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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

If it's not feature complete, how can it be an official release??

The previous codebase was left at 68 ESR so the team could work on the new codebase. 68 ESR is now EoL. So now the question is do they try to spend time dragging the legacy release along into the future and continue to attrition users (FF mobile is already down to ~0.5% browser share) or bet that continuing to focus on the version based on the new codebase will yield better outcomes even if it doesn't have all of the features of the old version.

> bet that continuing to focus on the version based on the new codebase will yield better outcomes even if it doesn't have all of the features of the old version.

Ah, executing the famous Netscape strategy, are they? If they were attritioning users already, I shudder to think what will happen with almost no extensions for a few... Weeks? Months? And, if the article is right, also a good number of stability issues.

The few extensions they do have already give them a major leg up over the most commonly used browsers, which offer... 0.

Multiple chromium forks are working at integrating chrome (desktop) extensions (and some already have experimental support).

As soon as they do, there's really no point in using firefox anymore. Especially since they seem to give zero fucks about my workflow, I give zero fucks about them.

It's significantly faster and ublock origin works.

Seems like getting parity would take a year+

So I guess they decided it's worth dumping the current code base to focus on the rewrite.

Especially since they now get an outcry and see which features are actually required and which others, they could have invested time on are not required.

In the FAQ they announced a few features "within three weeks" which for me is the thing about "most frequent pages" being shown on a new tab. Quite a habit of mine to use that ...

Relying on removing features then seeing which ones get you yelled at is not a great approach to building trust in your users. when you classify adding to tickets about the missing features with comments like "I really need this feature and it's omission is causing me to look elsewhere" as unproductive (or even in other projects taking a similar approach some have called it harassment) at the same time, it's a bad look.

Just got the new Firefox on my tablet earlier and ublock origin did unfortunately not work well after the update. Ads are no longer removed, but replaced by whitespace with a loading icon in the middle. I'm still considering if I find that more or less annoying than browsing with ads enabled.

> replaced by whitespace with a loading icon in the middle

This seems to be a filter issue, please submit cases to filter list maintainers.

Note that "Ignore generic cosmetic filters" is checked by default in Firefox for Android, it's something you may want to toggle.[1]

* * *

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lis...

That may be a uBlock issue. On youtube at least, sometimes the ads don't get skipped, but you get a white "video" you can skip instead.

this is a problem with Mozilla in general

they gradually remove features essential 1-2% of the userbase and now they're getting to the point they have no users at all

the main reason to use Firefox over Chrome on mobile is the extension support, and now that's gone too

>the main reason to use Firefox over Chrome on mobile is

>the extension support, and now that's gone too

That's not quite accurate.

From "Firefox for Android upgrade FAQs" https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-upgrade...

Supported add-ons (note: currently, a limited number of Recommended Extensions are supported.

Here's the list: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?recommended...

Things like uBlock-Origin etc are there, so I'm happy.

It's a limited unsatisfying list for me.

Allowing only extensions monitored by Mozilla is against the great free internet spirit that Mozilla was functioning under till now.

If I want only monitored stuff I may as well switch to Google...

> If I want only monitored stuff I may as well switch to Google...

I was thinking this to myself. I use firefox on android because I have a set of addons that I refuse to browse the web without. If firefox can't run the addons I want, I might as well switch to the builtin browser instead.

Mozilla seems to be banking on "a freer/opener web" being a convincing selling point on its own. But at that point, they might as well just rebadge chromium like all the others.

Corralling power users into a separate app version ala Nightly now comes across as a vain attempt at creating a longterm offramp to avoid backlash.

It really makes you think "what's the point?" about it all.

Well the built in browser is Chrome (on Android).

Come back and let me know how that works. :) Maybe you've forgotten the cesspool that the web has become, with all the crappy adverts and popups. I'm just glad I can run ublock-origin, the rest I'll wait for a bit.

>Allowing only extensions monitored by Mozilla is against the great free internet spirit that Mozilla was functioning under till now.

I feel the same way.. I would suggest to a have a LITTLE patience. They'll most likely get more extensions going forwards or people will fix the ones you use.

But their telemetry says each of the thousand features removed is a mere papercut!

I feel like one of the worst things to happen to software engineering is telemetry. It just leads to companies cutting all the features that I like.

Power users in general will dsable telemetry, so the bulk of the data these companies get come from the patterns of usage of the lowest common denominator users. It's no surprise then that everything that appeals to power users is slowly but surely removed from future iterations of the software in question. Mozilla is just another dumb corporation circling the drain of death at this point.

In my experience, people often make decisions first then go trawling through sea of data, selecting metrics which support their decision and ignoring those that contradict it. Intentionally or not, much of this stuff is essentially p-hacked.

Yeah as a long-time Firefox on Android user, I'm not happy about the current state of things. Excitement about ~~~the future~~~ wore off about 2-3 years ago and things are still not great overall.

Unfortunately, since Brendan Eich left it's being downhill. I know I'll get downvoted to pieces, since this is Hackernews, but so be it. When an organization starts prioritizing anything other than what is best for the product and it's users and starts talking about "social" stuff, say goodbye to efficiency and technical brilliance.

> Unfortunately, since Brendan Eich left it's being downhill. I know I'll get downvoted to pieces, since this is Hackernews, but so be it.

I would have upvoted you, but as requested, I downvoted you instead.

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