A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly | Hacker News Reader

A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

blog.mozilla.org

138 pointssohkamyung148 comments

Is it me or this article is really vague? What's the new experience, exactly?

Also, I started using Firefox on my Android phone because of 2 reasons: block ads and Google seems to be more and more for-profit and not for-users. And I love Firefox with one exception: when I press a link on another app Firefox doesn't open but gives me a small notification on the bottom the screen saying the tab opened in Firefox. I find this really annoying as I wouldn't press a link if I didn't want to browse it right away.

It's not you, I only opened the article to see if they had dealt with input lag and just lag in general and I get 6 paragraphs of unwanted marketing speak until I even get close to something resembling actual changes.

If anyone from Mozilla is reading this, just get to the facts next time, don't insult us by throwing a ton of marketing babble at us, we don't care.

That marketing babble is there for the same reason the majority of YouTube videos are >10 minutes and filled with the same filler: Google's ranking algorithm.

For YouTube videos it's mean watch time. Filler babble pumps up those numbers.

For Google, it's mean read time. Filler babble also pumps up this number. However, it also ranks higher directly because it's considered a "long form" piece instead of a soundbite, and because it's more unique than similar pages (f.e compare all news outlets covering the same story -- it's all relatively the same).

Blame Google, for its algorithms that are directly shaping our communications and culture. Hell, blame all tech companies that use algorithms to determine culture (see: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, and yes, HN). Whether this is good or bad, is someone else's argument to write.

Mozilla, and every other website owner, must play the game in order to drive organic traffic to its pages through search engine optimization. Otherwise, you might not be reading this article right now, and it would be solely shared by word-of-mouth from people who check the site or are on a newsletter.

> Blame Google, for its algorithms that are directly shaping our communications and culture. Hell, blame all tech companies that use algorithms to determine culture

> Mozilla, and every other website owner, must play the game

No. Mozilla and every other contributor still have a responsibility for what they put out there. Google and Facebook messing up the overall environment doesn't let individual contributors off the hook.

Hating the game vs. hating the player.

We all have to do things in our own self-interest, especially when there are higher powers bearing down upon us.

They're not off the hook, but they're not the biggest fish that needs to be fried. Going after them won't solve anything except the need to vent one's own emotions.

The cycle will continue to repeat for other websites and other people. We've established that it happens often, and we've even established the root cause. Idling on "who's at fault and what should their punishment be" is just that: idling.

Severely off-topic but this is also how I feel about battling racism in America, but the general notion of systems vs specific agents was strongly reinforced for me by the Slovenian political writer Slavoj Zizek in a book of his after 9/11 wherein he remarks that Left politics were becoming more and more about targeting specific agents when the processes that motivate and constrain those agents (as well as our own) are so much more anonymous that its difficult for people to even parse the significance of.

I doubt that Mozilla needs this page to be ranked high, it's more of a press release and not a landing page that should come up high in search results when you search for Firefox...

Ranking individual pages is vitally important in the website traffic game.

Suppose Mozilla's goal for its blog is to generate a lot of organic traffic so that people are aware of Moz Corp's continuing development efforts. If that were the case, individual ranking of pages matters.

A domain name has a certain "rank," that's based entirely on on-page SEO -- or all of the indexed pages and site as a whole -- and off-page SEO -- or all of the domains and pages that link to it.

One of the algos in determining on-page SEO is cumulative ranking of all pages under that domain. That is, a single page's ranking is not an isolated variable based purely on that page and its content alone. The other pages that fall under that same domain impact every other page on said domain.

If Mozilla published a poorly SEO'ed blog article, that would negatively affect the ranking of all other articles under the blog.mozilla.org name -- and more severely any other pages that link to it or are linked inside of it.

That's only the first part. Suppose they wanted to generate traffic for this individual press release? Then that's a whole nother ball of wax.

They could put the actual content in understandable form at the top, and leave the page of marketing babble for after.

Google crawlers treat the first few paragraphs as an abstract, and weigh it heavier than the sections that follow after.

The balance between SEO and readability has already been struck, and an equilibrium has been reached. Changes will only happen when Google ships out new major algorithm changes. They're relatively often though, and always shake up the field.

If people were really interested in fixing this problem, they would start writing and campaigning for more transparency and democracy from Google. Do you think that would affect their own rankings? ;) Rhetorical question.

> the majority of YouTube videos are >10 minutes and filled with the same filler: Google's ranking algorithm.

Ironically now sometimes google shows video results suggesting to skip the first few seconds. I swear I've seen it a few times, but maybe I was being A/B tested

Also seen it when searching for some how-tos. More than a few times. I thought it was brilliant, but now that you mention it: why doesn't this show up more often?

Firefox Preview is the complete review that fixes input lag and UI responsitivity - if they managed to bring all of that to today's nightly release, that's not clear.

That feature is called tab queue, and it can be disabled in settings.

I personally find this feature brilliant.

And it is one of the reasons I use FF on Android

IIRC a double tap on a link opens the browser.

Oh, I didn't know what's called. Thank you.

What is tab queue? Is that the new feature or is that the old feature that gp was complaining about?

What are the new features?

It's the feature they were complaining about. It's useful if you're in some other apps (e.g. a feed reader) from which you want to open several links in a row, which you then work through in order afterwards within Firefox.

Disabling the tab queue means tabs get directly opened again.

Sounds like you turned on the tab queue option, try turning that back off.

If you click the link a second time, it launches Firefox for you. At least, that's my experience.

If Firefox pushes this before implementing support for extensions (namely uBlock or other ad-blocking / privacy extensions) then Firefox is well and truly toast on Android.

Correct me if I am wrong but the only reason non-tech people use Firefox on Android is to block ads.

Perhaps this is a push from Mozilla to try and get some search revenue flowing again?

For me personally, uBlock (and other extensions) is the only reason I am using Firefox on Android. If this feature is removed, I will either go back to Samsung Browser or check something else.

Web-extentions are comming, i hope that it will be fully functionnal before it replaces the current firefox https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/pull/7280

"Hope" in this case shouldn't be enough unless they also decide to bake ublock origin right in.

I'm a bit torn on the latter idea, actually: as much as I would love it if Mozilla would give such a well-deserved middle finger to the advertising world for their bad behavior, I also think it would create a kind of relationship between gorhill and Mozilla that would result in an unhealthy power dynamic.

I have 2 reasons uBlock and the fact that I can use my own sync server.

How do you do that? I have been wanting to run my own sync for a long time but haven't been able to figure it out.

https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...

was the guide I used

Okay. Thank you. Do you run your own accounts server or just use Mozilla's?

I use still Mozillas but have planned to replace it some day.

Samsung browser is a piece of garbage that is constantly phoning home, like all other pre-installed Samsung apps.

Look into Kiwi Browser. It's a chromium based android browser that supports extensions https://kiwibrowser.com/

I've been using it alongside FF for Extensions, but it's nicer (+faster) than FF and has features like pull down to refresh a page, native web-app support etc.

Yes, the same goes for me. Even though I really like these changes, this needs to be added. Will switch to Stable until then, I guess.

If you are checking something else, I recommend Brave. I've switched from Firefox to Brave and I am mostly satisfied.

What does it offer that Firefox does not ?

People here seem to "hope" that extension support will be implemented.

If my stable Firefox for Android gets updated into a browser without uBlock Origin I will immediately switch to some chromish alternative with adblocking. There's no reason for firefox for android once extension support is gone, featurewise.

I use Firefox for Android for one reason: the ability to not load images on cell data. I'm surprised other browsers don't have that, but it's huge for me since I pay by the megabyte (Google Fi). It saves me $10/month easily.

edit: oh, it looks like that's missing, too. Nooooo....

Plus ublock origin can save a lot of data.

I am on a slow university network and I keep JavaScript off by default using UBO. It takes 3 clicks to enable it for sites that really need it, but web is much faster with it.

Try the duckduckgo android browser, most ads fail in it without extensions required.

My favorite feature is the "fire" icon that closes all tabs, deletes all cookies and history and basically reinitializes the browser.

HN mods should investigate the systematic downvoting of pro-Brave comments. It happens on every discussion of browsers.

I "systematically" downvote comments that exist solely to advertise an alternative to the software being discussed. I would do the exact same thing to "hey, use firefox" comments on a Brave-related article.

They keep getting voted down because comments like "just use brave" don't actually add anything relevant to the discussion about the subject article.

WebExtension support in theory is coming in Q1 - https://github.com/orgs/mozilla-mobile/projects/44

Regardless, Firefox Preview already blocks ads and trackers perfectly fine the built-in tracking protection. I've not seen an ad in the months I've been using it.

Reddit, Facebook, Amazon, Youtube and Googles search ads aren't affected by the built-in tracking protection at all.

That alone are half the pages most non-tech people (like my parents) usually browse.

I remember seeing a list of domains which Firefox tracking protection explicitly whitelists (presumably to avoid breaking these sites’ functionality). Google and Facebook were in there. That told me all I needed to know about this supposed tracking “protection”.

Really? Are you sure you don't have some other hosts/vpn based ad blocker? I surely don't use Firefox Preview for much, but I definitely saw an ad on Preview when I was using it yesterday. I forgot why I wasn't using it -- aside from the fact that Firefox normal is in the quick access icons -- and since my phone had just restarted I thought I'd give it a go. But I quickly saw an ad and thought "oh right" and went back to normal Firefox.

> Regardless, Firefox Preview already blocks ads and trackers perfectly fine the built-in tracking protection.

I don't want a blacklist of ads and trackers. I want all third party scripts and frames blocked by default, which uBlock Origin does perfectly.

Can someone with Firefox for Android nightly confirm whether extensions are actually not available with this new release?

I agree that this would be a cataclysmic regression for Mozilla, if that is indeed what they plan on releasing.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-preview-upgrade... appears to say that, yes, that is what they plan on releasing.

I installed it: no add-ons, they are coming "late 2020" supposedly.

I think it's good to consolidate the branding but this is a half-finished preview replacing nightly, a step backwards.

I had bought into the Firefox ecosystem down to their password manager and would have paid for premium services. Remove the ability to adblock on mobile and I'm pulling out of the entire ecosystem. What a betrayal. They don't even have any skin in the ad game

They are working on WebExtension support [1] as well as built-in basic ad-blocking [2]. Anyone can follow the progress on their public issue tracker on GitHub.

1: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315

2: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/96

As someone who was deeply disappointed when they broke all old extensions before fixing the new API (but had nowhere to go as Chrome had always had neutered extensions compared to Firefox) I hope they'll fix the extension interface first this time.

Try Basilisk, by the same people who made Pale Moon, but with less feature stripping.

"nightly for developers" it's so you can make your stuff work in upcoming versions. I think it's fair to start early. Stick to beta if you want to develop extensions before they are implemented.

I've tried Fenix a few times, and even without getting into extensions, it seemed like a regression in many ways.

How so? I loved the layout and the collections rather than book marks

I like the collections a lot, the layout not so much (moved url to top, but it only moves it for browser page, not the collections page.

Quite a lot of negativity from HN so far, so I'll add some counter.

I've been using the Firefox preview since it was announced and overall have found it to be a vast improvement on the previous incarnation. Tab management is much more intuitive and easier on the thumbs, the URL bar being at the bottom is jarring at first but soon becomes much easier to use, the performance is similar to the Firefox Focus which I had previously switched to from the main Firefox app.

Between this version of Firefox and the improvements to servo and webview brought in with v57 on the desktop side, we've seen a massive leap in terms of user experience across the Mozilla portfolio. Granted, addons and notably adblock is an omission, but really when I reflect on what I felt was missing from the Firefoxes of yore, I would always come back to 'look and feel' and 'performance' and I feel like these new releases go a long way to redressing the balance with the competition in my books.

> Tab management is much more intuitive and easier on the thumbs

It's worse if you have many tabs and the compartmentalisation feature is not flexible enough to be used with many tabs. Oh and the missing preview image is annoying when I'm looking for a site, because it's easier to look for a tab by looking at it then reading every title

> the URL bar being at the bottom is jarring at first but soon becomes much easier to use

yeah I love the idea and it kind of works. problem is that _it doesn't stay down_ when I want to edit an url I first have to click on the bottom and then at the top as well. I really often want to edit the url I have in my browser and this is so annoying I can't even describe it.

> the performance is similar to the Firefox Focus which I had previously switched to from the main Firefox app.

No it probably isn't. For me firefox preview has the same slow downs as normal firefox for android. A few seconds to open and then a few seconds to show my tabs (oneplus 5 + ~150 tabs).

If I just wanted a fast browser with adblock I would use "Lightning" (available in fdroid), but I want addons. Every other feature is available in every other browser.

> when I want to edit an url I first have to click on the bottom and then at the top as well.

Another annoyance is how it never disappears. I get that it would be less intuitive to have a bar at the bottom disappear when scrolling down a page and reappear when scrolling up, but the way it is now, with the bar always there, some websites are simply unusable in landscape mode on a regular phone.

All in all, a great and brave decision, but poorly executed.

As this release is nightly, feedback like yours will go a long way to fix these annoying UI issues

Of course, the reason I don't use Chrome is due to the stuff Firefox has - ad-blocking on mobile and tree-style tabs on desktop. Chrome's look and feel is specifically what I don't like about it.

This is great, and firefox as a product is also great, but I couldn't decipher this information from their wall-of-marketroid-speak.

This is a really big problem for a company such as Mozilla, because marketroid speak makes me distrust them, and they're riding on a reputation of trustworthiness.

Wow, I am pretty surprised by this decision. I've been using Firefox Preview for a while, and while I do enjoy the new approach, I still regularly encounter bugs, including those that make me lose open tabs or other regressions for which I need to keep Firefox ("regular"?) installed.

Not to mention the lack of addons (ad-blockers) and the fact that this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Brand new experience", whoa.)

What is happening, Mozilla?

Note that this is about Firefox Nightly, not Firefox regular:

> A new browsing experience arrives in Firefox for Android Nightly

So related to this decision I would say: nothing special, as far as I can see. They're just moving Firefox Preview to Firefox Unstable.

> while I do enjoy the new approach (...) this announcement is completely useless and void of information. ("Brand new experience", whoa.)

You're mentioning this yourself: Firefox Preview is a very new experience compared to the current mainstream Firefox for Android browser. You and I may be aware of Firefox Preview's existence, but for those out there who are not this is not a post that is useless and void of information.

But they’re not stopping there:

> As for next milestones, the brand new Firefox for Android will go into Beta in Spring 2020 and land in the main release later in the first half of this year.

What state it will all be in by then remains to be seen, of course.

(Aside: ugh, “Spring” as though everyone lived in temperate and subarctic northern hemisphere. Most of the world doesn’t. This is a very American/European way of expressing things.)

Imagine they forecast their release "During the harvest" or "when the bushfires stop" or something. It's just weird.

> So related to this decision I would say: nothing special, as far as I can see. They're just moving Firefox Preview to Firefox Unstable.

But the implication is that Preview is becoming the trunk from which future releases will be cut. If Preview lacks critical features like ad blocking and is as unstable as the previous commenter implies, it's probably not ready for that yet. (I can't comment on the bugginess, since my Preview was stuck in private mode until like five minutes ago — losing tabs was just part of the deal.)

Well, I agree that that is a reasonable worry - Mozilla is not exempt from fears of mismanagement (especially not after the news of the layoffs).

In addition to not supporting addons, preview also does not let you bypass warnings to access sites with self-signed certificates, and I need to do that.

There is much concern about what’s happening with extensions, and I share it, but I want to say this much: Fenix really is way faster than Fennec. On my low-end phone, I used Fennec so that I can use it as a minimal browser, with fonts disabled, NoScript installed, uBlock Origin installed; also for ideological reasons. I always knew that on pages where I needed to enable scripting it was mostly still a lot slower than Chrome, but I use it anyway.

I’ve just tried Fenix out now, and yeah, it’s going through stress tests like loading Reddit’s web interface much, much faster (like, at least twice as fast and five times as interactive).

I’ll wait for the extensions story to be polished off. There’s clear progress and intent. I have confidence they’ll pull it off.

A few screenshots would be nice… Really, it's a "new browsing experience", and what we have is just a wall of shitty corporate text saying how great it is. Fuck that.

Given https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315 and https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5630 are still open, does this represent a regression in supported functionality for nightly users?

Definitely. I don't understand how Mozilla doesn't understand that extensions, particularly content blocking (and specifically Ublock Origin) are definitional of what Firefox is and should be.

No this is definitely not a regression. Firefox launched a new app called "Firefox Preview Nightly", so as of right now both Nightly and Preview Nightly exist side by side; regular nightly users are not impacted at this point in time.

That's surely not clear from the blog post. I just read it again and I still can't find it; indeed, the only links to apps are links to the existing Firefox Preview (not even to Firefox Nightly, which is what the article seems to be talking about).

Searching the store turns up both "Firefox Preview Nightly for Developers" and "Firefox Nightly for Developers" which is consistent with your claim but is not necessary supportive of it.

The title refers to an app apparently called "Firefox for Android Nightly" but no such app exists that I can find in the store.

It is possible this is one of the worst public announcements ever. A link to the product they're announcing to would have made a significant difference.

I don't understand why you've brought up what the current state of affairs is, the article says:

> For current Nightly users, it’ll feel like a big exciting upgrade of their browsing experience once they update the app

Which sounds to me like Fennec is going away and the update will replace it with Fenix.

>as of right now both Nightly and Preview Nightly exist side by side; regular nightly users are not impacted at this point in time

Is anyone disputing this? What will happen when the "new experience" the article talks about is launched?

> What will happen when the "new experience" the article talks about is launched?

Can't people use the stable version then? I fail to see the issue here.

The issue is that their roadmap has the stable version being replaced automatically in early 2020 with one that doesn't support extensions (full support of which is late 2020), unless you pause updates on your mobile device and had an unsecured browser.

So that means for at least most of 2020, I won't have the option for the browser experience I like and will have to go use brave mobile or something.

As someone who wants to avoid a Chromium hegemony, this is pretty disappointing. I would like to support Mozilla on mobile, but they'll leave me no options to do so.

You are technically correct, but from a more general point of view I'd consider it a regression. A Mozilla regression, if you will.

But they love testing! And users! That is all what matters I guess?

As a user who's tested Firefox Preview and loved extension support in Firefox for Android: it's been good enough for me to have somewhat naturally transitioned to using it as my main browser. The built-in tracking protection blocks practically everything that I used uBlock Origin for (though I'd still appreciate the real thing coming), I haven't really experienced bugs, and it's really quite snappy.

There's certainly still a number of features missing (I'm personally eagerly awaiting the return of the home screen), but it's certainly not as dire as some here make it sound, and it's been progressing pretty rapidly.

No ublock origin? Good luck with that, mozilla.

Reading the faults, particularly the second one, it seems that uBO will be supported, but the issues they're having is with how to sync settings between desktop and mobile if you don't use sync...

But do remember that that’s talking entirely in hypotheticals, about what will be implemented, not what is implemented. #5630 is really just a very slight subset of #5315, “enough of WebExtensions that uBlock Origin works”.

It’s clear that there is intent to implement WebExtensions, but the timing is what’s in question—that it seems that they’re starting to push it towards widespread usage well before WebExtensions are supported, which is a total deal-breaker for many (definitely including me). I expect the situation will be clarified shortly.

If one doesn't use sync (I don't) it means that settings are not synced, by choice of the user. Or am I missing something?

If the nightly beta is like firefox preview then it's too early for it.

1) addons don't work yet

2) sharing of media files doesn't work https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3621

3) you can't add exceptions for ssl certificates https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1168

And it's all in all more buggy then firefox for me....

I really welcome a new approach, but since in my extensive testing it performed as bad as firefox and had more crashes it will more or less force me either to stick to an older firefox release (mask updates) or use a different browser (maybe install gecko as html framework and use lightning or something)

Edit: formatting and added conclusion

> And it's all in all more buggy

I've used it as main browser for a while and have the same impression. For instance it simply crashes when logging in to certain websites, even after a clean install. Probably some bug with cookies.

Edit: it also still uses more battery than Chrome for me. Apart of that it's a top browser.

Yeah I got similar problems. I stopped using it a while and always come back to check out if it got more stable or if my bugs where fixed/features implemented and nothing really changed (I think one or two bugs I reported got solved)

I don't really want one of the main applications I use on mobile to crash on me

> 1) addons don't work yet

It'll be interesting to see if this change is going to get rid of extension support or not. I'm a Firefox fan, but uBlock Origin is more important than the browser.

This is in Nightly. I know people often times do _not_ expect breakage, because Nightly has been pretty stable for a long time. But that's not a guarantee.

Most people will be concerned about lacking Web Extensions support. It's indeed not there yet and this is why this blog post is your heads-up to move to a more stable channel.

Web Extensions are being worked on as you can see dependent bugs linked from this meta issue in bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582185

And FYI, for me personally the built-in tracking protection has been a decent replacement for my favorite add-ons, so I'm personally quite fine with this change :-)

Lots of comments in this thread about why they have implemented this before implementing addons. Based on Mozilla's public project board it looks like they are well underway on implementing add-ons:

https://github.com/orgs/mozilla-mobile/projects/44

Check the done column

The comments here re. "why before addons" is because the marketing-speak (tm) blog post leaves everyone with the impression that this new version is just about to replace the existing FF for Android that does support uBlockOrigin.

And as many comments here indicate (and I am with those who feel this way), for a huge swath of FF for Android users, the ability to have uBlockOrigin is the critical reason why they have FF for Android installed in the first place.

As in, if there is no uBlockOrigin, there is no remaining compelling reason to run FF for Android. This is a failure of the mozilla marketing droids to understand their customers.

> the ability to have uBlockOrigin is the critical reason why they have FF for Android

Me too

Agreed that the blog post is dross. I still hold out hope though that Mozilla is not as dumb as their dumbest blogpost :)

For those complaining there is no adblocker, support for uBlock Origin is already implemented upstream. https://twitter.com/FirefoxPreview/status/121564800555626496...

What is "reference browser" in this context ? Is this the repo for Firefox Preview/fenix ? Or an upstream version of Firefox preview ?

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/reference-browser

"A web browser reference implementation using Mozilla Android Components.

The Reference Browser is not a product intended to ship to end users. Instead it is a Technology Preview for many new mobile components that multiple teams at Mozilla are currently working on

It includes the Mozilla Web Platform via GeckoView, a new modern Firefox Accounts and Cloud Sync implementation and the new "Glean" telemetry library. All these components will be foundational for Mozilla's existing and upcoming Android products.

The Reference Browser can also be a starting point for your own new browser-like applications. It depends heavily on the Android Components project where most of the actual implementation lives. That project also includes many smaller sample applications."

My question was more among the line :

What is the relation between

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/reference-browser

and

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix

That Readme does not really answer that question.

I have Firefox Preview installed on my phone and it is set as my default browser, but I still keep the original Firefox for Android, because:

- Preview is missing support for Add-ons. This was a huge advantage of Firefox for Android (for me this means, that I cannot use uBlock.. the built-in ad blocker is good, but uBlock is better)

- There are limited settings available in Preview. (e.g. what I am missing a "download images only over wifi" option.)

I also have Firefox Preview installed on my phone. It's set as default but I basically don't use it, because:

* Preview lacks support for ad blocking.

* For some reason, every time I open a link in Firefox Preview, it goes into "Private" mode and there's no option to stop that from happening. I think it used to ask me, and one time I said "Private" and ever since then it's been in private mode - it asked me every time till I said "Private" and thereafter it's never asked me again. This means I can only use Preview for the links that transiently get opened, because I can't even find the normal tabs without closing Private browsing.

Settings - Default Launcher - there's a checkbox that you can uncheck to not open random links in private tabs.

For clarity, that's Firefox Preview Settings not Android Settings. I would probably appreciate being asked since I tend to forget to close things - better to say "i want this tab only transiently, close it some time in the somewhat distant future (but, preferably, keep both transient and permanent tabs available)". Being asked to open it private is almost that.

Still leaves me with ad blocking which is probably the third most important feature of a web browser after the ability to parse and render HTML.

I don't think that's intended behaviour by default: I've never set this up, and links open in my regular session.

I've always assumed that, at some point, I must have fumbled and pressed "set as default" one time when it asked me. I regularly drop my phone, and fumbles that get me into settings I don't want happen occasionally. But it definitely used to ask me every time.

Ugh so what is what and what's the news? There are (among others like ff klar) for android:

- firefox (firefox) > old

- firefox for android beta (firefox_beta) > old

- firefox nightly for developers (fennec_aurora)> old (maybe this one will move to fenix and that's the news?)

- firefox preview (fenix)> fenix rewrite

- firefox preview nightly for developers (fenix.nightly) > fenix rewrite (app also shows up as "firefox nightly", but with an outline logo)

I brackets is the end of the package name (org.mozilla...). They really should get a naming convention on the road.

all mozilla apps here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/cluster?clp=ig...

Fenix is nice, but still lacking add-on support (which is a dealbreaker for me)

Add-ons are the only reason i am using Firefox on android. It is slightly slower, and more cumbersome than other alternatives - but add-ons(especially ublock origin) make up for that heavily.

> It is slightly slower, and more cumbersome than other alternatives

Except that Firefox Preview in my experience is not. It's even quicker than Chrome or Bromite on my FP3.

I use Firefox Preview as my main browser on Android, but I think pushing adoption by deprecating the regular Firefox for Android is the wrong approach. How are they going to compete with other browsers if they can't even get existing Firefox users to switch to Preview?

In particular, Nightly users are already deliberately accepting bugginess to help test new Firefox releases. If they're not using Preview, there's probably a reason for that.

> For current Nightly users, it’ll feel like a big exciting upgrade of their browsing experience once they update the app

... is a very optimistic prediction. Add-on support is missing, there are various strange bugs that are no deal-breakers for me personally, but still annoying, and the URL bar at the bottom is confusing to get used to. Forcing the transition before Preview is ready doesn't look like a smart move to me.

Firefox preview is an interesting experiment with decent speed and a nice layout.

However there are some big blockers for me before I can use this browser. One is bypassing TLS errors (or preferably finally allowing me to use my own certificate authority for some internal services). Right now the issue is on hold and nobody from the Firefox team seems to. Be working on dealing with certificates.

The other is the addon issue, but I have faith thst those will work once the preview goes mainstream.

If Firefox goes live without those two points, I'm going over to brave. I like Mozilla and I want a second browser engine for the web, but basic functionality like this should not be foregone for the sake of "bringing new experiences".

So... Should I keep using Firefox Preview or from now on Nightly is considered more stable? I really don't get this.

I've just gave it a try but nightly is still on the older version here. Anyway Firefox Preview is my default browser with Firefox Beta as a backup on Android. Preview is much faster but lacks extensions and many settings. Moreover I'm not sold on the new UI: address bar at the bottom is fine as long as it goes on top for some tasks, history is hard to find and I miss the favorites sites start-page (have to create groups but it's not the same).

I use Firefox over Chrome because Google - you know... there's a submission a day about that - and I trust Mozilla much more to be-not-evil and such. So it's kind of a political-ethical thing. On PC performance is on par so it's not a compromising choice. On Android Chrome still has an edge.

I'm a happy user of Firefox Preview for a while not, and I just want to say to all developers: THANK YOU!

It's pretty stable in my experience, and in fact much faster than the main version.

Link for those who want to try it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...

As much as I love Firefox, I have quit preview because of a bottom bar. (And this is from someone who had always used bottom tabs in desktop Opera in 00s)

It is poorly executed and often obstructs input on websites.

Annoying for nightly users, but reasonable for Firefox team to clean up the number of releases out.

Though the reason I used nightly was fewer rules around custom extensions, not to be on the bleeding edge.

The bottom placed nav bar is a major ux improvement, I love it!

"If you’re on an older version of Android (pre-5), you will won’t be able to download Firefox for Android."

I wonder if it will or won't.

Firefox preview crashes on my 2019 Android phone when I attempt to upload a file to the web. I hope this is no longer the case...

It would be great if you could file an issue at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix if that still is the case.

Can somebody please remind me why the mobile firefox is stuck at version 68.x whereas other platforms have moved on to 72?

Because mobile Firefox is now ESR until the new mobile Firefox ("Fenix") is ready.

Uhh why does everything have to be an experience nowadays?

maybe anybody who decides to try it can comment here what if anything is new?

Doesn't work in my (widely used) Android version. I'm a long time Firefox user and feel abandoned.

"Requires Android 5.0 and up" according to the Play Store listing. Android 4.x is from 2013 and had its last update in 2014. It hasn't received security patches since October 2017. Why should Mozilla continue to support such an ancient version?

Firefox: "Consider ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint"

Also Firefox: "Throw out your perfectly fine phone and buy a new one! Do not think about the slave labor and environmental/climate costs that will go into producing it."

(I feel critical of Firefox in this thread, but I wouldn't dream of using Chrome. Mozilla are at least half decent and aim towards ethical behavior. But it would be nice if they let us do the things they recommend.)

I don't consider a phone that hasn't received security updates in 2.5 years "perfectly fine". I'm all for extending the life of older devices, don't misunderstand me, but that requires software updates. My phone is probably much older than those of most HN'ers (been using it for over 3 years now) and I used my last laptop for 7 years. But I don't run ancient unsupported software on either.

What I'm saying is "you shouldn't run Android 4.x in 2020", not "you shouldn't use a device from 2014 in 2020". Whether it be through better manufacturer support or a custom ROM like LineageOS, these ancient versions need to die.

In the rest of life, we don't consider security flaws impose an obligation to replace something. For instance, your average home's door - fundamentally a security device! - is flimsy and does not offer much resistance. More durable doors are available, but not normally considered worth it.

Considering how many Android 4 devices are still in use today, Google and the manufacturers are behaving incredibly unreasonably in not supporting them. Nothing about Android 4 means it should die, any more in 2020 than in 2014. Google could suddenly grow a conscience and stop being evil tomorrow if they wanted; the fact that they have not updated in in several years does not mean they cannot start updating it again. It is not incumbent on the owners of any phone to discard it.

Please do not confuse the intrinsic properties of a product with business decisions. Corporations need to be responsible for the products that they release. Google is no less of a polluter than the company that releases waste chemicals into the local river.

(LineageOS is no be all end all. Many devices are not supported at all, and volunteers have no obligation to clean up for lazy private companies with no sense of obligation to the communities that make them their profits.)

"2014 - Ancient version" Sorry, but this mindset doesn't make a lot of good for the technology. It's not 90s anymore in terms of performance growth. The reason a smartphone from 2014 is considered obsolete is not technical.

If 2014 isn't an ancient android version and okay without updates, then why do you need updates for Firefox? You can just as well keep using the 2014 version of that, too.

>>and okay without updates

Who said that? It's exactly the problem. There's no reason 6-year old phone can't get updates, besides forcing the selling of new devices. It's a practice against user interests.

Apples to oranges and no i won't be using Firefox when Chrome, Brave and Edge still support the "ancient 2014 android version"

Why is it apples and oranges?

What makes using a 6 year outdated OS so much different from using a 6 year outdated browser? Both long stopped being supported by many websites and apps.

Because millions of people are using it and can't change easily? It's not that I don't get your point, but the amount of Android 4.x that I encounter is really big, maybe it's my humble environment, but still.

All of the 4.x versions together make up just over 10% of Androids used, according to Google. Pretty much every single 5.x version has a bigger share.

It's reasonable to give that up if it makes development easier / the end result more secure, imo.

Edited to ask: why is switching not easy? Even cheap phones come with far newer versions these days...

Not to be snarky, but Firefox itself is probably below 10% market share globally, so according to that logic, developers should not bother testing compatibility or performance with Firefox (but I agree with your overall point or sentiment !)

Ten per cent sounds significant to me. If you were saying "oh, all 4.x versions make up just over 1% of Android versions" it's probably fair.

New phones are not without costs even when they're cheap. It is better for everyone to use your phone until it stops working. And if you come from a place where a nice job lands you $150/mo a cheap phone is still expensive.

Only about 250 million Android 4.x users, mostly relatively poor, then: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/android-statistics/

I thought Mozilla would consider us important if only for that 10%. You know, 10% is quite important: Firefox has less than 10% of the desktop/laptop users, less than 1% of mobile users.

New phones have less features than old phones. No removable batteries, audio jacks becoming extinct, its almost as if manufacturers are making them completely disposable once the battery runs out.

> It hasn't received security patches since October 2017. Why should Mozilla continue to support such an ancient version?

Because ALL of their big competitors namely Chrome, Brave, Opera, and now Edge, support the "ancient" Android 4.x version.

Brave stopped supporting Android 4.x as well, see https://community.brave.com/t/installing-brave-on-android-wi.... The last version that supported 4.4 was 1.3.2, they're at 1.6.3 now for Android 5.0+.

Not true

I have Brave v1.6.2 installed on my 4.4.2 phone

Edit: just now i've upgraded to the latest v1.6.3, as you can see brave's still receives updates on a android 4.x

But you can still use the current (that will be old in the future) Firefox. yeah, no security updates but your OS is not getting them either. It sucks, and it shouldn't be that way, I'm with you, but it's the harsh reality. So, blaming only Mozilla for this situation looks a bit unfair from my point of view.

Of course, I don't blame Mozilla for all of that. I'd like them to champion disadvantaged users, that's all.

I expect more from Mozilla than from the other players in the web/browser/mobile scene, perhaps I'm wrong!

I've been using Firefox Preview on and off since last summer on a low-end phone running 5.1 with no issues due to Android version.

I use FireFox Preview on Android, I think its great compared to Chrome.

no ublock, firefox is dead

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