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This is not about code, but about ability to compete. First of all I'm a convinced Firefox user, I'm typing this in Firefox and I use Firefox on my Android as
by bad_user 11y ago
This is not about code, but about ability to compete.
First of all I'm a convinced Firefox user, I'm typing this in Firefox and I use Firefox on my Android as well and its absence has been one of my main gripes with the iPhone. I think this is great for us Firefox users. But browsers compete primarily in speed and supported open-standards. And even though I'm not one to fall often for the average Joe fallacy, I believe on average people don't give a shit about privacy, otherwise they wouldn't be using Windows or Google Search or Facebook. Of course, that doesn't mean companies or organizations don't have a responsibility to provide privacy or security, quite the contrary.
But if Firefox is just a shell that means (a) absolutely no extensions support, (b) in terms of security or privacy it will be as good or as bad as Safari Mobile is and (c) they won't be able to compete either on speed or on open standards and note that Apple is doing a shitty job in supporting new web standards lately.
They were actually right to be reluctant in supporting iOS, because the only value of this Firefox is providing Sync for us existing Firefox users. Which has been Google's strategy with Chrome as well. Not bad, but lets see it for what it is.
- sspiff 11y agoSpeed and supported standards were once how browsers competed. Now, features like Sync and a handful of extensions are what bind me to Firefox. Having Sync available on mobile, even if it doesn't use Gecko or Spidermonkey, is valuable.
- bad_user 11y agoYes, Sync is valuable for me as well. But it will have no extensions either, as those aren't allowed by Apple's policies.
- st3fan 11y agoWhat kind of extensions would you like to use on iOS. Can you give some concrete examples of things (either existing or wishes) you would like to see?
- bad_user 11y agoI can mention the ones I'm using on my Firefox for Android. The most important, without which mobile web would be unusable for me are: uBlock Origin (AdBlock Plus also available) and HTTPS Everywhere. I would also use NoScript, to completely block Javascript on websites I don't trust, but unfortunately the version for Firefox Mobile is not submitted to addons.mozilla.org and I don't trust extensions that aren't submitted there. Instead I've been using Ghostery lately, not sure what to think of it. I was also using the LastPass Password Manager, until I migrated to my own solution. I also have Pocket Hits and the Wikipedia Panel for suggesting stuff to read. Because I'm a developer, many times I open JSON links from emails and for formatting, the JSONovich extension seems to work on my Android Firefox.
- sspiff 11y agoI enjoy the Pocket integration in Firefox, as well as reader mode (which I think is powered by Pocket?). I also have an extension that allows me to mimic other user agents (useful for some sites to immitate an iPhone on Android). Since Firefox comes with "Request desktop site" by default though, this one is less important. Other than that: Greasemonkey is very useful to me, as I have a bunch of scripts that minimize page layouts of sites I frequent.
- kbrosnan 11y agoFirefox's reader mode is JS library that parses the page. It does not share any code with Pocket. https://github.com/mozilla/readability https://github.com/mozilla/readability