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Comment by marak830 | Hacker News Reader

That's a bit harsh. Every point they raised is valid: the UX changes have been weird and inconsistent, the lack of history searching is frustrating etc

I still use ff, I certainly won't be using Chrome as I appreciate my add-ons too much.

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Calling ff a mess is worse, as someone that absolutely hates ads it's a godsend.

Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I've tried all the major browsers on Android, Windows, and Linux, and I've always come back to Firefox, even if there are minor caveats.

If Firefox on Android is a "mess", what does that make Microsoft Edge? :- )

You might like Vivaldi. Basically Chrome w/ adblock without Brave's business model. Built by the team that left after Opera's purchase.

Does Vivaldi support add-ons/extensions on android? I don't see it mentioned on the landing page. Granted, ad-block is the primary one and included by default in Vivaldi, but I still like there being a possibility for extensibility even if what's supported on Firefox for Android is limited.

Unfortunately not. This is why I considered FF before last years release to have been _the_ browser for Android.

FYI there is a chromium fork called Kiwi Browser that supports extensions. I'm using it to tell you this right now.

Kiwi has become my goto Android browser, and it's not even close. Primary reason being chrome add-on support.

But it does have a high number of quirks make it through to release versions. Like tab ordering in the current version is broken, such that swiping tabs are in a different order than browsing tabs.

I've noticed those quirks too. Maybe I've just grown a tolerance for buggy software, I do tolerate a lot of idiosyncrasies these days. But I would rather deal with silly mistakes than deliberate crippling of tools I need to use.

It says something about the goals of app and especially browser design when buggy but not feature crippled consistently beats "not buggy" but constantly removing user features to add tracking and other things we never asked for, like exposing saved payment methods.

Chrome is also adding bizarre ux choices on mobile. The tipping point for me was nested tabs (tab groups) with no way to disable them. I've been a happy Android Firefox user since then.

I use chromium based browsers on mobile primarily and I just want to agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't know why this decision was foisted on us. Two layers of organizational abstraction with minimal benefit. I'm sure some people like it, but that's why you make it optional. The UX with nesting tabs is absolutely abysmal.

As a user of Brave, I completely agree with this. I wish the tab grouping could be disabled instead of forced upon users. And despite the issues with Fenix's project management that I mentioned in my post, I still believe that between Google and Mozilla the latter organization would be more willing to listen to user feedback and not attempt to move forward with features such as those. I can't imagine Google suddenly deciding one day that tab grouping was a mistake and walking back such a feature.

The fact that open in new tab only gives the option for "in group" did it for me.

Kiwi at least gives options for opening new tabs as in-group or standalone.

I don't think it's harsh, as those points to me aren't valid. I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security, privacy, ubiquity than UX and less used features like history searching.

That said, I can't do any combination of Netflix + Any other application leveraging graphic card drivers. Completely locks up the computer milliseconds after application loads,need to hard restart. Event viewer for system and FF is no help. Submitted bug tickets, no updates. Oh well, it's fast and secure when I'm not on netflix.

> I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security

I would, too, but they're not able to keep up on that, either, despite vast funding.

Foundations and nonprofits used to do one thing well, not 12 things okay, and 5 things pretty poorly.

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