A new Firefox for Android experience

I got force-upgraded to Fenix a few weeks ago, I had checked out the betas and previews previously and was amazed at how much stuff is still missing or broken:

- Most extensions are not supported yet. Looks like we'll at least get this in Nightly soon:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034

- Bookmark keywords are missing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2497

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12099

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12100

- Tab Queue is missing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12338

- Sharing a link from an app directly to another device is missing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1523

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11780

- Collections are confusing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10417

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11506

- Top toolbar is confusing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11298

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11314

- Somehow, they even managed to make opening a tab confusing:

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10368

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11833

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12301

  - https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12774

I'm very unhappy with his 'new experience'. Lots of UX failures:

(I use top address bar)

1) to launch new tab in private mode I need to tap private tab at the top of the screen, then 'plus' button at the bottom, then address bar the top. Previously, it was far easier.

2) switching tabs is way worse than before.. If you are at the top tab, and 'open new link in new tab', said new tab is not even visible when you press switch tabs button!! You need to scroll up to see it! Old tab switcher was just better.

3) it suggests saving logins /passwords that are entered in private mode. Seriously?

I can go on, but these are the most annoying 'improvements'.

The only good addition is persistent notification to close private tabs.

And I'm not alone unhappy: several pages on Google Play are filled with 1 and 2 star ratings.

This is huge news. Wonder why it hasn't reached the front page. Europe-first launch? Undescriptive title?

I updated it on my 10" tablet, not on my phone yet. The UI on a smaller screen could be different.

I'm not happy with the lack of plugins. This is at least the second time they did it recently. If they want to piss off users and extensions developers they are very good at it.

The new grouping of bookmarks on the home page is an improvement. The old quick links (or whatever they're called) are still there but much smaller. Maybe there can be more than 8 of them, which would be good.

Opening a new tab is an awkward process with an extra step, which is bad. I hope they'll optimize it.

I configured the browser with the toolbar at the top. Maybe I'll give a try to the bottom placement.

Does seem a bit quicker, although I've only used it for a few minutes, so not long enough to tell whether it still suffers from the old Firefox malaise of becoming slower and slower with each passing day. So that's promising, but....

Still no text-reflow. Sorry, but any browser designed for mobile which doesn't offer this as a standard feature is just unusable, in my book.

It might not be obvious to the beardie young hipster developers out there, but some of us older folks are no longer able to read text at 6pt and might actually like you to prioritise making the web legible on your browser, over junk like themes and picture-in-picture video.

Curated list of plugins. OK, so they've got some of my regular 'must-haves' on there now; uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger. But I can't use my password manager [Bitwarden]. Is there a technical reason why most of the extensions which work on Firefox desktop version aren't automatically compatible with the mobile version? [see note on Yandex below]

Nice try Mozilla. But I'll stick with Yandex which offers text-reflow and works with nearly the full range of Chrome desktop compatible plugins.

And was already fast.

It's definitly a lot faster than before on my one plus 6. Espacially pages with a lot of images, or when rendering a video. A welcome improvement.