Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upcoming Android release
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
I know there are other apps that support add-ons but the fact is that Firefox is __the only__ "mainstream" browser that does this (quotes because it's 0.25% in the US, as the 4th most popular, behind Samsung fucking Internet).
It's popular to hate on Firefox, but this is the nerdiest of nerd issues and if we're being honest, all this has accomplished in the last decade is a decrease in market share and keeping Safari and (more so) Chrome dictate the Internet and user experience. Firefox being so low puts no pressure on Chrome to add add-ons. Firefox being so low just means Chrome can continue pushing the ad first Internet.
Yeah, it's fun to complain, but which do you hate more? That Firefox only provides 80-90% of what you want (when major competitors provide __0%__), or Google dictating the Internet (like AMP)? Complain, but maybe tone it down a bit. This is not the holy war you want.
uBlock doesn't exist for iOS because it is made impossible by apple, their extension API is not a "full" API.
Precompiled declarative blocking is more performant and power efficient than running a content script in a JS VM at page load, which matters on a CPU and battery constrained device.
I was responding to a comment claiming that mobile Safari doesn’t support add-ons. Which is simply not true!
Check the `@@` filters for `ios` here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters...
Adguard's default settings already do not include many tracking connections blocking filters, due to the lack of Safari's API for redirecting to neutered sources which could easily lead to breakages / anti-adblock.
In terms of privacy-protection, Safari is one of the worst.
Yes, see Twitter.
I have AdGuard installed on iOS and I do see ads. I do not see them when opening on Firefox desktop with uBlock Origin. If I disable uBlock then I do see them like on Safari.
As I said, precompiled declarative blocking only works for the weakest of blatant ads. Of course it's "more performant and power efficient" because it only runs on the bare HTTP requests. That's not what I want.
> I was responding to a comment claiming that mobile Safari doesn’t support add-ons. Which is simply not true!
Fair enough. But personally I don't count Safari's extensions as real extension, just like I don't count Firefox' previous approach of a handful of "blessed" extensions for Android as real extensions.
Safari content blockers aside, Safari web extensions are capable of blocking Twitter ads.
There may be other extensions, I don't know. In any case, the technical capability of the API is there.
It's a pain in the arse and certainly doesn't count as 'released' by any means but it's been at least just about possible for a while.
Mozilla refuses to address how having no adblock is a security risk, so I have moved all my friends and family over to iOS Brave.
Firefox built its own demise by having a bizarre focus on woke stuff instead of features that users direly need.
Which sure is nice to combat some malware but not really MY problem.
It also coincidentally happens to also rule out ANY browser engines. Firefox and Chrome can only use the provided webkit "WebView" component. Apple has effectively crippled Browsers on iOS to Safari, or a worse re-skinned version of Safari.
You are so insistent that the feature built in primarily because the platform you've chosen has limited your ability to do what literally every other platform can do. I know there are some benefits privacy wise to the Apple ecosystem but it appears that Apple continues to "refuse to address" the need for actual browsers other than safari on iPhone rather than skins on top of Webkit.
So neither party is doing what you please but you gave hundreds to thousands of dollars to one and nothing to the other so perhaps go ask the fellow who has all of your money if they can implement the feature.
Alternatively wait for some combination of law and or technology to work around Apple.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/03/googles_chromium_ios/...
They both use the same selectable filter lists, so I notice barely if any difference.
I'll also scuttle Cookiebro once Brave's cookie auto-delete moves out of beta.
Less extensions means less attack surface.
Here is an example of Brave's filtering falling short: http://0x0.st/H_YB.jpg
Do you see that wide gray box that says "Youtube Featured, RELEASED this week!" I consider that an ad for trashy commercial popculture slop, I hate it and want it gone. How do I remove it with Brave's blocker? I have ad blocking turned up to aggressive but it's still there. I can't figure out how to create a new cosmetic filter, Youtube is unusable to me without this. If I scroll down further I see similar boxes for "Trending", "Shorts", and "Celebrate World's Indigenous People's Day." All of this needs to go; in Firefox I don't see any of it because, with ublock origin, I created a cosmetic filter for ytd-rich-section-renderer. "Rich section" indeed...
Anyway, I didn't downvote your above comment, which is now flagged as well. Near as I can figure the "modern godwin" accusation leveled against you is either because you mentioned brave (is Eich claimed to be a nazi now?) or because you said Mozilla is being woke. Either way, a very stupid reaction to your inoffensive comment. This place is becoming orange reddit.
I have literally never seen this box. Something might be wrong with your config, either manually or due to Brave. Could be worth it to hit up Brave on their Github.
For what its worth, I was an uMatrix user in the past, but I got tired of the churn of constant tiny breakage (even if my regular set of sites was beautifully set up after a while). I know very well the ins and outs of blocking.
I did a trial run for a few weeks, alternating between uBlock and Brave blocking, and the difference was so unnoticeable that I just went cold turkey.
Brave has honestly been on a roll with their built-in security features:
- HTTPS upgrading
- configurable adblock
- fingerprinting protection
- WebRTC protection
- (soon) port-scanning protection, the first browser to do so
- (soon) cookie auto-deleting
> Anyway, I didn't downvote your above comment, which is now flagged as well. Near as I can figure the "modern godwin" accusation leveled against you is either because you mentioned brave (is Eich claimed to be a nazi now?) or because you said Mozilla is being woke. Either way, a very stupid reaction to your inoffensive comment. This place is becoming orange reddit.
Thanks for saying so! And yep. The funny thing is, all these dogmatic people do is strengthen the opinion of regular tech users like me. The more vindictive they get, the harder I try to steer away more and more people from Firefox.
Funnily enough its the opposite with Thunderbird. Since they had their split, their management is a lot more neutral and tech-focused and thus I try to get as many people back on that train as possible. I've even donated to Thunderbird, as those donations are specifically earmarked for Thunderbird only.
That's misinformation. It may not be as good as ublock origin (I don't know) but in my experience it removes practically everything.
I don't hate Firefox, I hate Mozilla.
This might be the most real comment here. All our perceptions are some fictionalized version of <insert company/product here>. Doesn't matter if it is Apple, Google, Mozilla, or whatever. Our judgements are based on narrow experiences and highly affected by the PR generated around them.
When it comes to Firefox, a lot of users' judgements might be from actual experience using the product back in its heyday (before it was lobotomized), as opposed to PR?
However, bringing PR into the discussion is a good point. Mozilla turned from a browser/web tools maker into a PR agency with unclear profit motives that happens to make an increasingly-lackluster browser.
I've never had to use about:config on mobile before, but I just checked and it works fine for me.
Do I even dare ask WTF William the Conqueror has to do with Firefox...? :V
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-opt-out-studies-fir...
- They are (recently) very top heavy for a non-profit foundation and are spending non-negligible amounts of money on C-level and execs
- Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet
- (Personally) their recent trends of UX with 'dummyfication' and mimicking chrome is a terrible loss
I am approximately as cynical as they come, and I'm not sure how Firefox could even exist if Google weren't keeping Mozilla alive (on life support), so I am intrigued by your criticism. I'd like to understand your viewpoint and what ideology is behind it, if any. In your view, what should be done?
> Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet
How would they get more sources of funding if not exploring other projects? Firefox would never pay for itself.
I totally agree with the exec thing, however.
In other words, HN crowd will shit on them regardless of what they do.
What aggravates me is nobody is asking why do you need so much cash?
- Why has it become so big that it needs to spend 81M on Management payroll per year? [0]
- Why has it grown so big that it needs to spend 21M in external consultants per year? [0]
- Why do you need 1000+ staff to roll out an open source browser engine / browser and an email client?
Mozilla had almost 8M in no strings attached donations in 2021. If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things. This is even without taking into account Investment returns.
The cow grew too fat and too close to SF's money vortex.
[0] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
Is there a more sustainable path where they don't rely on Google so much? Maybe? Developing a browser doesn't seem to be cheap. Do we know how many resources are used in Firefox versus the rest? I'd like to see a strong argument that Mozilla could be fully/more independent while still developing Firefox.
The thing is, even if they're badly managed today, they're still the best agent fighting for the open web. Apple helps, but I don't think they care much about it and would happily change if it were better for their bottom line.
Well the C-suite sure isn't writing code, so that's already a few million going to "the rest" as opposed to Firefox.
It's one or the other, you can't have neither. 8 million is tiny in comparison to who they're trying to compete with. Thank god that's not their only revenue source, otherwise they'd be dead a decade ago. I guarantee you Edge has a higher yearly budget than that without even having their own engine.
> If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year...
Go ahead and do that, nothing's stopping you. You've been beating this same drum for the past three years[0], don't you get tired of it? I'm begging you, do something useful for the future of the web instead of shitting on those that do. It doesn't have to be Mozilla, donate to FSF, Ladybird, Internet Archive, Wikimedia, and so on and so on. Get involved, be the change you want to see, create your own NGO that will do something better and I'm gonna be the first one to throw money your way. Just do something useful with your time instead of chasing internet points by behaving like a parrot.
> On thing I feel we are still missing is for FSF, Wiki, Archive.org, etc. to effectively gather enough cash to start lobbying in politics and in industry much in the same way Meta and Alphabet do.[1]
Guess who's been doing that? Mozilla[2], the same NGO you've been shitting on for hours in this thread! Pick. A. Lane. Stand for something that's not downplaying work done by others.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24654676
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36981953
[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/bills?c...
Writing fast moving mature Software for multiple platforms, is not something you can do with three nerds in your spare-time. Web browsers are highly complex, and Firefox has still many historical grown baggage to improve and maintain. And let's be fair, their software has a very high quality-level, even we can dispute on the details. Whether 1000+ people are necessary for this, I don't know, but considering everything they do even in their core-area, it's not something which can be done with small budget.
> If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things.
Amazing by their perspective, but not by the standards of end-users. And 8 Millionen, that's around 666k per month, meaning you have either around 3-5 well paid workers who are worth that price, or 10-20 poorly paid workers, who are probably average competent at best. And this is nowhere near the number of people necessary for such a big project.
I like where you were going with your comment but the math doesn't support the specific argument.
How many people do you think work on the Chrome team? Then include companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Igalia, and others that contribute to Chromium.
The browser is the primary interface to untrusted and often-malicious code, as well as a window to the outside world. It's the perfect place for security features that would actually make a difference.
Sell an enterprise-focused browser with built-in ad & tracker blocking (important for security), website restriction policies (which are currently implemented via various hacks such as DNS blocking), logging and data loss prevention and centralized management. Use that to subsidize the free version.
They won't even need to restrict the free version's features; all the code can remain open-source. Enterprise customers pay for the support and the hosted services (case in point - Okta has a successful business despite there being plenty of free, self-hostable alternatives).
Mozilla has a huge competitive advantage here - they have brand recognition (especially among IT folks which would help sell it to the enterprise), a competent and up-to-date rendering engine (no small feat these days) and at least some skill left to work on said rendering engine. They're in the perfect position to actually be able to offer a browser product (as opposed to a Chromium reskin which is all that the competition does).
Do any of those companies' browsers actually come anywhere close to the feature set I just outlined? Chrome is functionally a very good browser but lacks those features, and Edge is malware disguised as a browser that needs a full-time sysadmin to keep on top of the group policies to disable whatever bullshit "feature" they release every few weeks.
None of them have ad/tracker/malware blocking, logging or data loss prevention. Not sure if any have website/domain blocking capabilities. All of these are features that big enterprises currently use expensive third-party solutions (such as TLS intercepting proxies) for. A browser that has that built-in would actually be an upgrade.
> Oh fuck off
Shall we keep it civil? I think we’re both ultimately on the same side in wanting a browser that puts users’ interests first instead of adtech or dubious corporate interests (I’m not even sure of Mozilla’s current strategy because the user-hostility and annoyance of Firefox isn’t even due to actual ads).
What are those strings, apart from being default search engine?
I don't understand nor approve their current strategy of trying to make a Chrome clone - even if they actually make a perfect copy, why would people use it instead of Chrome itself?
The only way for Firefox to survive and thrive is to differentiate itself from the incumbents and offer features that those incumbents can't offer due to conflicts of interest such as built-in ad blocking. Make a better browser and people will come.
At the moment there is no reason for any non-technical user to use it over Chrome, since in its default configuration it's no better (and being non-technical means they are not aware of add-ons/etc). Give non-technical users an actual reason to pick it over Chrome.
Worse, their current strategy is actually alienating their current (mostly-technical) users, effectively working against their already-tiny marketshare.
With magic money? Do you think mozilla employees and firefox employees should starve? Should they be making firefox entirely as charity?
The other browsers are made by a GigaCorp that extracts a tax from pretty much everything on the internet, especially if you want to do any advertising, and another Megacorp that has billions upon billions of dollars in cash just waiting for a need and also extracts 30% on ANY financial transaction using their hardware.
Imagine people pushing stupid hard for everyone to use Meta's MetaVerse instead of VRChat because VRChat once had an advertising ID in their code or something. Like sure, that's not awesome, but like, what the fuck is the alternative?
Well they've got enough magic money considering the salaries of their C-suite, so short-term needs are absolutely covered.
Long-term the Google subsidy will eventually dry up but focusing on an enterprise-grade browser (see my other comment here) is worth a shot.
Charity isn't actually that bad of an idea either, since Mozilla Foundation is actually a non-profit (but somehow owns a for-profit company that pays insane salaries to execs? Shady as fuck). Developing a browser that is actually focused on the user fits with their purported mission and will do more to improve the web than all the auxiliary projects/initiatives they've done so far.
How many Managers does one need to negotiate prices for VPN and Pocket? So far, the excessive management does not make the impression to be very valuable for making money, or even let Mozilla survive one day longer.
Of course do they need to make money, but at no point so far did they make the impression that they made any serious attempt beyond some lip service. Well, except VPN, which is just a resale of a popular service, with a natural chemistry for their philosophy.. And I'm not sure how much money their VPN really made so far.
And I mean sure, it's not a bad goal, but they are letting Firefox die in the process. And once you lost your place at the standards negotiating table, then what? They already capitulated when Google decided that browsers needed DRM, and I don't see them stopping WEI either.
I don't need yet another VPN. I need a strong browser to rival Chrome.
That’s a charitable interpretation. An uncharitable one would be that, due to flaws in American 501c3 legislation, at least some people involved in Mozilla view their job as a sinecure. Capture of a non-profit for personal benefit is a longstanding phenomenon in the USA.
No. Capture of a non-profit for personal benefit is key to the express purpose of non-profits in the USA.
The foremost function of non-profits in the US is to displace community organizations, especially democratic worker organizations which remotely resemble a workers' political party like you can find in other countries. Non-profit law in the US makes such organizations perfectly illegal while providing anti-democratic resemblances of them instead.
People get so pissy about mozilla pissing away a few dollars here and there, or maybe is full of people just extracting cash from the brand.
Meanwhile google as a corporation extracts a tax on pretty much anything that touches the internet.
But sure, mozilla is the bad guy here and we shouldn't use their browser......
It’s more than a few dollars. For years now, the majority of the Mozilla Foundation’s income goes to things other than developing Firefox.
Meanwhile firefox works well, is plenty performant, and isn't pushing "standards" that try to make it easier to advertise to me, against my wishes. Why would you use the browser made by an advertising company instead?
The Mozilla "Foundation" does not develop Firefox at all. In fact they cannot do so. Because that would be tantamount to a nonprofit devoting resources towards the service of a for-profit business.
HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for
1) being financially dependent on Google
2) spending resources on literally anything except Firefox
3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox, no matter how innocuous
Spoiler alert: They have essentially no hope of avoiding 1 without doing at least a little bit of 2 or 3. Unlike Google, Apple, and Microsoft, they don't have billions of dollars coming through the backdoor from other business units. The money can't just magically appear, so either they make it from Google, from Firefox, or from alternative services.
Firefox on the other hand, despite having a lot of user-hostile functionality and design decisions, will constantly nag you pretending to be on your side, misleading you into a false sense of security.
It's funny because, you know, I expect chrome to screw me over while I expect firefox not to screw me over but chrome has screwed me over fewer times than firefox over the years.
It's one thing to make a mistake or do user-hostile decisions inline with your business model. But it's another to loudly shout about how "good" you are (and everyone else is bad) and then do the exact same thing.
Same reason why a policeman or some law-enforcement figure gets more outrage for committing a crime than a normal citizen.
What are you all smoking?
Also, ads on websites are one thing. Ads/nags within the browser itself (which I'm already using) are another. I'm pretty sure Google doesn't bother advertising Chrome to users who already use Chrome.
God damn, people act like money grows on trees when it comes to firefox. I don't care if they flub an attempt at advertising, like the Mr Robot nonsense, because mozilla isn't actively pushing "standards" meant to prevent me from some day being anonymous on the internet or blocking advertising
Virtue-signalling and wasting people's times does not contribute to funding either. I'd disagree with but understand actual ads, or promotions for Pocket/VPN/etc... but wasting users' time on virtue-signalling or "Colorways"?
(look at my other comments for actual long-term funding ideas for Firefox)
I constantly see Chrome ads about privacy and security. Your argument also isn't consistent. Your complaint is that Mozilla has "failed" to achieve their stated goals. The quotes because they've definitely made progress towards that, but just not to your expectations. That is fine to have higher expectations, but you're literally discouraging Mozilla from working in that direction, where others aren't making those moves __at all__. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
And can we stop copy pasting that line? You're starting to sound like a bot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyUIEYE13jE
Firefox has been an amazing product since day one.
Meanwhile, Chrome has literally been developed to probe your ass for data they can sell to advertisers.
In that thread there are a few more examples, most of them somewhat recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077683
Omg, firefox screwed me over by showing me an ad.
I see. I think no further illustration needed.
It's astounding how far people bend over backwards just to not change browsers for the good of the internet as a whole.
"Yeah I could stop hanging out with a serial baby stabber, but the other guy once said my hat was funny, so that's terrible and I will stay with the baby stabber"
Hardly screwing us over, though. They’ve been doing even worse things, for example constantly opting us in for “anonymous statistics” etc.
If it one day comes out they’ve been sharing this data deanonymized with 3rd parties, then you can say you’ve been screwed over.
People tend to just judge Mozilla way more harshly.
It's very unfair: they do good, and we ask even more of them.
Can we seriously not even contemplate the idea that there might be a certain corporate entity out there with a vested interest in ensuring that Firefox usage is kept deliberately low while at the same ensuring they _just_ enough funding to keep going so they can point to it and say "look, we're not a monopoly!"
It doesn't take a lot of mental effort to realize that the userbase left doesn't want telemetry and third party partnerships; Mozilla knew this, they tried to get away with it and lost goodwill.
It's not the thing, it's the attempt to get away with it that irks me. No one except The Paid wanted pocket integration and Mr Robot promotions.
Meanwhile google is pushing an attempt to strangle the open internet to death, in the open, for all eyes to see.
But no, lets keep pretending that mozilla doing a poorly executed ad is comparable to THAT
It's a self-inflicted problem though. Mozilla uses every opportunity to claim they're on your side and want to protect you from the evil guys.
The nagging itself is annoying to begin with (and incomprehensible - at least ads make sense from a business point of view - but why interrupt my workflow to let me know about Colorways?), but it's made even worse with all their self-righteous BS about privacy while the browser actually being pretty poor (and not GDPR compliant due to default-on telemetry) in its default configuration.
What does this mean? My experience using tabs in firefox has not changed in like twenty years!
Look what an unholy mess the new change to audio playing status has caused.
To summarize, in compact mode you will get the audio playing icon on a tab but it will hide the favicon in that case.
In normal mode, and only if you have a small number of tabs, you will find a tiny 'PLAYING' text instead. If you hover over it, you will find the playing icon...which will have hidden the favicon then.
UX geniuses with too much time on their hands.
Supports adblock (addons) and shows tabs on top just like desktop so it's easy to switch, dark mode for all websites, etc. It's relative fast and lots of options. I use FF with no addons for some websites.
Honestly, I hate this on the phone. But I get it. I had that initial cognitive disruption when FF did this. But once that was gone (idk, like 30 minutes?) I realized it was a lot nicer because I could actually reach the address bar and tabs without needing to stretch my hand. Or if I have a bigger phone, use a second hand. I mean there's a reason navigation buttons on the phones (for the OS) were always on the bottom. It's just easier. But yeah, you gotta get through the initial cognitive disruption. But you know what? I also got used to when Android switched the time from being at the top right to top left and I'm willing to bet most people did too and don't really think about it anymore. As for the dark mode... well you got a point there. Though dark reader was one of the first add-ons on FF mobile. Though as much as I love dark mode, some websites are just unreadable with it and it drives me nuts. Specifically anything with a transparent background...
Uhhh how many tabs do you keep open? I have 16 or so in the background on firefox on an old ass Pixel 2 phone and it never has any sort of delay.
https://www.engadget.com/firefox-for-android-update-08000789...
I'm not salty about the 6+ interviews or anything.
The manager of the team I would have been going on (FF for Android funnily enough) knew of some of (and said he actively used) my past work which was probably a leg up.
In the end they were far from the worst interviewers (hello Hopper for that title*), but it soured me against Mozilla after putting that much time and effort into it and just getting a "we're no longer hiring for this position" form email.
*: Never paying out their tech screening "payment", to rejecting me over an answer I never gave (we didn't like when you said "XYZ").
Where have they announced that they're focusing on "agenda pushing"? Mozilla's "agenda" feels like a very tiny part of what they do, it's just that people talk about it endlessly.
Just read their blog. Latest three: - EU's AI Act - Fakespot school supplies? - Making trustworthy chatbots to support women plagued by violence and abuse
The first one might make sense? Second one WTF? And third is disgusting (I know people effected and the LAST thing they want is some chatbot).
None of these are related strongly to Firefox. I quit donating to them years ago after it was obvious they have their priorities messed up.
How is hosting "responsible AI" competitions not something they're doing? Sounds like a huge waste and a distraction from what should be their core mission of protecting the web by making the best browser they possibly can. If they want to dip their toes into the AI space to stay trendy and relevant, they could at least do it in a way that constructively relates to creating a web browser. Their local translation extension is a good example of this, they did a great job with it. They could do more, like maybe experiment with AI-guided adblocking or something. But a competition to create responsible chatbots? How is that relevant to Firefox? Besides the winner of the competition being stupid, the whole competition was stupid. What did they even hope to accomplish with such a competition, to sway the development of commercial chatbots from the likes of OpenAI or Facebook? They gave out $100k to the top 3 winners and not one of them has anything to do with making a better browser. If I'm wrong, then please explain how any of this relates to making Firefox better. Don't copy-paste their vapid corporate rambling explanation to me, if you can't explain it in plain normal english then it's bullshit.
In your opinion. I disagree. They could spend a billion dollars on making the best browser the world has ever seen and it would still be used by next to no-one. People use the browser they're given, especially in the smartphone era we're in now. Android users use Chrome. iOS users use Safari, Mozilla isn't even allowed to make a real version of Firefox for iOS.
So they've clearly decided to expand their mission to protect the web. Ensuring AI is used ethically strikes me as relevant to the topic, a little too much like chasing buzzwords to my taste but it's clearly an area of current interest. And hey, maybe a few more people will learn about the Mozilla brand and consider converting to Firefox some day.
Seems like you're now conceding matheusmoreira's point you disputed before:
> They got one billion dollars and they're reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead.
And you haven't bothered to answer my question, so I'll put it to you again: How does rewarding the development of a chatbot to talk about sexual violence relate to furthering their mission to "protect the web"? It's nothing more than the predictable synthesis of AI hype and a popular social cause, it has nothing to do with the web at all. If the best you can come up with is people will hear about this chatbot and then maybe they'll use Firefox, then why don't you just admit the whole thing is a farce?
And as for it being an effective promotion of firefox and "clearly an area of current interest", then where, besides Mozilla's corporate blog, have you ever heard of this chatbot competition or any of the three winners? The winner of the competition is "Sanative AI", never mentioned on HN before this comment. Do a general web search for "Sanative AI" tell me if any of the results you find are likely to inform people of Firefox's existence and benefits. I feel confident in asserting that this competition has not brought a single new user to Firefox, and was not in earnest ever meant to.
I don't understand why everyone keeps talking about this as if it's an either/or.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/116.0/releasenotes/
Three releases so far this month! Look at that technical organization iterating on its core product!
Maybe that's a great example of the different ways you can look at the exact same thing. To me that's a privacy cause, and it's one I agree with. What percentage of Ring customers are aware they're providing the police with a direct feed of their front yard?
"Ring Reveals They Give Videos to Police Without User Consent or a Warrant"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/ring-reveals-they-give...
"Privacy cause" is an agenda they're pushing. An agenda I happen to agree with, but promoting that privacy agenda is not software development spending no matter how you look at it. You can't reasonably claim these are equivalent just because you like them both. Telling people that Ring is bad isn't software development, a "different way of looking at it" doesn't cut it.
There aren't only two pots of money in the Mozilla budget, one labeled "software development" and another "agendas", they do all kinds of things. An increase in "agendas" does not automatically mean a decrease in software development. Case in point: Mozilla used to have a "Mozilla Science Lab" from 2013-18[1]. When it was shut down there was presumably extra cash made available. Maybe it went to "agendas", maybe it didn't. And hey, maybe it couldn't: the foundation receives donations for specific projects, they're not able to just say "thanks for the money, we're actually going to spend it on something totally different". If they shut down a program they might well lose the funding associated with it and the whole thing would be a zero-sum exercise.
To interpret this as a binary choice between two activities is an oversimplification.
The claim was more specific than that: it was “reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead”.
Two factual statements:
1) the Mozilla Corporation laid off engineers
2) the Mozilla Foundation spent money pursuing “agendas”
I am suggesting that those two events are not necessarily connected to each other.
There's definitely an agenda. It's one that's good for users IMHO though, as opposed to the agendas of the for-profit browser makers.
This just made my mind blow up...
If it's true, then it's REALLY BAD!!!
- they fired lots of good devs to cut on expenses but then keep paying more and more to top execs (and we're not getting any anomalous good results that justify it iyam)...
- from what i understood, they also "kind of" kicked Brendan Eich (yeah, Brave's CEO, the guy that invented JS, etc...) out over some "personal" things that had nothing to do with Mozilla (but then again... you should go read about this and take your own conclusions)
- Firefox, also start following the herd and that led to it cutting lots of features people loved (e.g.: Firefox had tab grouping addons - and then a native feature - way before we had Chrome browser... now everyone complains firefox is the only browser that does not support tab groups... kind of ironic!)
- some more .......
All in all it's a love-hate relation! We love and need Firefox because it's the only good thing left around, but people are very pissed up with "Mozilla's attitudes and decisions"
then again... this is just what i understand from the "news"!!! You should really go out and see what others think about it!!!
I think tab containers are way better after getting used to them. But they are much jankier and feel they needs a UX pass to really make it shine. There were a half dozen instances where I wanted to do something, thought it wasn't a feature, and then found it in a weird context menu. Which includes the fact that the feature itself is behind an add-on! A add-on with native level support, but an add-on nonetheless.
All the ideas of tab groups and much more is there but scattered all over the place.
Was it for public statements that might be construed as creating a hostile work environment?
I don’t know why it’s so hard for leadership to just keep their nose clean, avoid making any sweepingly bigoted statements, do their jobs, and make their millions. If you’re an embarrassment for the company as an IC you’re gone, even if it happened in your personal life and not at work. Why should leadership be held to a lesser standard, especially when they actually do hold power over people’s lives and careers?
Its 2023 and we’re still doing the “blizzard defense”, employees just need to live with the hostile work environment, it’s personal beliefs/not serious, right? And while some companies might let you get away with it, the law is not exactly on your side either.
I mean, I realize that's a lost cause, but I still believe it.
What else do you do with a billon dollars? Even a browser on FF's scale doesn't need a billion to operate properly. Most of that would go towards advertising and lobbying for stuff to secure their place.
Especially for non-tech-savvy people, who don't know what a browser is, if they need a certain feature then you just replaced their chrome with firefox + this feature and they were happy. But if Firefox is just another Chrome clone, then it is neccessarily an inferior one.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
Perhaps anecdotal, but whenever I ask a Chrome user why they don't use Firefox, that's the main two reasons they cite. I do ask often though.
What "certain features" do non-tech-savvy people need? I know lots of devs who rarely even know or care which browser they're using. Not to mention non-tech-savvy people..
Speaking of mobile firefox where did Save as PDF vanish and why? and so on
edit: I have been told in a reply the save pdf feature still exists but has been changed for no reason to a different location in the menu
They can never provide rational justification for any of it. Their "data" arguments are farcical. Have you ever tried to push back against a UX expert's decrees? They can't rationally defend their changes with the data that supposedly informs them so it rapidly devolves into "your opinions on UX are invalid because you're an engineer. I'm an expert so you need to trust me." Salaried "UX experts" are a blight on software development; if their services are ever needed at all, they should be given a short contract with clearly defined goals.
The utter horror. It's so user hostile to make an easy way to see which tab is the source of the annoying sound you are hearing.
Oh, and it doesn't hide the favicon unless you have so many tabs open each tab can only fit the favicon. So for probably the vast majority of users who don't spend their days with 300 tabs they never check constantly open, they don't see this.
So user hostile
Look what an unholy mess the new change to audio playing status has caused.
To summarize, in compact mode you will get the audio playing icon on a tab but it will hide the favicon in that case.
In normal mode, and only if you have a small number of tabs, you will find a tiny 'PLAYING' text instead. If you hover over it, you will find the playing icon...which will have hidden the favicon then.
UX geniuses with too much time on their hands.
On mobile though... I switched back about a year ago, when I got sick of the ads on chrome.
If the choice is between being able to install uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger vs not being able to... I'll definitely stick with Firefox on mobile.
A multi-process architecture is not an obscure technical goal, it's an essential for modern browsing, and something that Chrome had from the outset, and is a large part of the reason that Chrome originally clobbered Firefox in both security and perceived speed.
Today Mr. Firmwarrior stands in the public square shouting about Firefox some more.
If Chrome actually tries to force some crazy user-hostile breaking change like Manifest V3, we'll probably get enough pushback to see a really polished Chromium fork take off. Worst case, I can use LibreWolf as my daily driver
There is no better vertical tab solution than FireFox + Sidebury.
If you are using horizontal tabs, you are not a "power-user" of a browser.
This is just such absurd, elitist, gatekeeping. WTF. How about just not have 400 tabs open? Am I really not a "power user" of my browser because I utilize the bookmark feature.
Get over yourself man
I am not "gatekeeping," I just think that you aren't using the "power" of the browser if you have <10 tabs open and limited tab name space. What's your definition of browser "power user?"
On my MBP, I have 10 windows (each with a title representing general category). In each, I have: up to 24 pinned tabs that take up three tab slots up to 30 regular tabs open that I can see without scrolling each of my tabs has 40 characters of name space, which is plenty to know exactly what the tab is
I'm sorry if my post came off as acerbic. I will admit that I am annoyed as hell that:
1. Chrome has such market share when it doesn't have a descent vertical tab solution
2. Safari's vertical tabs are a total joke and Brave's are barely better
3. Firefox doesn't have native vertical tabs so I have to rely on an extension and they make it a total pain to get rid of the horizontal tabs
Even still works on newest Firefox, assuming you install a sketchy extension and disable signature checking. Thanks for your contribution, Firefox, I guess, though I can't help but notice that you spent the past decade trying your hardest to make this addon not work.
Their market share was dropping for a long time before, and it was dropping for a long time after. And to the extent that switching addon models helped them improve performance during their big marketing push in 2017, it probably got them a few users back if anything.
A full half of Firefox users (even at the time) didn't use addons, and the majority of the rest only used one or two adblockers.
It also remains more blocking capable than Chrome, for those so inclined.
So I think that on the balance, I'm a supporter.
This decision, to finally re-enable add-ons on Android, is a good one and I applaud Mozilla for making it!
You are confusing cause and effect. We've been saying the same things as we watch Mozilla slowly strangle Firefox to death for a decade.
That said, this is great news. I'm very much looking forward to being able to capture embedded videos on Android and maybe even get back my precious DownThemAll.
Google is actively doing that every single fucking day with thousands of people working towards this goal, with Chrome being an essential tool in that process, as whatever chrome does, everyone else will be forced to do.
Why the fuck would you enable that, even for a little "convenience"?
That's called "Waterfox Classic".
Absolutely not true. I still hear people talking about FF as if it is pre-quantum. They complain about how slow it is. But quantum made it faster and more secure overnight. There's still a lot of people who are complaining and have just never tried it after the big issues were fixed. Or they try it, there's a small cognitive dissonance because checks notes "the interface is horrible", and so they call it slow attempting to justify why they dislike it rather than making an actual criticism or giving it a fair shot. Come on, the UI is almost identical across the board with browsers.
And we're doing this for what... to give Google more power over the internet? I'm sorry, I think it is you who are confusing cause and effect. You participated in the monopolization of browsers and are suffering the consequences of it. Because of a little convenience. The path to hell is indeed paved with "good intentions." Little steps is all it takes to make progress over decades. Unless you can tell me there's a huge major problem with FF that outweighs the ad focused internet, then you have it backwards.
Firefox has been my browser of choice since v1.5. If I didn't use it I wouldn't need to complain about it. Its slide ever-closer to Chrome-hood is why we're disappointed.
all this has accomplished in the last decade is a decrease in market share
But phones are so much faster now! And with MV3 chrome claims they have prevented a variety of ways extensions might be slow.
I don't know how Chrome can keep justifying this old old choice.
(~30y Mosaic/Netscape/FF user)
Regardless, my point stands, Safari mobile lacked extensions for over a decade while Firefox was offering some on Android. Can iOS browsers even offer meaningful extensions so long as Apple forces them to be a skin on Webkit? (With Safari getting privileged access of course.)
iOS and iPadOS Safari has supported extensions for a while now.
https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/get-extensions-ipada7ca...
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/get-extensions-iphab0...
> For the past few years Firefox for Android officially supported a small subset of extensions
If you're referring to desktop, on the other hand, Safari has had extensions since 2010.
And again, mobile Chrome, a much bigger competitor than Firefox, has no extensions.
3 years is a long time, yet for the impatient there is an escape hatch. I've been using it for years to get more add-ons into my Firefox install. And there were some extensions available during that period, which is more than none. Mozilla has been offering more choice and customization than a trillion dollar competitor for over a decade, and for some cases still does.
I'm sad that Vivaldi uses Chromium under the hood, but that the only thing that has UX I need (and I don't even care about its slow UI and random crashes every few days).
But I'm always happy to hear someone uses Firefox.
Some facts:
One does not need Firefox Nightly to run more extensions than the "supported" ones.
Creating a "custom" collection of Add-Ons on addons.mozilla.org can be done using a disposable email address.
There is no visible Settings option to add a custom collection in Fennec from F-Droid. To make it visible, one has to go the About page under Settings and tap the Firefox logo three or more times.
One needs to enter an "ID" in Fennec to add a "custom" collection. The addons.mozilla.org site does not tell the user her ID, it's in the URL that points to her collection.
After a custom collection is added, one loses the default collection of Add-Ons "supported" by Mozilla. No way to easily switch between collections. Need to remove the current collection.
After installing a custom collection, whenever the user access the Add-Ons menu in Fennec, Firefox tries to connect to addons.mozilla.org. Mozilla's definition of user privacy excludes telemetry and data collection by Mozilla.
As another commenter mentioned, many of the Add-Ons that are not "supported" by Mozilla work just fine. They work just as well as uBblock origin, NoScript and the other "supporteed" ones.
I seriously don't get it. Why do I have to create a "custom collection" with an email address to install an extension. Why can't it work like it does on PC ?
I used to have a number of addons installed at that time, including Stylish (prior to the hostile changes), uBlock Origin and UnMHT.
You probably mean the Firefox Daylight release that happened in August 2020. Firefox Daylight or Fenix was a completely new browser, not an update. That completely new browser did not fully support add-ons at the time it was released, which is why Mozilla introduced the restricted list of "supported" add-ons. I'm not quite sure how this is ironic. You seem to think that Mozilla somehow did this to get one over on their users, but I can assure you that this isn't the case.
Legacy addon support was removed from Firefox for Android at that point, too. Wikipedia confirms that in 2017 v56 of the Android version was the last to support them[1][2] and according to the official Android release notes the update was also called Quantum.
You're apparently correct that it didn't technically remove support for WebExtension addons though the addons I used became incompatible with the switch (which unfortunately caused me to switch to another browser after a faithful period of sticking with Firefox), including most that never became re-compatible on either desktop or Android again, including the exceptional UnMHT and sadly Firefox since has lacked MHTML support to this day.
It seems the dropping of legacy addons similarly caused others in this thread to recollect FF for Android as having dropped addon support during that period, given the impact in functionality.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_Android#Release_hi...
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/57.0/releaseno...
This is great news. Can't wait to have a no-fuss paywall bypass on mobile again.
Super stoked with this news this morning.
Did you mean Obtainium?
There is literally no ads nor external SDK or ad-tech or whatever you are referring to (before there was AdMob, but it didn't make much money anyway).
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.kiwibro...
The way Kiwi makes money is by partnering with Bing / Yahoo.
You launch the browser, it starts with Bing or Yahoo (depending on your country), and... that's it.
Bing then pays back a revenue-share to the browser each time the user uses the search engine.
The same way that DuckDuckGo gets a revenue-share from Yahoo and Bing too when you use DuckDuckGo.
So, if you prefer Firefox and Google, or Kiwi and Bing, this is just a matter of choice.
Tbf the dev always sounds reasonable in their responses but was a little off-putting initially so I kinda understand the GP's impression.
[1] https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next/issues/91#issuecomme...
[2] https://github.com/Tobi823/ffupdater/issues/35
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20210605191305/https://github.co...
> which is based on Chromium.
unfortunately that's a dealbreaker for me.
> No warranties or guarantees of security or updates
In general it's fine for users to fork software to scratch their own itches. But browsers are super security sensitive.
If uBlock Origin wasn't supported I would be on Iceraven, but I don't run a ton of extensions so I was willing to tolerate some inconvenience in order to be closer to the source.
The other thing is that Iceraven isn't a silver bullet, you can install any extension but if it's relying on an API that's not implemented yet it will break. Which is totally not their fault, but it gets back to -- Mozilla needs to actually implement full extension support beyond just flipping a switch on.
I'm glad Iceraven exists though :) I wouldn't not recommend them to someone who needs more extension support, it's just not right for my personal use case.
How can people complain about FF so much, when it's the only mobile browser that even gives you this option, and radically cleans up mobile browsing.
But no, it's "mozilla bad"
Which of those are you currently donating to?
No? We only have this requirement of the only browser not tied to an advertising organization? Huh, that's very strange....
Because apparently, I'm not allowed to embrace the full potential of my browser by installing any extensions that haven't been hand-delivered and serenaded by the majestic Firefox Marketplace.
Please share if you're familiar with a method. I'm contemplating the creation of my own customized version of Android Firefox, incorporating code to enable installation from XPI files.
Edit: Just tried it, not working: Tabbing on the xpi file -> Open with. Getting the toast "None of your Apps can open this file" even tough I just installed fennec.
coming They removed it. It was one good thing about Firefox mobile and they removed it.
Now please bring back the old UI and fix other issues you broke with that update (so the window that shows tabs so it doesn't forget where its position was, or make external video player work again) and I might switch back.
though it should be noted that i use browser on phone just to consume text. no video, no audio, and even picture is rarely the focus.
so, what do i miss?
The others are missing for sure, though.
You don't need this. Just go to your uBlock Origin filter lists settings and enable these:
* AdGuard - Annoyances
* uBlock filters – Annoyances
* You can now also use uBlock Origin to set cookies and LocalStorage entries automatically. The annoyance lists already set opt-out cookies for sites like Google and Youtube
* Firefox has actually been isolating third-party cookies and other site data (e.g. LocalStorage) for over a year. It's pointless for you to ever be concerned about them.
1. OneTab 2. Unhook 3. Unclutter 4. Violentmonkey
Tampermonkey shows in Add-on manager list in android, but not in addons.mozilla.org!
* AdGuard - Annoyances
* uBlock filters – Annoyances
uBlock Origin also has an "element zapper" feature that lets you temporarily remove overlays that aren't covered by the lists.
So I can read Twitter links without dealing with the login modals.
* AdGuard - Annoyances
* uBlock filters – Annoyances
Also, for browsing Twitter anonymously, you could use nitter.net instead of the official Twitter site.
That's precisely what that extension's doing -for- them when twitter links show up somewhere else.
multi-containers.
How do you want to separate cookies/identities without that?
I seriously can't live without it, anytime I'm trying to read a website and a fucking pop-up obscures the text I'm trying to read, I want to throw my device on the floor.
I mean I am happy enough with Firefox on android even with it quirks, and the main add-ons I use are already supported but this will fill in the last few gaps.
Very welcome!
It has been possible to use extensions on Android, but keeping them loaded on Android after OOM reclamation has been a pain up until now.
I wrote up a hack where I push Android Firefox extensions over Wireguard and OCR.
https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu...
Hopefully this is the end of the need for this kind of hack. I love Firefox on all my platforms and having extensions on Android makes it even better.
By the way, seems like you could use inotify to detect new screenshots rather than polling the Syncthing API. Probably not enough of a functional difference to change something that is already working though.
Syncthing was necessary to get the files onto my desktop machine, and I don't know how I could have automatically pushed from my android phone otherwise. Syncthing was so ridiculously easy to use, I basically just started a docker container, and then added the backend on my Android device. Zero firewall configuration. So simple. I suppose I could have easily used inotify, but either way I needed a script to launch the OCR, and I don't really see a big value in using a filesystem watch over an API when the syncthing api is very simple.
Cheers!
You make a good point about Syncthing. It's just that polling kind of offends my sensibilities if there's something better. But.. I'm one of those hackers running multiple bash processes per second just to update my status bar... For about ten years now! So, don't mind me. ;)
Syncthing is great software and I'm using it on all my devices. I'm glad it provided an easy solution to your use case.
But then they decided they needed a mobile-specific experience and created the current dumbed down version with limited add-on support.
Because the typical user will ignore the warning and install the extension. Then down the line Firefox will be slow and they forget why. Then they uninstall Firefox.
Sure, you can avoid this trap personally. But the statistical behaviour is harmful to a healthy Firefox userbase.
If you want the typical user to use Firefox, setting yourself apart as the mobile browser that has extensions for example, or keeping features that people use and like as they used to do when they had dominant market share would be good ways to do it. They used to understand their selling point.
And beyond that, as I have personally seen using iceraven and others have noted in here, tons of extensions that firefox blacklisted work fine and have for years. They still blacklisted them. Even if we agreed that disempowering the user so that they have a good experience made sense, which I don't, the actual number they would've needed to blacklist would've been much lower than the ones they actually blacklisted. In at least one of those instances the stated reason was a blatant lie.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...
One of the things might be putting cookies on your computer.
I'm fine with just blocking and not giving consent.
Wish you hadn't downvoted him.
This is absolute hyperbole. Have you forgotten the context? You're on a story about full extension support being implemented, which is exactly what you wanted.
So after your lil'karen rant you switched to proprietary browsers that do worst?
I have used firefox since 2007. I have used the exact same firefox PROFILE, that I simply copy from device to device when I set them up, for 10 years now. I have NEVER ONCE lost ANY settings.
Maybe you're on a weird linux distro and the package manager does dumb things?
If this directed at me, well, I didn't downvote anybody. I saw the parent post being downvoted a bunch, and wanted to know what they were talking about.
I don't currently have an Android phone. Having a better browser is one of the few things which would want me to move from iOS.
It was an honest question.
Are you able to set Firefox as the default browser for Android for the whole phone? For instance, if I clicked on a link in an app, would uBlock Origin filter everything loaded? i.e, the app loaded the page in the same app, can I have that rendering engine set to Firefox with Ublock?
Edit: Sorry for anyone reading this, I know I'm using the wrong terms, hopefully you know what I mean.
That's very sad and weird mobile browsers usually don't have extensions. Firefox can probably repeat the history here - as I remember it was the first to introduce extensions (on desktop) and they are a cornerstone part of what have made it great in the first place.
Just in case anyone missed this, it seems that Android Firefox STILL will not allow anonymous installation of extensions. Even if you wrote the extension yourself, and want to install on your own device.
Only workaround is to only install approved extensions, or be forced into registering on AMO. if I am wrong I will be happy to hear it, but this upcoming release doesn't seem to offer any meaningful change in regards to user privacy and control.
> any meaningful change in regards to user privacy and control.
There's an enormous difference in user control between the 22 extensions that are currently allowed on Firefox Android and an open library of add-ons, even if Mozilla is retaining control of the add-on installation process for now. I don't usually jump to Mozilla's defense, but saying this is no "meaningful change" is rank hyperbole.
I think this mirrors the desktop behavior (now correct me if I'm wrong, I very well might be ;)). Firefox Developer Edition on Desktop has options for sideloading, but otherwise to sideload it needs to be signed. You can however temporarily load an extension to test it if you're a developer in I think any version of Firefox.
Their link (https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/developi...) suggests that Android will work (almost) the same -- you can temporarily load an extension to test it, but it needs to be signed unless you're on nightly.
I do think forcing every extension to be signed is a mistake and I wish they'd do away with that policy. But at least on first impression, it looks to me like mobile will be as open as desktop is? Which would be a huge improvement considering how locked down the current Firefox for Android is.
You also can sideload apps in Nightly, although I understand that is not ideal.
the backwards logic to justify this sentence is mind boggling. I wrote my own extension, I should be able to install it on my own device without getting permission from daddy Mozilla, period. I should not have to register for that, in the same way I dont have to register with Debian to install a program on Linux.
I wish Mozilla release altstore/sideload version of IOS app with all the feature available in android.
You can use Firefox extensions on iOS via Orion Browser.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449820...
https://browser.kagi.com/updates/orion-iOS-release-notes.htm...
It wouldn't be that much more work to package it up and release it for side loading.
"AdGuard – Cookie Notices" and "EasyList – Cookie Notices"
The best one seems to be Consent-O-Matic as it actually tries to disable all trackers, but it doesn't work on some sites/popups.
I can replicate it with just a single tab and I have excluded Firefox from all my battery saving and memory saving features.
But that was already possible to do on regular Firefox Beta and Nightly. We just had to create our own collection, like Iceraven did.
Come the fuck on
I don't believe Mozilla cares about the open web. If they did they wouldn't continuously kneecap their users. They use this open web argument to browbeat people into accepting their awful decisions that users don't like, then they do things one after another that have a predictable outcome of reducing their market share. Hard line firefox users make every excuse in the world for why people should tolerate any abuse they throw at people, it's similar to how political parties scaremonger about their opponents. It's grimy.
I want to like firefox. I want to use it. It's frustrating seeing it fall like this which is where the anger comes from. It's like having a fuck up brother and when you tell him he needs to quit fucking up he calls you a piece of shit tool of the bourgeoise. Who needs that bullshit in their lives? So I don't feel entitled to Firefox, I use alternatives.
Er, Mozilla marketshare on Android is low because of Google anti competitively bundling Chrome with the Play Store.
Chrome continues to defeat everyone, including Edge which is bundled with Windows.
Firefox's reason for irrelevance today has nothing to do with whether its competitors are bundled with operating systems.
Also, Firefox never defeated Internet Explorer. You are misremembering that. Firefox once made impressive market gains despite the anticompetitive competitor bundling. That doesn't mean it's feasible to keep doing it.
It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors.
If Firefox doesn't actually bring anything tangible to the table, why would people pick it over whatever they're currently using (which is likely to be Chrome)?
The average user doesn't hate Google like some people do, so a purely ideological argument of "it isn't Chrome" won't work (and didn't work as its marketshare kept declining). Users need tangible, non-niche features to switch.
The reason to pick firefox over competitors is because they are the ONLY web browser vendor who isn't actively handicapping the internet. Firefox could smear my face with literal shit every time I use it and it would still be less hostile to end users than, let's see what chrome is doing this week, oh yes, forcing everyone to build attestation systems into the internet so that you eventually will be cryptographically prevented from blocking ads.
Jesus. Perspective people
Nobody among regular people cares. Banking on ideology alone is in fact how you end up with a low single-digit percentage of market share.
Even if Mozilla actually had your best interests at heart, it still needs to have decent marketshare (including from people who do not know/care about ideology) to actually have any weight in web standards discussions, otherwise Chrome can just ignore it and push whatever agenda they have.
To check if it was just me I used this site: https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...
On the up side, at least it isn't stark white on a stark black background.
It's impossible that this hasn't already been seen so it's absurd it's still an issue.
Allowing access to about:config?
Nah, I'm dreaming. Will continue to use Nightly.
If so, that’s very generous of Mozilla to force users to segment themselves into an (even smaller) bucket so they can be easily tracked by fingerprint alone.
I have a wildly paranoid Firefox setup (hardened config, NoScript, Cookie AutoDelete, ClearURLs, uBlock). It basically runs everything off (js, custom fonts, cookies, etc) unless I whitelist it explicitly.
I was never quite able to replicate it on Android because some extensions didn't worked as expected or were clumsy on mobile.
Will give another try.
I suppose newer phones can handle it, but at the same time, I don't think many users realize the additional performance impact extensions can have on the browser.
EDIT: It’s kiwi and yandex browser apparently.
We currently use playfab in work, and the admin panel is missing a few features on Firefox compared to chrome. Google Meets has been doing some nonsense over the last few weeks on FF causing it to break for our team (and pushed us back to slack huddles). My bank's search functionality doesn't work on FF (but the app works so I use that instead)
Ironically, the biggest source of website breakages for me is extensions. UBlock breaks _way_ more, and I just disable it on a site by site basis.
E.g deep links. Which is very, very basic feature for mobile. Firefox on Android is unusable without it - and it seems like no one prioritize this, so excuse me for not being excited by any other feature.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54653641/app-links-not-w... https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15202 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1809264
The browser is a sandbox that I use specifically to protect me from this kind of predatory shit.
I had one for great gesture controls.
i don't know why and how people still use chrome on mobile. it is an awful web experience.
Chrome never even enters the equation. Even at work, when I've got a choice between Chrome and Edge, Edge has taken over for me because of the ability to "turn a site into an app" which lets me have work resources on the taskbar as unique icons I can easily access to switch between.
I think the one thing I keep Chrome installed on my desktop for (because I have all of them) is the superior Chromecast support if I feel like casting some streaming media to the TV in the other room from a site that isn't supported by the Roku TV.
I get the social and business issues with Mozilla, but I don't see it going anywhere for me on mobile. Probably not coming back on the desktop until they literally pay me to use it though.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-n...
So Chrome and Firefox? I already have extensions. It's too little too late Mozilla, you burned me by removing them years ago.
Firefox accounts for 0.48% of the mobile browser market share
How can you have a content-blocking browser that only allows one single tab at a time?
It happens so many times that while browsing an ad-heavy page an ad gets opened in a new tab (since Firefox fails to block it), but since it's a mono-tab browser it simply replaces the one I was browsing.
They’d have to add their own content blocking list, much like they did with Firefox Focus.
But, mostly, I just use Android so it doesn't really matter.