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That's really sad, because Firefox on Android is actually really great and the fact that you can run addons (e.g. uBlock Origin) makes it even better. In years

That's really sad, because Firefox on Android is actually really great and the fact that you can run addons (e.g. uBlock Origin) makes it even better. In years past Firefox would occasionally crash on me, but I'm not sure it's ever even done that on my current phone, which is closing in on 9 months old. I'm not exactly treating it kindly either, I currently have 93 "tabs" open and though it doesn't keep those in memory it does recall page position even if it has to reload the original source when I go back (based on it putting me at the same point on the page for a week-old HN thread I was skimming through). There are some addons I'd recommend bypassing on mobile though just for UI reasons - uMatrix, any of the Vim keybinding options, stuff like that. Also, unfortunately the Invert Colors addon doesn't work on Android because of a missing API.

metilda 9y ago
Dark background, light text for Firefox Android is pretty good, makes reading websites much easier for me!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mastazi 9y ago
Firefox on Android is becoming ready for prime time just now, until recently it lacked basic functionality that most competitors have, e.g. unless you opted into beta, you still can't organise your bookmarks in folders [1]. So it is understandable that it still has a tiny user base, but at the same time now that critical features have been added I expect it to grow. We should also consider that soon, when version 58 will be out, there should be a significant performance improvement which will help adoption [2]. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160470 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160470 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16047689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16047689
cageface 9y ago
I really want to use Firefox on my Pixel 2 but the scrolling still feels really chunky compared to Chrome. I hope there's still room for improvement there. I've been really happy with the newer Firefox builds on my MBP.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Firefox 58 should bring some bigger performance improvements still to Android. It's mostly going to bring those improvements to Android that Firefox 57 brought to the desktop, minus the UI and the deprecation of old extension APIs.
frik 9y ago
Firefox feels very heavy and is slower than Chrome on Android, even on high end smartphone. And it has a non-native UI that looks so out of place. And many browser features like bookmark handling (folders) are still missing. Maybe v58 will change things for the better, but at the moment it's obvious why almost no one is using Firefox on mobile, probably even the devs don't dog food it on mobil. Where is the DevTools on mobile. Why not offer a full browser, with a slightly more mobile UI. Firefox mobile is very dumbed down, for casual users, Chrome has lots of more settings and features on mobile.

metilda 9y ago

Dark background, light text for Firefox Android is pretty good, makes reading websites much easier for me!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mastazi 9y ago

Firefox on Android is becoming ready for prime time just now, until recently it lacked basic functionality that most competitors have, e.g. unless you opted into beta, you still can't organise your bookmarks in folders [1]. So it is understandable that it still has a tiny user base, but at the same time now that critical features have been added I expect it to grow. We should also consider that soon, when version 58 will be out, there should be a significant performance improvement which will help adoption [2]. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160470 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160470 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16047689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16047689

cageface 9y ago

I really want to use Firefox on my Pixel 2 but the scrolling still feels really chunky compared to Chrome. I hope there's still room for improvement there. I've been really happy with the newer Firefox builds on my MBP.

Sylos 9y ago
Firefox 58 should bring some bigger performance improvements still to Android. It's mostly going to bring those improvements to Android that Firefox 57 brought to the desktop, minus the UI and the deprecation of old extension APIs.

frik 9y ago

Firefox feels very heavy and is slower than Chrome on Android, even on high end smartphone. And it has a non-native UI that looks so out of place. And many browser features like bookmark handling (folders) are still missing. Maybe v58 will change things for the better, but at the moment it's obvious why almost no one is using Firefox on mobile, probably even the devs don't dog food it on mobil. Where is the DevTools on mobile. Why not offer a full browser, with a slightly more mobile UI. Firefox mobile is very dumbed down, for casual users, Chrome has lots of more settings and features on mobile.