep my workflow the same. In my mind, that was peak Firefox. Yes performance wasn't great, but I didn't care. It was good enough and I mostly browsed with JavaScript disabled. The new vim mode plugins can't compete with the old plugins because they…

The really galling thing is they lied right to our damn faces about how "the new faster systems breaks the old add-on system" while they were still using XUL behind the scenes. In fact an HN reader compiled versions of Firefox 57 and above with user-installed XUL enabled and they work perfectly well.

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

#32

Post by mikae1 » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

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

Last time I used Iceraven many, but far from all, extensions were whitelisted.

What's worse, bookmarklets were as broken in Iceraven as in Firefox. I never though it would happen (I've been an extremely loyal Firefox user), but I had to switch to Kiwi.

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

#33

Post by kekebo » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #29

(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 understan…

That's sad to hear, thanks for the perspective.

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

#34

Post by jonkoops » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #29

(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 understan…

This pretty much feels to me what is happening to Mozilla as an organization from an outsider perspective. Engineering is no longer as important as the evangelism and management is making strange decisions that lack focus on what the target audience really is.

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

#35

Post by mrandish » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

sbernecchia wrote: post #20

also fennec from f-droid is able to use custom extensions (and also about:config) it is compiled from firefox stable, with minimal changes, and mozilla telemetry disabled. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/

Yep, Fennec has been my solution to Mozilla abandoning FF on Android.

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

#36

Post by CorrectHorseBat » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #30

mmmrk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As if that has anything to do with it, Chrome is even worse in that regard and it's market share has only grown.

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

#37

Post by aceazzameen » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:35 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 gripe is Fenix UI animations are slower than Fennec. It makes the newer version slower and feel less responsive.

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

#38

Post by contravariant » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

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

There is in fact a way to plug in your own whitelist if you use Firefox Nightly [1]. It's a bit of a hassle though, and it's so obscure that I'm fairly sure almost nobody is aware of it.

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

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

#39

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

jonkoops wrote: post #34

dblohm7 wrote: post #29

(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 understan…

This pretty much feels to me what is happening to Mozilla as an organization from an outsider perspective. Engineering is no longer as important as the evangelism and management is making strange decisions that lack focus on what the target audience really is.

The evangelism is even bad. It was more coherent and convincing back when the browser was better.

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

#40

Post by Pxtl » Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

After dealing with performance, janky scrolling, and crashing in FF and dealing with weird UI bugs in Edge (keyboard overlaps page instead of resizing page), I've sadly had to return to Chrome on my phone.