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Comment by elcapitan | Hacker News Reader

I switched to Firefox when Quantom came out and never looked back.

On Android I use Opera, which has a built-in adblocker. I would love to use Firefox as well, but on Android it just seems very sluggish. Especially the scrolling is kind of cruel.

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I keep seeing people complain about scrolling on Firefox on Android, I've been using it for several years on Nexus 5X, I just don't see what people are talking about. Whatever you're experiencing, is it really bad enough to justify using a proprietary browser? Do you have any clue what the browser or that built-in ad blocker are really doing? Where do they get their block list? Does it block trackers? Do they collect data about you directly? I don't have time to dig into it now, but I remember hearing some kind of story about them acting as a proxy to accomplish the ad blocking, if true, that's a horrible trade-off.

I think condescending lectures like that are what's really going to convince people.

"Doesn't happen to me, but you should deal with it."

Really inspiring stuff!

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be condescending. I just get fired up when I see someone taking steps to keep control of their machine but then falling into traps intentionally set by companies like Opera.

Check out the upcoming revamped mobile Firefox on Android (Fenix) and you might feel quite differently: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix

You have to opt into some beta groups first to use it: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/16/mozilla-firefox-preview-ne...

It's located here on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...

Does it have extension support yet?

When did you try it? The full release of Quantum on mobile lagged desktop by several releases.

I try again from time to time - just did, it definitely got a little better with the scrolling, but it seems like Opera is still ahead quite a bit. That's for some very specific acitivies like quickly scrolling through a twitter feed with the profile pics and embedded images loading just a bit slower on FF, which is annoying. Maybe not the typical experience on average web sites. I found however that while scrolling on news sites that are js-heavy it also jumps and stops quite a bit (I guess when new assets are loaded and it live-updates during the scrolling). Just something I never have on Opera, which is butter-smooth.

Yeah, Twitter is buggy on Firefox mobile. It's the only site I've noticed that on, so I assume it's Twitter's fault, not Firefox. Just another way for them to force you into their app.

Well it's only buggy on Firefox, so not sure it is their fault. Probably it's just where you can see the inferior asset loading strategy show up more, but I've seen similar issues with other asset/scroll-heavy sites as well (like news sites).

Really hoping WebRender, and eventually Pathfinder make a big difference here.

https://github.com/servo/webrender

https://github.com/pcwalton/pathfinder

You can already enable WebRender on Firefox Preview (Fenix). It renders pages allot faster but scrolling feels more sluggish.

Thanks, I'll check that out!

Update: Couldn't find it on the Play Store

In my experience Firefox for Android is faster than Chrome.

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