Firefox for iOS Now Available for Preview in New Zealand | Hacker News Reader

Firefox for iOS Now Available for Preview in New Zealand

blog.mozilla.org

85 pointsAaronn50 comments

The separation of "Firefox" (brand, UI, browser history, password sync, extensions, etc) from "Gecko" (an implementation of a rendering engine) seems like a good idea to me, even if it was forced by Apple.

Gecko stands for nothing; it's just code. Whereas the Mozilla / Firefox brand stands for things like privacy, security, etc. (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/)

The Firefox/Mozilla brand shouldn't be tied to Gecko or any other specific piece of code.

I agree, but they still need to deliver the other things that go with the brand: End-user control, privacy, and openness and freedom (as in speech).

I don't know much about Firefox for iOS: Does it live up to those expectations?

Maybe, maybe not. And the Firefox brand will live or die accordingly. The nice thing about Mozilla is every line of code is Open Source; even the server stuff.

That's my point, I'd rather that than have it depend on where Gecko can run.

End-user control, privacy, and openness and freedom (as in speech).

If they really wanted to support that it seems like a great opportunity to make a Gecko version of Firefox only available for jailbroken devices, and let their userbase do the rest.

But given the direction they have been heading in the past few years, it seems all their talk about "end-user control" is just clever doublespeak for Mozilla doing the controlling.

We have iOS platform support (in progress) in the main (gecko) tree now actually. If anyone is interested in putting a WKWebView compatible API on top of that, please fork the project and submit a patch. Open source! Hack. Mix. Burn! :-)

Here is the meta bug for Gecko on iOS: https://bugzil.la/1163827

with limited resources it seems difficult to release a polished product for such a small group of people...

If the settings page screenshot is anything to go by, it doesn't look like it offers much in the way of control or privacy (no cookie controls, for instance).

But I haven't used it yet, judging it on a screenshot is a little unfair...

First release. Let us know what kind of features are important to you.

I'd like feature parity w/ Firefox for desktops or Firefox for Android, but I have no idea how realistic that is. How realistic is it?

Also, can you implement the WebExtensions API? That would be a big boost, enabling all the features in FF add-ons.

Can you really separate those things? They relate directly to technical aspects of the implementation that are somewhat out of their control on iOS.

They could deliver FireFox today and Apple could change the rendering engine tomorrow and violate those principles and the FireFox team would have no control over it, other than to withdraw the app from the app store.

This is not about code, but about ability to compete.

First of all I'm a convinced Firefox user, I'm typing this in Firefox and I use Firefox on my Android as well and its absence has been one of my main gripes with the iPhone. I think this is great for us Firefox users. But browsers compete primarily in speed and supported open-standards. And even though I'm not one to fall often for the average Joe fallacy, I believe on average people don't give a shit about privacy, otherwise they wouldn't be using Windows or Google Search or Facebook. Of course, that doesn't mean companies or organizations don't have a responsibility to provide privacy or security, quite the contrary.

But if Firefox is just a shell that means (a) absolutely no extensions support, (b) in terms of security or privacy it will be as good or as bad as Safari Mobile is and (c) they won't be able to compete either on speed or on open standards and note that Apple is doing a shitty job in supporting new web standards lately.

They were actually right to be reluctant in supporting iOS, because the only value of this Firefox is providing Sync for us existing Firefox users. Which has been Google's strategy with Chrome as well. Not bad, but lets see it for what it is.

Speed and supported standards were once how browsers competed. Now, features like Sync and a handful of extensions are what bind me to Firefox.

Having Sync available on mobile, even if it doesn't use Gecko or Spidermonkey, is valuable.

Yes, Sync is valuable for me as well. But it will have no extensions either, as those aren't allowed by Apple's policies.

What kind of extensions would you like to use on iOS. Can you give some concrete examples of things (either existing or wishes) you would like to see?

I can mention the ones I'm using on my Firefox for Android.

The most important, without which mobile web would be unusable for me are: uBlock Origin (AdBlock Plus also available) and HTTPS Everywhere.

I would also use NoScript, to completely block Javascript on websites I don't trust, but unfortunately the version for Firefox Mobile is not submitted to addons.mozilla.org and I don't trust extensions that aren't submitted there. Instead I've been using Ghostery lately, not sure what to think of it.

I was also using the LastPass Password Manager, until I migrated to my own solution. I also have Pocket Hits and the Wikipedia Panel for suggesting stuff to read. Because I'm a developer, many times I open JSON links from emails and for formatting, the JSONovich extension seems to work on my Android Firefox.

I enjoy the Pocket integration in Firefox, as well as reader mode (which I think is powered by Pocket?).

I also have an extension that allows me to mimic other user agents (useful for some sites to immitate an iPhone on Android). Since Firefox comes with "Request desktop site" by default though, this one is less important.

Other than that: Greasemonkey is very useful to me, as I have a bunch of scripts that minimize page layouts of sites I frequent.

Firefox's reader mode is JS library that parses the page. It does not share any code with Pocket. https://github.com/mozilla/readability

> Gecko stands for nothing; it's just code.

Gecko is an implementation of a rendering engine with specific goals, too.

Gecko has a stand on web features. Having market share means more control on new features (especially controversial ones like DRM) that get introduced to the Web. This doesn't help in that direction, which keeps the mobile web controlled largely by Apple&Google.

Here is a link to the repository, for those interested :

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios

It is programmed using Swift.

We love contributions. Go fork and make a pull request! <3

Thanks!

Let's see if I get it compiled and can test it right now without waiting for the offical release. :> Wohooo~ Open-Source!

As a developer, you can absolutely grab the code and run the app on your own own devices. However, there are a few manual steps that you need to take before this works.

If you want to build the v1.0 app with Xcode 6, then use these instructions: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/blob/v1.0/BUILDING.md

If you want to build the (upcoming) v1.1 app with Xcode 7 beta, then use these instructions: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/blob/master/BUILDING....

Happy to help here or in a new thread if you get stuck in the process. We have tried to make it as simple as possible but due to some code signing complexity it can't be a 'download & run on device' kind of thing unfortunately.

I'm assuming this is essentially a wrapper around WKWebView, as per Apple's rules?

Yup!

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios

http://www.myce.com/news/mozilla-working-on-firefox-for-ios-...

firefox: chrome for safari.

and in being so, what exactly is the point?

I don't use iOS, but if I did, I'd use it just for multiple search engines, awesomebar history search, and history/bookmark/tab sync.

but... you get all of that with Mobile Safari..?

What he meant is that if you are a Firefox user in other platforms, you can now keep everything synced including iOS devices. It is mainly for Firefox and ex-users who left Firefox because of lack of iOS option.

But you get the ability to sync with your bookmarks, passwords, etc on platforms that run the real Firefox web browser because they don't lock you in to a single rendering engine like Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, etc.

It's not clear to me why there's no link on the blog post (at least, I couldn't find one); but here's the product page, grabbed from one of the screen shots: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ios .

That link is to signup to be notified... and to subscribe to a newsletter... and to give Moz your data. Just FYI.

Anyone have a DDL?

I had the impression that they are intentionally rolling it out by region (the title and link mention that they're starting in New Zealand—unless that's a version name for Firefox?), so I assumed that the link went to a download page if you were in the correct region. If I haven't completely misunderstood, then maybe a New Zealander can comment.

They've limited downloads to NZ App Store accounts to prevent everyone from downloading it at once. This lets them do a wider beta test, and fix bugs so when they release it globally everyone else's first experience will be positive. It's common on iOS for games to do this too.

Does this allow for installation of add-ons?

What kind of add-ons would you like to see?

Presumably any add-on supported by Firefox on Android.

erm.. ublock :)

uBlock too. Or maybe it would be possible to use the upcoming iOS 9 content-blocking extensions [1], or is it a feature/api usable to Safari only?

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...

The newer web view (WKWebView) will support content blocking extensions across all apps. The older web view (UIWebView) will not support content blocking at all

Lastpass, Privacy Badger, Disconnect and uBlock

I imagine that would be in violation of Apple's rules around apps executing 'arbitrary' code from 3rd party sources.

Hmm, well firefox could vet them so that they're not 3rd party and the user could permit to inject 'add ons' into every web page loaded. You are allowed to upload html/javascript dynamically (just not shared objects, jvm byte code, etc)

that's such a silly restriction here. Nearly every webpage a user goes to breaks that rule.

That depends on whether the code is executed using Apple's JavaScriptCore framework, or your own interpreter.

It's a stupid rule, but you can execute arbitrary code if you create a JSContext and load it in your app.

I'm not very familiar with how web browsers are built, but would it be possible to write a HTML / CSS renderer on iOS that utilised JavaScriptCore for code execution?

This would abide by Apple's policies given that arbitrary code is still executed through their JavaScript engine, but would give much more flexibility on the rendering side.

It would be more bespoke than simply wrapping a WKWebView.

Is this a feasible path for a browser like Firefox on iOS?

does it at least come with its own video player for vp8/vp9 videos?

What’s the setup for ‘default browser’ like on iOS now? I guess you can add Firefox as a target for ‘Send to’ sheets but presumably normal links in other apps will still open Safari?

If you guys want to download it you just need an account with an address in New Zealand.

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