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I always suspected the reason we never got extensions in mobile Chrome is that they didn't want the ad blockers. I wasn't aware that Firefox mobile started supp

I always suspected the reason we never got extensions in mobile Chrome is that they didn't want the ad blockers. I wasn't aware that Firefox mobile started supporting them. Going to give it a try.

petre 9y ago
Opera mobile also has an integrated ad blocker but I also use a hosts file to filter just about everything.
JCharante 9y ago
I thought it was because most app stores didn't allow apps to download code to be executed.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  What app store does that other than Apple's? And a rule like that doesn't allow full web browsers so it's unrelated to the question of whether full web browsers have extensions.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Nah, that's just Apple's. Google Play has always been much less restrictive.
coldpie 9y ago
Firefox for Android is really good. Most passive browsing extensions work just as well on mobile as they do on desktop.
bobajeff 9y ago
Just want to point out that's there is a really old issue for this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113111 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113111 It's been assigned to some unknown person since 2015. Though I'm not so sure the reason for it's delay in coming to Android isn't technical rather than organizational. Brave for Android is based off of Chromium and it didn't have extensions either. It sounds like the way extension APIs were initially implemented didn't lend itself to a Android port. "We never had the Android version compiling with extension support in the first place - in our early development internally, we hacked/commented/disabled random parts of extension code just to get the binary to compile, and we later tidied this up to disable extensions in a neater way to save binary size. So, you are basically talking about actually implementing extension support for android from scratch, including adding every thing that extensions require but aren't currently implemented for Android. This isn't likely to be especially easy. " - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chromium-dev/GhVf5bicbVc https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chr... Though I don't understand why since Firefox mobile extensions are based off a similarly designed system (Jetpack) to Chromes. It seems that if nothing else they could create a new API for extensions on Android.
- Sylos 9y ago
  > Though I don't understand why since Firefox mobile extensions are based off a similarly designed system (Jetpack) to Chromes. Moreover, Mozilla is currently actually switching to an extended version of Chrome's extension API (which Mozilla calls "WebExtensions"). They had no problem implementing that on Android Firefox. Obviously, yes, there are APIs that just don't make sense on a mobile browser, but you have a well-defined API, so just blacklist extensions that require these APIs.
pc2g4d 9y ago
Firefox is my preferred mobile browser for numerous reasons. I hope it's a good experience for you.

I always suspected the reason we never got extensions in mobile Chrome is that they didn't want the ad blockers. I wasn't aware that Firefox mobile started supporting them. Going to give it a try.

petre 9y ago

Opera mobile also has an integrated ad blocker but I also use a hosts file to filter just about everything.

JCharante 9y ago

I thought it was because most app stores didn't allow apps to download code to be executed.

Dylan16807 9y ago
What app store does that other than Apple's? And a rule like that doesn't allow full web browsers so it's unrelated to the question of whether full web browsers have extensions.
icebraining 9y ago
Nah, that's just Apple's. Google Play has always been much less restrictive.

coldpie 9y ago

Firefox for Android is really good. Most passive browsing extensions work just as well on mobile as they do on desktop.

bobajeff 9y ago

Just want to point out that's there is a really old issue for this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113111 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113111 It's been assigned to some unknown person since 2015. Though I'm not so sure the reason for it's delay in coming to Android isn't technical rather than organizational. Brave for Android is based off of Chromium and it didn't have extensions either. It sounds like the way extension APIs were initially implemented didn't lend itself to a Android port. "We never had the Android version compiling with extension support in the first place - in our early development internally, we hacked/commented/disabled random parts of extension code just to get the binary to compile, and we later tidied this up to disable extensions in a neater way to save binary size. So, you are basically talking about actually implementing extension support for android from scratch, including adding every thing that extensions require but aren't currently implemented for Android. This isn't likely to be especially easy. " - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chromium-dev/GhVf5bicbVc https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chr... Though I don't understand why since Firefox mobile extensions are based off a similarly designed system (Jetpack) to Chromes. It seems that if nothing else they could create a new API for extensions on Android.

Sylos 9y ago
> Though I don't understand why since Firefox mobile extensions are based off a similarly designed system (Jetpack) to Chromes. Moreover, Mozilla is currently actually switching to an extended version of Chrome's extension API (which Mozilla calls "WebExtensions"). They had no problem implementing that on Android Firefox. Obviously, yes, there are APIs that just don't make sense on a mobile browser, but you have a well-defined API, so just blacklist extensions that require these APIs.

pc2g4d 9y ago

Firefox is my preferred mobile browser for numerous reasons. I hope it's a good experience for you.