Comment by thoroughburro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thoroughburro | Hacker News Reader

> Here’s something the iPhone isn’t getting anytime soon: honest-to-god browser extensions that you use on your desktop, also on your phone.

This convinces me the author is not knowledgeable about current browser capabilities. They probably haven’t tried anything but Firefox in a long time.

Orion runs desktop (Firefox) extensions on iOS, and is in many ways a breath of fresh air. Instead of parroting “all iOS browsers are Safari” and throwing their hands in the air, they actually got hacking on it.

https://kagi.com/orion/

Edit:

> With adopting the Web Extensions API, we show our support for creating a unified browser extensions experience across all three major web rendering engines. We ended up porting hundreds of APIs, one by one, that were never meant to work with WebKit. Took us a few years, but here we are!

> Orion currently supports about 70% of Web Extensions APIs, and we add more every day. On top of that, we built advanced security features that give our users granular control over extensions, beyond what Chrome and Firefox offer. For example, you can choose to allow an extension to run only on certain websites.

While orion is good option, it is not there yet in terms of comparison with Firefox on Android. Many of the extensions will install but will not actually work. Even uBlock origin will have problems. Also it is common that an update will make the browser crash very often (happened with few updates). Also they don't provide a list of APIs they support and it is not open source (although they said they will but at this point I don't think they will any time soon).

But you agree the quote I responded to was incorrect, right?

Orion is based on WebKit, that's usually what people mean when they say it is all safari. So it is technically correct but orion approach ia to try to implement web extensions API in WebKit. Otherwise, apple wouldn't have allowed orion on App Store because the requirement is not to use any other engines (holding off to see what EU DMA effect would have).

You agree that your statement that it runs firefox extensions is misleading, right?

If I said “linux runs windows software and games” without further remarks, people would be correct to call me out on it.

No, I don’t agree. And Linux does run Windows software and games; I use this ability all the time.

Are there really people who read that and think “ALL Windows software and games” is implied? Bizarre to me.

Yes. If you say you’re compatible with Windows software and games, my expectation as a user is that everything “just works”.

You changed the phrase from “runs Windows software and games” to “compatible with Windows software and games”. I’m talking about the former phrase. The latter does imply more, but I didn’t say it; you did.

You're arguing about average assumptions.

Your biases are leaning in different directions.

Running Windows software on Linux requires a bit of domain knowledge; e.g. Wine, Lutris, Proton. E.g. which software actually works really well, which software works with tweaks, and which software largely works but you need to avoid certain features. The fact that you need to install special software, and it isn't some core OS compatibility layer like 32-bit support makes it lean towards "runs Windows software and games" being a little ambitious. It's not a perfect user story, that's all.

By your definition, Windows is not compatible with Windows.

Yes, some windows versions aren’t compatible with other windows versions. That’s not a contradiction.

If you wrote a function in a dynamically typed language and the documentation said "this accepts integers", but actually it crashed if you gave a prime integer and you only expected people to give it composite integers, people would say that the documentation was inaccurate.

It doesn't even matter if you're right.

0.0001% of users will use this. It's a non-starter.

The only solution to this problem is antitrust enforcement against Google.

Not op, but you cannot fault the author for not knowing every app or trend. With any luck, your reply will inform the original author, who may learn a thing or two from the discussion we are having here!

[flagged]

It’s still something of an exaggeration. If you take a look at the source for iOS browsers, the amount of unique code is non-trivial.

At minimum, it’s a sliding scale rather than binary and iOS browsers are less Safari reskins than Chromium-based browsers (most of which share a much higher percentage of code) are Chrome reskins. There’s exceptions like Arc which uses a bespoke AppKit/SwiftUI/WinUI UI instead of the standard Chromium stuff but that’s pretty rare.

> the amount of unique code is non-trivial

This doesn't matter as long as essential features of Firefox aren't allowed by Apple.

Orion has proven that web extensions are allowed, even if its implementation isn’t complete. There’s no guideline preventing a browser with a user-hackable UI (like Firefox userChrome) but nobody’s tried that yet. What’s left? As far as I’m aware, it’s just the small handful of manifest v2 request interceptor APIs that uBlock Origin depends on that can’t be supported fully.

> small handful of manifest v2 request interceptor APIs that uBlock Origin depends on that can’t be supported fully

... which is the most important Firefox extension.

I tried Orion after reading this, but other than uBlock Origin I haven't had much luck with getting extensions to work. I guess the extensions I use don't really overlap with the 70% they do support. If they've been working hard on this for years, I have to wonder what will happen first, actual mobile extension support on iOS through Kagi or a Firefox release for iOS.

The entire Orion browser feels like a beta product to me. But at least I've got uBlock on my work phone now, so that's cool I guess.

It is literally in beta, so it feeling like a beta product isn’t surprising. It does work with the extensions I need and it’s my primary browser on iOS, but I still find it too buggy and crash-prone on the desktop. That seems to be improving, but it’s not convinced me that it’s reliable enough yet.

The author is very clearly an Android user, so I'll give them some leeway on this. It's not like it's the crux of their opinion, it's just one extra layer. Also, until Orion is available on Windows and Linux, it's a no-go for a lot of people.

> "Orion runs desktop (Firefox) extensions on iOS"

Most extensions can be installed, but they do not actually function properly. Or, maybe only for 50%.

The most annoying part is, you do not know which extensions don't work (like content blockers, etc.)

The author definitely is not being very knowledgeable. In the comments, they didn't try Zen because they assumed, it can't sync bookmarks and extensions, which in fact it can and has Mozilla account baked into it.

yep that's something I learned later.

fwiw though: Zen does have other challenges at the moment with the Widevine licence. so you effectively can't use it to watch most video services today.

But point taken, from a technical accuracy perspective.

by family tree, almost all current browsers are descendants of '90s-era Konqueror.

Thank you so much for this comment that made me learn about Orion on iOS. It seems to be filling a gap that had been open for years.

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