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Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

blog.nori.moe

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Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is odd in this regard, though. Chrome tried to make it so you could only add extensions while signed in to Google, but have since abandoned that policy and currently permits side loading, while Firefox doesn't allow any extensions that haven't been signed by their certificate which means that if they forget to renew that certificate you can't use any extensions...which actually happened. It's bizarre to me th…

On desktop, Firefox Developer Edition, Nightly, and ESR still allow unsigned extensions after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config.[1] Firefox for Android doesn't allow sideloading,[2] and only has an advantage because Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions at all in its official relases. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ [2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/…

>On desktop, Firefox Developer Edition, Nightly, and ESR still allow unsigned extensions after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config.

I'm aware, and that's great, but since those come with their own caveats, yabuts, exceptions, eccentricities and bugs, I don't consider any of those useful solutions to that problem for me.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#72
I'm so happy with the redesign.

All UX improvements and no complains for me. Also I noticed how it gets better. And with Ublock origin installed it rocks.

I'm not a power user on mobile, hope more use cases like me exists and adopt Firefox, it will not be the nightmarish future that the OP mention.

I think that the major challenge for Firefox is advertising, how to be known and get installs, the product is good, but Google is so big and powerful that takes all the air and suffocates the little fox. Is like those avengers movies taking all the attention of the culture and those challenging and thought provoking movies with five people in the theater and two reviews in YouTube with fifty views. Sad.

Sent from Firefox Android.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#73
post #2

I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but…

I'm happier with android firefox than I would be with any other mobile browser, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have issues. The biggest one for me is that bookmarks are almost unusable. You can't search them, you can't see or edit tags, and you can't re-order them.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#74
post #17

It can't print. It doesn't support printing. If I need to print (to paper or PDF) something like an order receipt for an insurance claim or a shipping label to return something, I need to use another browser. I still use it, but this annoys me ~weekly.

why not screenshot or save it? It's not like the content is different.

Sometimes you must send a proper PDF. And saving a page to PDF (or "printing") is a basic feature of a browser. They shouldn't release a mobile browser without that.

Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#75
As a long time Firefox user, from when it was still called Phoenix, I reluctantly and recently switched to Opera on Android. Firefox crashed several times a day, text input and rendering was messed up, no page refresh, limited extensions ... The list went on.

It's still my main desktop browser which I love. Other than sharing the name Firefox, the Android version has nothing else in common with it sadly.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#76
post #2

I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but…

I fully agree with you, but I have to admit I am not a mobile "power user", my usage pales in comparison to desktop usage.

But my only complaint is what I'd call a bug that I haven't reported. I have a custom search engine on the desktop, where I for example can rewrite e.g. "x leo whatever" to "search for whatever on leo.org", and I can call this via a literal https://example.org/leo%20whatever - but I can't get firefox to accept that I enter a url with a space, it will never open my own "https://example.org" with the params, it will always search google for "example.org" even if I prefix it with https:// - this is maddening and maybe I just haven't found the switch to remove this stupid omnibar trend. Oh, and the url bar at the bottom is weird, but I'm not even complaining.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#79
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not screenshot or save it? It's not like the content is different.

Sometimes you must send a proper PDF. And saving a page to PDF (or "printing") is a basic feature of a browser. They shouldn't release a mobile browser without that. Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.

>Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.

Cause a pdf is much more professional just because you open it in Adobe vs your photo gallery...

This is bar none some of the most business oriented pretentiousness I've ever read on here. There is nothing wrong with image files and screenshots. It's just a file format. The fact that you save one as a pdf doesn't change the fact that, again, the content is the absolute same. Anybody who is that anal about how they receive a file that does the exact same thing is completely out of touch. In my experience, only old people say the things you're saying cause they don't know how to work with various files.

Re: Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

#80
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you must send a proper PDF. And saving a page to PDF (or "printing") is a basic feature of a browser. They shouldn't release a mobile browser without that. Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.

>Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing. Cause a pdf is much more professional just because you open it in Adobe vs your photo gallery... This is bar none some of the most business oriented pretentiousness I've ever read on here. There is nothing wrong with image files and screenshots. It's just a file format. The fact that you save one as a pdf doesn't change the fact th…

Screenshots doesn't scale properly and destroy all information about text (not that PDF stores text properly, but at least PDF readers succeed with various tricks to recover it).
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