Platform Tilt
mozilla.github.io
mozilla.github.io
I have a related problem which is apps that launch their own web view as a builtin web browser when you click a link in the app. This lets them spy on any web activity that you do while in that embedded web view.
I think I wish that both the Android Play Store and the iOS App Store required apps to launch the user's browser for all 3rd party websites. To do this, they'd have apps categorize themselves as "web browser" or "not web browser".
For a "not web browser", the app would have to make a short list of domains (5? 10?) that it's allowed to talk to. Any others would be blocked by the OS.
For a "web browser" the app could contact any domain.
I don't know what legalize like language they'd use to define "Web browser" but apps like Facebook, FB Messenger, Google Maps, and others who's primary use is not "Browsing the web" could be clearly in the "not web browser" category.
There's multiple reasons I want this.
1. Apps with embedded web views can spy on all network activity and web view activity. By preventing apps from having embedded browsers that problem is solved.
2. Passwords, addresses, other things are synced in my browser profile. Every time some app launches an embedded browser I get none of that
3. Bookmarks are synced in my browser profile. Any sites I view in an embedded browser I can't bookmark
4. History is synced in my browser profile. Any sites I view in an embedded browser don't show up in my history
One other feature I might require if I was ruler of the world is that these apps that launch links be required to support a context menu for "open in private browser window"
remember that it's been 9 generations of android major versions since they added runtime permissions for camera and such. internet access is still not requiring a permission...
(Original incorrect post below)
Not only that, but on the play store that permission isn't mention at all. Is like "all apps will use it so why bother" but some of us create apps without it, and we cannot probe it.
I don't know what my mom and dad would do if Android ever took away the three button option.
So yeah. Lenovo sucks.
I'm more worried about others that don't have savvy children
And this might be a perfect example of where manuals make sense. Not a 300-page book (not that I'm opposed to that as a reference option), but a few pages that explain the basic gestures rather than having to randomly stumble upon it. My grandma asked for a manual when she needed a new smartphone (upgrading from Android ~5 to ~9 I think) and honestly I think it would really help her to have some pages of written instructions for the basics (not help pages or a document file to prevent a catch-22)
For example, they recently converted from DirecTV to Chromecast with Google TV (...with YouTube TV), and they use it every day, and my mom still has trouble using the d-pad to navigate menus in four directions. She was entirely used to DirecTV's menus, which (mostly) just scroll up and down using the channel rocker button.
It's been a year and despite saving probably 50%+ on their monthly TV bill, it's all my mom can say -- "When are we going back to DirecTV? It was so much easier. Google makes me feel stupid."
Windows/Xerox PARC put running applications in a dedicated spot on the screen so they're always visible and there's no guesswork for a reason. If multitasking on phones is to improve, it can't be hidden away and invisible. (And it wasn't, Android's multitasking button was at least how my dad got comfortable with the concept.)
We have decades of UX research telling us not to hide critical functions, but we keep doing it anyways because fashion/art/trends/etc.
The safari view component solves the privacy issue when adopted.
In-app web view back buttons go back to the app instead of one page back in the history. It’s driving me nuts.
> For a "not web browser", the app would have to make a short list of domains (5? 10?) that it's allowed to talk to. Any others would be blocked by the OS.
What does "allowed to talk to" mean in practice? Off the top of my head, either you only check the domains of URLs that are explicitly navigated to (too lax, easily circumvented) or you check the URLs of literally every request (too strict, many developers would not be able to load their own sites).
This is why it's 5 or 10 domains instead of just 1. You just need to list every domain you actually use.
If you’d like to help out with the effort please get in contact with us (open web advocacy)
Legislators and media fail to understand the systemic consequences of user-hostile "open" language, so do things like (a) force users to deal with 'must have' apps becoming only available outside of pro-user curation so adtech can exploit them (b) force genuinely user-friendly subscriptions management to be "opened" so billions more dollars can be pulled from user wallets without users realizing or understanding or having the willpower to overcome barriers to cancelling.
The knock-on consequences to device security, performance, reliability, and user privacy, are not understood or discussed, and if understood, would not be wanted by normal users.
This is all beautifully orchestrated by black-is-white named foundations and interest groups funded by surveillance capitalism[^2]. It's dystopian.
Luckily I only need it when Apple Maps can’t find something (or In need biking directions).
Meanwhile Google built the Custom Tabs feature[1] to push Android devs into the exact opposite direction: Even when the app just wants to open an unrelated page (e.g. from a user-provided link), its now encouraged to open the page in a "custom tab" instead of the default browser - with the explicit goal of keeping the user from leaving the app because precious precious engagement etc...
Naturally, there is no systemwide setting for users to turn it off, you have to find the setting for each app separately (or rather hope it has a setting at all).
[1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/02/bringing-b...
Mozilla is justified in challenging it, but I don't know if they want to go pulling that thread.
Safari's monopoly on iOS devices is the only reason a sizable number of developers care about non-Chrome support. Currently, they have to. If the message to users becomes "broken feature is not broken on Chrome" we're on the road to monopolyville. And then Google really doesn't need consensus when it creates new web standards.
The status quo is all sorts of messed up, but it could be worse. Hopefully I'm wrong about this.
Sounds like you like monopoly.
I don't think people actually care about browser engines. Maybe they have a notion of 'this website only works on foo browser', but im doubtful that happens a lot on the modern internet.
People already install and use Chrome on iOS because they want the non-rendering engine features, like syncing bookmarks etc.
Edit: Looking further into it, turns out MacOS system market share has a sharp decline in December for whatever reason.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833412
[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
It would be a pleasant surprise if Firefox for iOS got a marketshare bump large enough to move the needle, but I wouldn’t bet on it because the odds are against that happening.
> Those new iOS Firefox users would then be encouraged to adopt Firefox on their desktop computers, because they would finally be able to sync desktop Firefox with an adblock-enabled Firefox on iOS.
That's not true. People don't care about adblock-enabled Firefox on iOS, because they don't care about Firefox whatsoever. And they don't care about Firefox whatsoever because Mozilla doesn't care - they seem to be focused on just about anything (mostly CEO bonuses), except actually improving the browser to be a competitive product.
I use Firefox as my daily driver, and believe me - the temptation to just switch to Chrome is there, every day. Chrome is not only a better browser, the incompatibilities and annoyances (resulting from its de-facto monopoly) are enough to drive people away from Firefox.
The only reason why Firefox still exists, is because Google keeps paying Mozilla money to be their default search engine - and it remains in Google's best interest, it's their insurance card in a possible antitrust case.
> Of course it's in Mozilla's interest to challenge Safari's Apple-imposed monopoly on iOS.
Of course it is in their interest - because they are Google's sock-puppet.
Personally, I do hope that Apple's rules for iOS web engines get challenged - but only as a followup to an antitrust case vs Google, ideally with an outcome of separating the browser from the adtech company.
Firefox has seen meaningful improvement over the 2023 and (imo) is competitive with both Safari and Chrome and out-delivers both browsers on some metrics. To say that Mozilla does not care about Firefox is to say that the entire browser ecosystem is so stunted that an organization of Mozilla's size can keep pace with two of the richest companies on the planet while actively trying to focus their attention elsewhere.
It's nonsense.
In 2023, Firefox finally shipped fully offline translation support (a feature that literally no other browser has), they (finally) brought back full extension support to mobile devices, Linux support on Wayland improved, Manifest V3 for Firefox is now shipping (with blocking web request support) and it's actually pretty good, voice commands are now supported on Mac, Firefox managed to start surpassing Chrome's speed on Speedometer (for all the test's flaws, this is still an achievement). PDF editing launched, picture-in-picture view got a redesign. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting
I know that plenty of people would have preferred that Mozilla not spend so much time and attention on rewriting parts of mobile Firefox, but even there it's silly to argue that they significantly rewrote parts of mobile Firefox because they're not focused on Firefox.
This claim comes up all the time and I genuinely don't understand how people can possibly believe this. You think that Firefox would be competitive with Chrome and Safari if Mozilla didn't care about it? Is the idea here that Chrome and Safari engineers are so lazy that Mozilla can keep pace with them by doing nothing?
https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-...
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/mozilla-blinked/
Firefox does not just have to improve faster than the competition, it needs to already be better, and to continue getting better, faster than two among the biggest behemoths of all time, to even hope to be competitive in a "free" (LOL, sorry.) market. Being objectively better by a huge margin is literally step 1, and we're. not. there.
Antitrust is the only way, and all three companies need a kick in the balls. Mozilla perhaps the gentlest, but a kick nevertheless.
While sometimes I agree with them (and in particular I agree that Mozilla has gotten way too comfortable with advertising and with partnering with extremely questionable and/or harmful people and technologies), an issue with the criticism I keep coming back to is that Mozilla is in a position where it often gets blamed simultaneously for relying too much on Google for revenue and also for every single revenue stream it comes up with that isn't Google being somehow a distraction from Firefox.
I'm not actually a fan of Mozilla's current CEO or many of Mozilla's recent decisions, I do think on some levels Mozilla is floundering around. And you're never going to get an argument from me that CEOs shouldn't be paid less across the board. But it is worth adding some context to Lunduke's criticism in particular that the last few years have also seen some of the strongest financial developments for Mozilla in a while and I'm not completely sure what critics like Lunduke want if they're going to simultaneously call Mozilla out for being in the pocket of Google and call Mozilla out for looking to diversify revenue and push development towards what is by far one of the most popular buzzwords for financial investment and product investment/monetization in the entire tech industry at the moment. If Lunduke wants independence from Google, then short of antitrust this is how you get it: you build things that are actually monetizable. By that metric, even people who are critical of the CEO like me need to be willing to admit that she seems to on some points be doing an actually fairly decent job. Under her, Mozilla has finally started taking meaningful steps to diversify funding away from Google's influence.
I don't want to act like the frustration isn't legitimate. I do feel frustration when I watch Mozilla rewrite their Android tech stack for the Nth time. That effort could be better spent elsewhere.
But I'm also very firmly of the belief that you could replace Mozilla's CEO with anybody and the markestshare decline would look the same. This is not a problem of leadership. This is a problem of antritrust and Mozilla flat-out is not big enough to out-compete an anticompetitive market. I'm all for Mozilla getting better, but sometimes I see criticism here that if they just straightened their act up and made a fantastically better browser it would change everything. It wouldn't.
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As a thought experiment:
In June of 2024, Mozilla Firefox will be the only mainstream browser with fully effective uBO support. Manifest V3 will be out so it will be gone from Chrome. Safari already has terrible adblocking extension support. Brave is not deprecating those APIs, but Brave also (as far as I know) doesn't have an extension store and relies on Chrome's so if those extensions get dropped from development on Chrome they will also not be available for Brave.
Come June, do we think that Firefox having indisputably the best adblocking of any other browser will move the needle on its market share?
I don't. I don't think consumers will care. I can't count the number of times that I have told people about features in Firefox that are objectively better than Chrome's implementations (multi-account containers, profiles, android extension support, fully offline translations, the TOR uplift project, actually encrypted cross-device sync, etc, etc...) and they didn't even know those features exist. Yes, some of that is that Mozilla is genuinely terrible at marketing. But a much bigger part of that is that the browser market doesn't really work that way anymore; default positioning and anticompetitive behavior are more effective steering tools than any browser feature set.
I agree that it comes down to antitrust. But the only thing I can think of that Mozilla can do about that is to
A) continue to diversify their revenue from Google (because Firefox itself is not monetizable) and to
B) start campaigning for intervention (which they are doing right now in this article).
Because even if Mozilla was able to build an indisputably better browser than Chrome, it wouldn't matter. You've said it yourself, alternatives were much better than IE6 and it still didn't matter. Does anyone think it's even physically possible for a company of Mozilla's size to outpace Chrome even more than Chrome and Firefox outpaced IE6? Plenty of other companies (including Microsoft) have been in Mozilla's position and have tried to do what Mozilla is doing, and their conclusion was that they couldn't compete with Chrome; they couldn't develop a separate browser engine from Chromium and keep pace. Microsoft decided that what Mozilla is doing right now was too difficult to attempt.
Firefox would be more competitive on iOS with Gecko-based WebExtensions on iOS such as uBlock Origin, which is exactly what Mozilla is advocating for with this page. It's contradictory to argue that people don't want ad blocking on Firefox by claiming that Mozilla isn't trying to improve Firefox, when in reality, Mozilla is pushing for the removal of Apple's restrictions, which would enable Mozilla to improve Firefox on iOS with WebExtensions, ad blocking, and other useful features.
> Of course it is in their interest - because they are Google's sock-puppet.
It would be Mozilla's interest to challenge Safari's Apple-imposed monopoly on iOS even if they received all of their funding from other sources, and the reasoning is simple. Mozilla is harmed by Apple hindering Firefox in all of the ways that the page mentions, all of which limit Firefox's capabilities, convenience, and attractiveness. To credibly claim that it's not in Mozilla's best interest to challenge Apple's restrictions, you would have to show that Apple's restrictions benefit Mozilla indirectly in some way that fully offsets all of the ways it directly hurts Mozilla. And Mozilla does not benefit from Apple's restrictions in any significant way.
You have to understand that from the POV of 99.99% of users, Firefox is not "suppressed".¹²
Yes, Firefox on iOS has to use WKWebKit. But "if Firefox could use their own browser engine on iOS then Firefox would be popular on iOS" is magical thinking. Other than a handful of technical gurus, users absolutely do not care.
¹ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/mobile/ios/ ² https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser...
I’m a uBlock Origin fan, and FWIW I’ve found that iOS products like 1Blocker work as well in practice. I can also recommend Rekt and Vinegar.
I’m under the impression that Firefox on Android only supports a tiny percentage of Firefox extensions.
iOS content blockers don't work in any browser except Safari due to Apple's restrictions, which limits Firefox's usefulness and hurts Firefox adoption on iOS in an anticompetitive way. That is one of the reasons Apple should not restrict Firefox from implementing extensions on iOS. There is no reasonable justification for limiting browser extensions to Safari on iOS.
> I’m under the impression that Firefox on Android only supports a tiny percentage of Firefox extensions.
Firefox for Android can install every Firefox extension from addons.mozilla.org as of December 2023. Turn on desktop mode on addons.mozilla.org to see all of the options. Also, the beta channel of Firefox for Android can sideload any extension through the settings and this feature is on track to make it to the stable release.
It literally didn't even occur to me that this would be the case. That's a travesty, and I appreciate the corrections.
As a Firefox fan, what's your take on why Mozilla has a separate ad- and tracker-blocking "privacy browser" (Firefox Focus) instead of making Firefox on iOS better?
Focus was Mozilla's way of offering Tracking Protection on iOS in some form without slowing down the performance of its main Firefox for iOS app. In addition to blocking ads within the Focus browser itself, Focus also provided iOS content blockers, which ironically (due to iOS content blockers being exclusive to Safari) allowed Focus users to block ads in Safari but not in Firefox for iOS at the time.[2]
Focus migrated to WKWebView in 2017 after iOS 11 bridged WKWebView's feature gap, allowing Focus to retain its Tracking Protection feature through the transition.[3] With Firefox and Focus both on WKWebView, Mozilla then ported Tracking Protection to Firefox for iOS in 2018.[4] Tracking Protection improved Firefox for iOS, but could never be as comprehensive as the Safari-exclusive content blockers.
By that time, Mozilla had already launched Focus for Android in 2017[4] even though Firefox for Android already had the ability to block ads more comprehensively with extensions such as uBlock Origin. As a privacy-focused secondary browser with a one-tap "erase session" feature, Focus was a niche app that turned out to be well-received by users, and Mozilla probably did not have a good reason to discontinue it even after Firefox for iOS gained Tracking Protection.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977855
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/introducing-fir...
[3] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/issues/274
[4] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/latest-firefox-...
[5] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-focus-n...
* https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/mobile/focus/
The reason I make my websites work in Firefox is really not because I need to make it work for Safari. Firefox usually works out of the box, but even if it didn't, Safari being a neglected platform that always needs extra work really wouldn't make me feel like putting in yet more work on another tech stack
If they didn't, Safari would be used as an excuse to ignore their other complaints from other companies, because the truth is that Mozilla is right about Apple's behavior and it would be hypocritical for them to complain about Google/Microsoft without mentioning Apple.
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I also want to (respectfully) push back somewhat hard and bluntly against this idea in general.
I'm really tired of the status quo defense because the status quo is not headed in a positive direction and is not going to change unless bold moves happen, and nobody making the status quo defense for Apple seems to have any plans on how the status quo is going to get better. Safari is not enough to stop Chrome's dominance on its own. And that status quo might not even be preserved in the long-term anyway because there's a nontrivial chance that browser engines get forced open in the EU at some point after the EU's app-store rules take effect.
Here is the reality of the situation: we are currently closing out on a political administration that has shown a historic level of willingness to pursue antitrust against tech companies. People really haven't grasped just how unbelievably friendly the Biden admin is to antitrust in a way that is not common for US presidents. Maybe that administration will continue for 4 more years, and maybe it won't. But taking that uncertainty into account, this is likely one of the best opportunities presented since the early Windows antitrust cases to argue for actual intervention on Google/Apple/Microsoft. The intersection of an administration that is extremely open to antitrust in comparison to other presidential admins, along with shifting consumer sentiment against big tech, combined with Apple facing pressure on multiple fronts around iOS, combined with Google getting ready to hobble ad blockers in June makes this a great time to make these arguments and to push hard for changing the status quo.
Is it a little risky? Yes. But waiting longer is not going to make the situation better, it's only going to mean that Firefox is less relevant when it makes its case, that the administration has more chance to roll over, that Mozilla can't seize on public sentiment. There is never going to be a point where it's an easy 100% win for Mozilla to make this case, and if they don't make this case, they will eventually be driven out of the market entirely.
I fully support them firing all cylinders at everybody, Apple included. It only makes their case stronger. If we're worried about Chrome dominance if iOS is opened up, the way to deal with that problem is to regulate Google. This is the best time to make that case.
This is not the time for us to hem and haw about what could happen if Apple isn't allowed to be anti-competitive. If we wait, it will only become harder to deal with Chrome.
It's definitely configurable, I don't know what the default is, but I had it on accidentally once and it took me a while even to figure out what was happening (I kept accidentally opening new tabs, or whatever the top item is).
> JIT Support on iOS
This has been such an under-commented on factor of the whole "EU is going to force third-party rendering engines on iOS!" bit. Would Apple allow apps to support JIT? A new entitlement browser developers must apply for? It'll be interesting :)
I doubt it.
Does anyone know if this is accurate? Was it true for old versions and no longer supported?
com.apple.developer.web-browser.public-key-credential
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059255, but no comments there)
This behaviour seems to be erratic and only affects a few websites, such as https://forum.syncthing.net.
Closing the tab or using a different one doesn't solve the problem. I need to force close the app to fix this.
Still better than a google browser, even if I have my gripes...
As for extensions on iOS, Orion has the capability to install extensions from both the Chrome and Firefox extension galleries which would suggest this either isn’t actually a problem or slipped past App Review and has somehow remained available for years.
[0]: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/7374
[1]: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/9155
As a user, why the hell do I want third party applications to be able to access my browser's history, bookmarked sites, and cookies?
That's an obvious privacy leak!
Firefox can have that data when it's generated by Firefox while I'm using Firefox and not in other contexts.
This sends the file directly to the other browser which can then do as it pleases with the data. No filesystem knowledge required, and share sheets are common mobile user knowledge.
The short story is that the permission model would have to be changed; they have to add an Android permission for sharing browsing data that apps would have to declare and users would have to opt into. And of course that increases the risk surface area; We know from past examples that malicious apps sneak through (or non-malicious apps previously signed off on end up purchased by someone else and become malicious) and users really don't understand security.
The state is extractable via Google take out and the safest solution might honestly be to not support this directly on Android and instead require Mozilla to figure out how to import a takeout archive via the cloud.
But that's not possible, hence it being listed among the issues.
Something that Firefox on Android doesn't support, by the way :facepalm: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/417
Android is able to mediate access to other sensitive data with user consent.>That's an obvious privacy leak!
No it's not. It's only a leak if they access that data without your permission. There's nothing wrong with them being able to request that data, with you-the-user being able to respond to that request "fuck no".
The fact that somehow this doesn't apply to "searches from the start menu" is a joke.
1. Anyone who makes a browser is prohibited from advertising it on other sites owned within the same corporate hierarchy: no lying to YouTube users that they will have a better visit if use Chrome, etc.
2. Any organization which has a majority stake in a browser has to test every web app in every browser with more than 0.5% share, and has a time limit to fix any compatibility or performance issues except those caused by a browser not having good support for W3C standards. The idea there is preventing stuff like the long period where YouTube used a Chrome-only web components draft rather than the standard version Firefox and Safari implemented and served them a dog-slow polyfill instead but still allowing them to tell Apple that feature X doesn’t work well because the implementation in Safari needs to be improved.
Correct but I don't notice that because I search by opening Firefox and typing the search query there. It's an icon tap anyway. I don't use the search widget on the home screen, I removed it.
This is also a large part of why we're so horribly misinformed about how well the world is doing. Ask anyone who "stays current" how it's going in the world, then look at virtually any statistic for any country spanning medium-range timespans (say, 15+ years) such as poverty, access to healthcare, longevity, basic vaccinations rate, education, equal gender opportunities... We have trouble with the intangible (such as climate change: 2 degrees across a generation are can't be noticed and attributed in an obvious before-your-eyes manner), but everything else is constantly improving everywhere and nobody reports that.
Trusting reporters to tell you what's up is a fool's errand, unfortunately, and I'm not even sure it's their fault