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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

#371

Post by celsoazevedo »

dekatron wrote: post #37
kome wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ublock origin already works on firefox on mobile (android). it's already supported, it's already available. and it's awesome. i don't know why and how people still use chrome on mobile. it is an awful web experience.

It is an awful experience indeed. I switched to Kiwi browser when Chrome forced tab groups on everyone with no option to disable it. Kiwi has add-on support and removes many of Chrome's annoying aspects. I could never go back to browsing on mobile without add-ons like uBlock Origin and Sticky Ducky.

Isn't Kiwi really outdated though?

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

#372

Post by Nextgrid »

mrguyorama wrote: post #348
Nextgrid wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ad telling you to install Chrome is one thing. I don't believe any Google nor Chrome ad had self-righteous BS about privacy, "improving the web" or similar like Mozilla constantly does. Also, ads on websites are one thing. Ads/nags within the browser itself (which I'm already using) are another. I'm pretty sure Google doesn't bother advertising Chrome to users who already use Chrome.

Okay, then how should mozilla fund firefox? They don't have billions upon billions in advertising revenue to backstop a project that exists only to exert more influence and control of the internet. God damn, people act like money grows on trees when it comes to firefox. I don't care if they flub an attempt at advertising, like the Mr Robot nonsense, because mozilla isn't actively pushing "standards" meant to prevent…

> Okay, then how should mozilla fund firefox?

Virtue-signalling and wasting people's times does not contribute to funding either. I'd disagree with but understand actual ads, or promotions for Pocket/VPN/etc... but wasting users' time on virtue-signalling or "Colorways"?

(look at my other comments for actual long-term funding ideas for Firefox)

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

#373

Post by herewulf »

xrd wrote: post #237

I love this. It has been possible to use extensions on Android, but keeping them loaded on Android after OOM reclamation has been a pain up until now. I wrote up a hack where I push Android Firefox extensions over Wireguard and OCR. https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu... Hopefully this is the end of the need for this kind of hack. I love Firefox on all my platforms and having extensions on An…

Okay, that's an impressive hack! One that should be totally unnecessary, but wow, nice job working around limitations!

By the way, seems like you could use inotify to detect new screenshots rather than polling the Syncthing API. Probably not enough of a functional difference to change something that is already working though.

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

#374

Post by lapcat »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #353
donatj wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari don't sorry(sic) add-ons at all iOS and iPadOS Safari has supported extensions for a while now. https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/get-extensions-ipada7ca... https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/get-extensions-iphab0...

Only 11 years after the competition! Courage

This comment makes no sense. The competition is mobile Chrome, which has no extensions, and mobile Firefox, which has only a limited number of chosen extensions. Literally from the linked article:

> For the past few years Firefox for Android officially supported a small subset of extensions

If you're referring to desktop, on the other hand, Safari has had extensions since 2010.

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

#375

Post by iakov »

mrguyorama wrote: post #317
iakov wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook whataboutism. Google is objectively evil, what that has to do with Firefox, my "user agent", showing me Disney ads?

When you choose to continue using the browser from the "objectively evil" company, helping them continue to push those objectively evil goals, because "firefox showed me A ad", because for some reason that is more screwing over your users than literally fucking the open internet.... It's astounding how far people bend over backwards just to not change browsers for the good of the internet as a whole. "Yeah I could st…

I choose to use Firefox, for more than a decade. It does not mean I am a happy user, and it does not mean that I can't complain about Mozilla being shittifed year after year.

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

#377

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dralley wrote: post #286
captainmuon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Firefox's addon policy is one of the reasons they lost market share. Moving from oldscool extensions to webextensions they lost their unique selling point. Firefox was the only browser that you could really theme. It's adblock existed earlier and was better than others (and is soon again due to Manifest v3?). Especially for non-tech-savvy people, who don't know what a browser is, if they need a certain featur…

No offense but you could only come to this conclusion if you've looked at literally zero data and are just shooting from your hip based on sporadic HN conversations. Their market share was dropping for a long time before, and it was dropping for a long time after. And to the extent that switching addon models helped them improve performance during their big marketing push in 2017, it probably got them a few users bac…

I'd be extremely careful about using Firefox's analytics data. I can't find Firefox's telemetry coverage numbers (they gather the info, so it's probably out there somewhere), but it's not at all unreasonable to suspect that a lot of the "power user"-type interactions are correlated with an unwillingness to enable telemetry. Couple that with the fact that Firefox, as a relatively niche browser these days, has a selection bias for more techy-savvy users, and you have a recipe for extremely misleading statistics.

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

#378

Post by cpeterso »

autoexec wrote: post #107
Dalewyn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's popular to hate on Firefox, I don't hate Firefox, I hate Mozilla.

I'll always love Mozilla, or at least some fictional idealized version of it, so I'm stuck being increasingly disappointed in Mozilla while holding out for the times they do something right. Giving add-on support back to firefox users is a good thing so here's hoping it won't be done in a way that disappoints me. I hope they bring back about:config next.

Which settings would you like to change in about:config?

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

#380

Post by xrd »

herewulf wrote: post #373
xrd wrote: post #237

I love this. It has been possible to use extensions on Android, but keeping them loaded on Android after OOM reclamation has been a pain up until now. I wrote up a hack where I push Android Firefox extensions over Wireguard and OCR. https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu... Hopefully this is the end of the need for this kind of hack. I love Firefox on all my platforms and having extensions on An…

Okay, that's an impressive hack! One that should be totally unnecessary, but wow, nice job working around limitations! By the way, seems like you could use inotify to detect new screenshots rather than polling the Syncthing API. Probably not enough of a functional difference to change something that is already working though.

Thanks for reading through that long convoluted post! I appreciate the comment.

Syncthing was necessary to get the files onto my desktop machine, and I don't know how I could have automatically pushed from my android phone otherwise. Syncthing was so ridiculously easy to use, I basically just started a docker container, and then added the backend on my Android device. Zero firewall configuration. So simple. I suppose I could have easily used inotify, but either way I needed a script to launch the OCR, and I don't really see a big value in using a filesystem watch over an API when the syncthing api is very simple.

Cheers!

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