Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does.
(uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)
(uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)
It's not the same thing, but the built-in tracking protection incidentally blocks a portion of ads.
There's not much solid or explicit info in it, but it does seem to be planned eventually.
I'll be happy to use their other browsers (mainly, Firefox Focus, my default browser) until this one gets more polished, but the moment this one becomes a bit more stable and adds a few more features (adblock support is certainly on top of that list) will be the moment when I not just switch over, but delete every other browser I have installed on my phone. I can't believe a browser (any browser) makes me feel excited in 2019, but this one does.
Lacking a port I would be interested in a solid, maintained Firefox-without-the-GUI base so people could port it somewhat easily.
It isn't even clear that they're not going to replace Android Firefox with Fenix before getting extensions working.
As far I know this issue is the most recent source of information: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574
It says «We are currently finalizing the transition plan».
Even if they don't have the entire transition planned out, I think it was important for Mozilla to communicate their Android dev focus was gonna shift to GeckoView, from existing apps, to allow external devs, and customers to have a better plan, even if they don't have the add on strategy and timeline fully fleshed out.
The alternative is waiting a few months to know any of this was happening.
Focus has already shifted for quite some time, though - the current Firefox for Android ("Fennec") code base has already been in maintenance mode since the end of 2017, i.e. over 1½ years, including a few months at the start of 2018 were almost nobody was regularly working on it at all other than watching Bugzilla for any immediate priority bugs and reacting to those in case any happened.
Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.
(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)
I am sorry but tracking protection on mozilla as it is now (only enabled by default on private windows, and hapening with no user knowledge/information/learning oportunities) is a lame clutch.
Outside of that I'm sure turning ad blocking on by default would break several sites.
Also publicly, they've said that ads are an integral part of the web.
What's the difference of shipping a feature off, and shipping with support for an extension (on both firefox and Google's chrome store sites!) that can be installed? At this point we are just discussing semantics. Install vs Turn on.
I wish they'd focus more on getting the UX of containers up to snuff. They are almost there, but still far enough away to make addons like Multi-Account Containers (MAC) something I cannot recommend to my parents.
Here is what I mean: Suppose I want to keep my use of example.com separate in it's own Example container. How do I do that?
1) Click the MAC icon in the toolbar, then click the "+" button.
2) Enter 'Example', pick an icon or color, then click okay.
3) Open a new Example container.
4) Navigate to example.com in the Example container
5) Click the MAC icon in the toolbar, then check "Always open in Example"
6) Close the tab.
7) Open a new tab, and browse to example.com
8) Click "Remember my decision"
9) Click "Open in Example container"
This is nuts. I can't recommend this workflow to anybody.
Anyone remember when Firefox extensions broke recently? I thought it was a rather horrible experience.
If the new Firefox Preview can natively block advertisements, whitelist sites, disable third party cookies, prevent and hide social trackers, block anti-ad-blockers, etc. etc. then I agree that extensions are kind of useless, and I understand Mozilla's point.
However, I see the lack of extension support detrimental to my freedoms as a user, since it means I no longer can control what the software hides for me, nor what it broadcasts about me to the abyss of waste that is the advertising industry; I will have to trust the browser, and the lack of extension support is a rather untrustworthy property to begin with.
Isn't it strange that the big flash announcement comes before MVP?
advertising is an abomination that destroys the utility of the internet
and so there's no fair comparison.
I hope they add support for addons otherwise there isn't much use for it at least to me.
With that said, what sites are you visiting? It could be that I simply don't visit sites with any ads, but I gave a few of my daily sites a spin in Firefox Preview and didn't notice any ads.
Winning their userbase back is the only way to win back the leverage they once had...
When you install Firefox Preview, tracking protection is enabled by default. This is recently true for Firefox Desktop as well.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/when-it-comes-to-pr...
This post below by our CEO explains how we're thinking about the issue broadly. Your privacy and agency are definitely front and center.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/the-web-the-world-n...
(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)
I understand that it's a testing release, but they stand to lose out on many testers and users. While I am perfectly willing to be a guinea pig and use this as my daily driver, I am passionately unwilling to browse with ads (especially on a mobile device where data is more expensive).
I am likely part of the vast majority of potential testers/users. There probably won't be a "hey, we support plugins/blocking now" announcement and, even if there will be, it probably won't be as visible as this announcement.
It doesn't block ads. It blocks trackers that sometimes happen to be ads too. But when it comes to ad blocking, it's no better than Chrome.
As a tester of Firefox Preview: WebRender has been a godsend for mobile browsing -- I have yet to see it choke!
Moto G4, Qualcomm Adreno 405, OpenGL ES 3.2
about:config doesn't work either