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Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#4

Post by capitainenemo »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #3
briffle wrote: post #2

I wish they would push hard for proper support in IOS for running extensions (or their own engine, etc)

I think it's still against Apple's TOS, stating that every web browser must be based on WebKit.

Indeed. Mozilla can complain about it (and they have) but blaming them for the situation serves little purpose. It's entirely in Apple's court.

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#8

Post by capitainenemo »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #7

We've had lots of news about this coming for months, but with Mozilla's quite low market share, and the share of those users that use extensions - who's really caring about this other than some power users?

Well, you might be right that it is power users, but I know that extensions and greater extension freedom are one of the things that is the draw that keeps the remaining Mozilla Firefox users (like me) loyal. Basically I'm arguing power users are a disproportionate percentage of the remaining Mozilla Firefox user base, which is why things like supporting tracking protection and privacy measures also makes sense for them to focus on, even if the majority of people online might not care about this.

So, I'm glad they are expanding the extensions available. I just hope that this isn't tied to creating an account still. [EDIT] I was overjoyed to see that I was able to add an extension without creating an account. Yay!

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#9

Post by mod50ack »

This is good. Now, all extensions marked by the developer as being compatible with Android are shown on AMO. (If you toggle to Desktop mode, you can actually install any other extension on AMO, too.)

The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. FF for Android supported add-ons from the beginning. That's the best thing about Firefox for Android! They decided to rewrite the UI in 2020, and there were fair reasons to do that. Obviously this required some reimplementation time for extension support.

But they then launched the rewrite of FF for Android with extension support... but hidden. Only a small set of recommended extensions were enabled, and a few were drip-fed over time (that is, added to the list). Thankfully, this included the single most important extension, uBlock Origin, from the very beginning. (The lack of uBO why Chrome for Android is borderline unusable for me!)

But from almost the very beginning, we've also had the ability to activate custom extension collections in Nightly (and in Fennec F-Droid, which is a rebuild of stable Firefox). The vast majority of extensions worked fine for... well, years now.

So why in the world was this delayed the whole time?

Re: Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android

#10

Post by temp0826 »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #3
briffle wrote: post #2

I wish they would push hard for proper support in IOS for running extensions (or their own engine, etc)

I think it's still against Apple's TOS, stating that every web browser must be based on WebKit.

Why can Kagi's Orion browser support extensions on iOS? I recently switched from Firefox because lack of uBO caused huge beef for me and have zero regrets. I'm not paying for Kagi's search service (happy enough with DDG for the majority of my searches), but I can really appreciate their business model and mission (they seem genuine afaict).
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