26 ms·

Reinventing Firefox for Android

• dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  I guess first party isolation isn't supported? (yet?) about:config loads a blank page.
• NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Its pretty good, just need faster tab switching and extensions.
• hereiskkb 7y ago
  With a new look and UI, a walkthrough maybe warranted. Took me a while to find the bookmark button. And the color scheme on the button itself is not as intuitive, does not present the idea on first viewing whether a page is bookmarked or not. But overall, looks great and works fast too. I am sure more devlopments are yet to come. For now, looks promising to be a challenger to the Chrome monopoly.
• dsr_ 7y ago
  Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does. (uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)
  • jjulius 7y ago
    >"The user experience of this early version will differ significantly from the final product, planned for release later this year."
  • mjw1007 7y ago
    Indeed, it's very disappointing to see such a long article without any mention of their plans for addons. It isn't even clear that they're not going to replace Android Firefox with Fenix before getting extensions working. As far I know this issue is the most recent source of information: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574 It says «We are currently finalizing the transition plan».
    • addicted 7y ago
      It's not comprehensive, but I prefer the strategy of publicly releasing the information as they have it available, even if it means it often raises more questions. Even if they don't have the entire transition planned out, I think it was important for Mozilla to communicate their Android dev focus was gonna shift to GeckoView, from existing apps, to allow external devs, and customers to have a better plan, even if they don't have the add on strategy and timeline fully fleshed out. The alternative is waiting a few months to know any of this was happening.
      • mjw1007 7y ago
        They said they were "currently" finalising their transition plans in February, so I think it's reasonable to assume that the plans have been finalised by now.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
      • iggldiggl 7y ago
        > I think it was important for Mozilla to communicate their Android dev focus was gonna shift to GeckoView, from existing apps Focus has already shifted for quite some time, though - the current Firefox for Android ("Fennec") code base has already been in maintenance mode since the end of 2017, i.e. over 1½ years, including a few months at the start of 2018 were almost nobody was regularly working on it at all other than watching Bugzilla for any immediate priority bugs and reacting to those in case any happened.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • orcdork 7y ago
    Haven't used android in a couple of years but firefox used to support addons (and it looks like it still does).
    • moosingin3space 7y ago
      GeckoView doesn't support addons yet. This is pending discussion, but it looks like the goal is to focus on mobile optimization first. As a tester of Firefox Preview: WebRender has been a godsend for mobile browsing -- I have yet to see it choke!
      • jimmaswell 7y ago
        Firefox was kinda slow sometimes with too much JS on the page on my old phone but still overall usable, and that was a J3 (replaced just last week), so I'd say that's pretty good. Great and lag-free on my s10+ so far. Not convinced optimization should be a priority over features and addons.
      • markdog12 7y ago
        WebRender doesn't work for me, "Unsupported Vendor" :( Moto G4, Qualcomm Adreno 405, OpenGL ES 3.2 about:config doesn't work either
  • AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
    uBO is the main reason I use Firefox on Android, as well. With that said, what sites are you visiting? It could be that I simply don't visit sites with any ads, but I gave a few of my daily sites a spin in Firefox Preview and didn't notice any ads.
  • gcbw2 7y ago
    Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox. Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.
    • Touche 7y ago
      Pure speculation, I wonder if their contract with Google forbids them from having ad blocking as part of the browser. At least if I was a company paying another company millions of dollars I wouldn't let them block my income stream in their product.
      • ChrisSD 7y ago
        They already have an adblocker built in (well a tracking blocker but that often amounts to the same thing).
      • tssva 7y ago
        Mozilla also didn't have ad blocking when their contract was with Yahoo.
    • silon42 7y ago
      plugins are better (I use uMatrix).
      • gcbw2 7y ago
        uBlock origin is turning into uMatrix, even on mobile (fenec) Firefox. Sneakily ;)
    • sciurus 7y ago
      I think the better comparison than SafeBrowsing for uBlock would be Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default. This uses data maintained by Disconnect. (Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)
  • tyingq 7y ago
    Oy. Isn't the extension support likely the #1 reason anyone uses it?
  • superasn 7y ago
    Same here. I was so happy to see this and I just went ahead and installed it in a heart-beat. Tried to find the addons page, couldn't find it, found your comment instead and uninstalled it in the next. I hope they add support for addons otherwise there isn't much use for it at least to me.
  • mncolinlee 7y ago
    It's a preview release. Addons are coming as well as ad blocking. It's not the same thing, but the built-in tracking protection incidentally blocks a portion of ads.
    • vaer-k 7y ago
      That's good to hear. Can you point to where Mozilla says they will support addons and ad blocking in Fenix?
      • Deimorz 7y ago
        This seems to be the relevant issue on GitHub: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574 There's not much solid or explicit info in it, but it does seem to be planned eventually.
    • jnurmine 7y ago
      This is a great thing to hear!
    • kevin_b_er 7y ago
      Per Barbara Bermes, senior product manager in firefox mobile, addons are not part of the minimum viable product. They're in the "backlog"
      • dblohm7 7y ago
        Right, but existing Firefox for Android users aren't going to be switched over to Fenix until it does.
      • zrobotics 7y ago
        Not to be mean, but that statement demonstrates a frankly shocking level of cluelessness. Extensions (mainly adblockers) are the critical feature that distinguishes FF mobile, and are the only reason I have ever been able to convince anyone to switch. I would almost consider adblockers functionality more critical than Javascript support, they should certainly be part of a minimum viable product. I know it's a preview version, but why would anyone in their right mind run this?
  • Roritharr 7y ago
    I really don't understand why Mozilla doesn't put ad-blocking & tracking protection front & center the way other orgs do. Winning their userbase back is the only way to win back the leverage they once had...
    • sciurus 7y ago
      Out of curiosity, what orgs are you comparing us to? When you install Firefox Preview, tracking protection is enabled by default. This is recently true for Firefox Desktop as well. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/when-it-comes-to-privacy-default-settings-matter/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/when-it-comes-to-pr... This post below by our CEO explains how we're thinking about the issue broadly. Your privacy and agency are definitely front and center. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/the-web-the-world-needs-can-be-ours-again-if-we-want-it/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/the-web-the-world-n... (Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)
      • Roritharr 7y ago
        Brave for example: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/
    • zamalek 7y ago
      Agreed. I hastily installed FF Preview and then immediately uninstalled it when I couldn't find where to install uBlock. They shouldn't have launched, or made an announcement, without some form of adblocking (native or plugin). I understand that it's a testing release, but they stand to lose out on many testers and users. While I am perfectly willing to be a guinea pig and use this as my daily driver, I am passionately unwilling to browse with ads (especially on a mobile device where data is more expensive). I am likely part of the vast majority of potential testers/users. There probably won't be a "hey, we support plugins/blocking now" announcement and, even if there will be, it probably won't be as visible as this announcement.
      • cycomanic 7y ago
  • SilasX 7y ago
    I would also appreciate if they worked on restoring the original addon capability they had up to 2016 (where you add keyboard shortcuts) before they go showboating.
  • jnurmine 7y ago
    Exactly. Anyone remember when Firefox extensions broke recently? I thought it was a rather horrible experience. If the new Firefox Preview can natively block advertisements, whitelist sites, disable third party cookies, prevent and hide social trackers, block anti-ad-blockers, etc. etc. then I agree that extensions are kind of useless, and I understand Mozilla's point. However, I see the lack of extension support detrimental to my freedoms as a user, since it means I no longer can control what the software hides for me, nor what it broadcasts about me to the abyss of waste that is the advertising industry; I will have to trust the browser, and the lack of extension support is a rather untrustworthy property to begin with.
    • throwupaway123 7y ago
      This is still a preview, it's nowhere near a finished product. Extensions come after MVP https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/662#issuecomment-477905130 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/662#issuecomm...
      • metalliqaz 7y ago
        (minimum viable product) Isn't it strange that the big flash announcement comes before MVP?
        • trickstra 7y ago
          Yes, that's what "viable" means. Viable for big flashy announcement.
        • yorwba 7y ago
          The big flash announcement is to get early adopters for testing. There's no reason to delay testing until the MVP is ready, as long as testers remain aware that Firefox Preview is a preview that shouldn't be expected to already have all features implemented.
          • dsr_ 7y ago
  • JeremyNT 7y ago
    I really feel like this should be the top comment; losing addon support in FF on Android is about the only change I can envision that would cause me to stop using it. It's great as it is, and there is no amount of tinkering they could do to it that might possibly make up for the loss of addons.
• sciurus 7y ago
  You can learn more about Geckoview, the reusable heart of Firefox Preview, at https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/ (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
• jeena 7y ago
  I can't find any info about Sync (especially with my own back-end) which is one of the main reasons I'm using Firefox everywhere.
  • pletnes 7y ago
    Firefox sync is amazing and one of the reasons I never got hooked on chrome (I tried using it for a full year). I often do research on iOS for coding related topics. Send tab to device - boom, it’s there when I need it and I’ve got my text editor open.
  • sagischwarz 7y ago
    Sync works fine, at least for bookmarks and history, but I cannot choose what to sync, the check boxes are greyed out: https://i.imgur.com/atDU75z.png https://i.imgur.com/atDU75z.png
    • fzzzy 7y ago
      It's not implemented yet. Coming soon.
  • sergiosgc 7y ago
    You can probably use Firefox Lockwise [https://lockwise.firefox.com/ https://lockwise.firefox.com/] to sync passwords.
  • kbrosnan 7y ago
    You are not currently able to Sync to a custom server in Firefox Preview. Doing that requires access to about:config which is not set up in the release version.
• owaislone 7y ago
  I've been using it and it has been actually pretty good. It already has Firefox Sync and ability to send tabs to different devices. Only thing I miss is the ability to open tabs in background. This was my favorite feature in the previous Firefox for Android.
  • mncolinlee 7y ago
    > Only thing I miss is the ability to open tabs in background. Long press the link.
    • owaislone 7y ago
      I meant send links from any app to firefox and switch to firefox at a later time to find them ready to be read.
      • mncolinlee 7y ago
        I didn't know about that feature. Feel free to request it on GitHub.
        • dblohm7 7y ago
          In Fennec that feature is referred to as “Tab Queues.”
• diafygi 7y ago
  My ideal for mobile: Firefox + uBlock Origin + Containers Now: Firefox + uBlock Origin (no Containers) Upcoming: Firefox (no uBlock Origin, no Containers) Seems like we're moving backwards, no?
  • patrickbolle 7y ago
    This is a preview version (as mentioned a billion times in the article). Addons are planned by the end of 2019. This is for testing.
    • Ultramanoid 7y ago
      Like others have said, uBlock Origin ( or solid alternative; uMatrix, etc ) at this point is a prerequisite for any browser. I am not testing something that puts me in danger and throws me into the festering garbage dumpster that internet is these days without it. It's like testing a car that doesn't have brakes yet.
      • neiman 7y ago
        So don't test, it's not mandatory...
        • Ultramanoid 7y ago
          I am a developer and spend half my work time in Firefox Nightly. This is not usable for me despite being exactly the target for this preview.
          • Touche 7y ago
            The target of a preview is not people expecting it to be feature complete, so no, you're not the target.
            • Ultramanoid 7y ago
• nwah1 7y ago
  Main thing I don't like about Firefox for Android is the lack of support for containers. I want to use sites like Facebook within a container.
  • briffle 7y ago
    I love containers, but the lack of ability to sync them really annoys me. Every time I get a new computer (or re-install, or setup a VPN to test with, etc) I have to manually create all my rules to always open my bank stuff in a special container, and always open my work sites in their container, etc. It seems like these rules should just sync.
    • nwah1 7y ago
      Totally agree. I've also had it just completely forget all my "always open in container" settings in the past. But that hasn't occurred recently, so hopefully those days are over.
    • djaychela 7y ago
      Me too - there doesn't even seem to be a way to generate a file that you could open on another computer? Having them sync via Firefox would be really good - even more so on mobile.
    • steve19 7y ago
      Me too. It is classic Mozilla. They have such big blind spots. Even after the certificate debacle, which wiped containers for some people, they still appear to have no plans to sync them.
    • rrix2 7y ago
      Maybe give this a try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-with-transitions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-wi... (source, i haven't looked: https://github.com/blackhole89/multi-account-containers https://github.com/blackhole89/multi-account-containers)
• numbers 7y ago
  I love addons for firefox mobile so I'm not sure if I can give that up just yet :/
• silversconfused 7y ago
  Add extensions support and disable telemetry/remote-control by default (pushing updates where you control the code is remote control, don't even try to argue against that one).
  • pgeorgi 7y ago
    > disable telemetry/remote-control by default (pushing updates where you control the code is remote control, don't even try to argue against that one). So they shouldn't put updates on the Play Store?
    • dbtx 7y ago
      They shouldn't be sending me to the Play Store ITFP. I can't use Play because I've got no GApps in my phone, so I can't try their app unless I find a copy "somewhere" and convince myself it hasn't been poisoned. I got a reasonably up-to-date Firefox through APKPure, and later on after watching that 35C3 talk [1], I unzipped and grepped all those saved .apks to find the APKPure app itself and Firefox and LingoDeer had the same traces of Facebook's SDK in them. So that's off the table, huh? The ones that I saved from older phones after having gottten them through Play were all fine, but I can't update those without grabbing another phone and letting Google ... play in it. <ducks> Just the other day I asked the Waterfox team for an apk and an md5sum, for the same reason-- though I'd settle for the md5sum alone! But Mozilla has resources WF can barely dream of, and it apparently intends to be a champion for privacy, so this is kinda sad. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc
      • pgeorgi 7y ago
        If you have a phone without GApps, you're either in China (which has its own app store ecosystems) or not Mozilla's target audience for their binaries. https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/68.0b13/ https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/68.0b13/ has the APKs plus signed hashes though. (But more generally speaking: Why don't you build Firefox from source if you're so concerned with middlemen messing with the code?)
• steve19 7y ago
  Still no pull to refresh. They really don't want users to adopt their browser. Literally every single other mobile Web browser supports it. Yet Mozilla has some ideological stance that it breaks web interaction (with what, the 0.0001% of browser that target Firefox above Safari or Chrome on mobile).
  • fluidcruft 7y ago
    I've been using Preview as my main mobile browser (switched from Firefox Focus as my main when Mozilla announced they've abandoned Focus). The things I miss: * Firefox Focus had a very quick way to send a page to a different browser "Open in " and I'm pretty sure it actually just listed the browsers there in the menu. None of the hassling with the share menu that takes forever to load and forever to search through. I really hate using the share menu on android. Somehow it's gotten even worse and side scrolls now. I don't want to sign in to my Google account in Firefox on android, but if you set firefox as your default all the login redirects go there. I think on Focus you could just tap "Open page in Chrome" and it would just punt it along and everything worked when needed. * Lastpass app annoyances. Lastpass just matches the Firefox app itself rather than the site I'm viewing. Which is annoying but not a huge deal. I'm not sure whether lastpass worked in Focus though. Focus was like a staging area before going to a full browser. Overall I'm pretty happy with Preview. I really liked using Focus though where it worked like a "firewall" where I could decide whether I actually wanted links opened by other apps to go into my browsing history or not. I really liked the way I learned to use Focus and I'm sad it's been abandoned. It was like "Open all links in Private mode first and then decide if you actually give enough of a shit to go further". Focus was small and easy to learn to trust.
  • AgloeDreams 7y ago
    In fairness, that is pretty non-standard and is only done on Android as I understand.
    • earenndil 7y ago
      Android is the standard, more or less, for touch interfaces. They have significantly more devices than ios, and no other touch device is more than a blip compared to those two.
• abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
  I dont envy Mozilla. The demographic that they're targeting are really hard to please.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • vaer-k 7y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. I think everything users want is achievable. The current Firefox allows addons and ad blocking via addons. The Fenix update improves speed and adds some new features. Both the current and the new undermine Blink dominance and serve to support a more diverse, collaborative open Internet. All of these things are attainable in one browser, and I think that would satisfy most users.
  • lucideer 7y ago
    You're probably right but, as a member of that demographic: - I use Firefox, and have done continuously for a long time. I don't intend to switch to anything else, despite being very unhappy with the experience in many ways, as I consider it to be the "least worst" - I genuinely believe there are very easily achievable low-hanging fruit that Mozilla could implement that would at least please a large swathe of their target demographic. Namely, not talking about privacy and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do. I understand that there's a revenue stream there, and a balance to be met between economic survival and ideal conditions, but this particilar issue is a deal tipped too far towards defying the point of the exercise. Perhaps I'm in a bubble and this is just my "single issue", but shouting about privacy and sending all that data about their users to Google seems a fairly large deal to me.
    • amenod 7y ago
      > ...and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do... Huh, I must have missed that - if true, this is a huge breach of trust for me. Do you have a link?
      • Certhas 7y ago
• Touche 7y ago
  Some feedback: If you are going to market your browser as privacy focused, it has to block ads by default. As far as I can this one does not block ads at all. Good initial experience but please block ads.
  • jamesgeck0 7y ago
    This is at least partially covered by tracking protection, which is on by default.
  • orbital-decay 7y ago
    >If you are going to market your browser as privacy focused, it has to block ads by default A privacy-focused browser should care about the privacy part of the online advertisement, which is tracking. Completely preventing the site from showing any ads is a different feature.
    • suby 7y ago
      Considering that advertisements are a common vector for installing spyware and malware, I think adblocking and antitracking are two sides of the same coin.
  • bwat49 7y ago
    it already blocks trackers by default
  • inanutshellus 7y ago
    No, these are not the same and oughtn't be conflated. I'm perfectly happy seeing ads that aren't targeted to me personally based on my browsing history. Ads on, say, Stack Overflow or HN or whatever, that target nerds ("great hosting!", "3d printing tech!", "legos!") would be perfectly doable without tracking each of us personally.
    • rrix2 7y ago
      It's interesting to think about how these sorts of niche sites which have a narrow enough demographic to have valuable ad space are more or less being entirely eaten alive by networks with incredibly wide demographics. The centralized networks have to resort to building a panopticon to replicate segmenting which used to be natural at the network layer and the niche sites have to resort to playing along because of how powerful that panopticon is.
• mintplant 7y ago
  > In order to have a strong foundation for the next generation of mobile Firefox browsers and put all our efforts and resources in GeckoView, work on Firefox Focus will currently be on hold. Don’t worry though, you can still keep using our privacy browser, Focus, as well as our current Firefox for Android. I think this is a typo, and meant to say that Firefox for Android development is on hold, not Focus.
  • callahad 7y ago
    Not a typo; we had not formally announced that Focus was on hold while we bootstrap the Firefox Preview / GeckoView / Mozilla Android Components ecosystem. Now we have. :) If you're interested in community maintainership of Focus, please fill out this survey: https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5022894/Firefox-Focus-Survey https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5022894/Firefox-Focus-Survey (Linked from https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/)
• riquito 7y ago
  I'm a happy user of both Firefox Focus and Firefox mobile, I don't know what could they improve but I'll give it a look. About Firefox focus, I love to have it as default browser when opening links, it gives me a lot of confidence to know that the session will be completely destroyed afterward. I'd miss it if it were to be discontinued.
  • antpls 7y ago
    Same usage here, and happy with it. Using both Firefox Focus and Firefox Android, Firefox Focus being the default browser
  • r3bl 7y ago
    A neat little thing I've discovered after installing the Preview is that Focus is still here. You can toggle between the modes in one tap, and if you're in a private mode, opening links from other apps behaves just like Focus (minus the convenient "erase everything" button, at least for now). It's the best of both worlds, I don't have to use a second one for those rare scenarios in which I want cookies (like remaining logged into HN).
• jimmaswell 7y ago
  Cool, how about working on that mobile browser you already have? I've been using it for years and it's good but apparently the lack of progress on it is because they abandoned us users of it to focus on this thing. When quantum came out addon capability on mobile severely regressed and never recovered. This issue to support the context menu API has been open for TWO YEARS.[0] I just want to be able to long press an image and reverse image search it like I used to, is that so much to ask? Yes, there's an addon to do it through the addon menu and then tap the image but it's not the same. 0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363016 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363016
  • re4ctor 7y ago
    The amount of work to improve Firefox for Android basically meant a rewrite was needed, hence Firefox Preview being the eventually replacement when it's fully ready
  • mncolinlee 7y ago
    We had many discussions around this. The Firefox for Android code base was not in a great condition to maintain backwards compatibility as well as accept a new rendering engine and all of the new Android Components we wanted to introduce to unify of our code bases for different Android-based products. TL;DR: There was too much cruft built up. Work should move faster now. We substantially grew our Android team in the last year.
    • jimmaswell 7y ago
      I hope that works out then, I'm just frustrated with the state of mobile as it's been since the regressions. As someone who still thinks dropping XUL from desktop was a mistake (and maybe even mobile now that devices are more powerful) I wish it could've just stayed how it was but I'll just have to make the best of it.
• buu700 7y ago
  Add a mobile JS console and this will immediately become my default browser. I don't understand why no one has done this yet.
• vast 7y ago
  Just yesterday I thought it is really annoying that mobile browsers put the address bar on top, even worse if it is moving in and out. That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel. Now FF puts the address bar on bottom. Quite a suprise but I think it is a pretty smart change.
  • samueloph 7y ago
    I can't understand how UX designers come up with the idea that putting stuff on the top of the screen* is a good thing, and even keep reiterating through that. That's an honest question, anybody knows what's the motivation behind that? * or, places that are hard to reach for most users
    • inanutshellus 7y ago
      1) It's entirely rational on a desktop to have the URL at the top. 2) same browser gets put on a mobile phone, wants to "feel natural" 3) url bar goes in the "familiar" place.
    • Nagyman 7y ago
      Legacy design and use patterns. The top of the screen used to make more sense than today. Mobile-first design really hasn't taken hold for many UX web designers (and/or the organizations haven't adapted). Relatively speaking, large phones where it's difficult to reach the top weren't popular until recently. Even mobile apps are just starting to put navigation towards the bottom.
    • silversconfused 7y ago
      They are thinking like letterhead.
    • JoshTriplett 7y ago
      In addition to familiarity as others have mentioned: when you scroll a site, it feels natural to "scroll away" the UI on the top. If you have UI on the bottom, and you want to hide it when scrolling, that doesn't feel as natural.
  • 7y ago
• bad_user 7y ago
  Nice changes, I'm now wishing for an Android :-)
• bombledmonk 7y ago
  I just switched to the current Android Firefox a few weeks ago and I must say I find it very hard to go back to Chrome. uBlock and Dark Reader make the phone browsing experience a remarkable amount more pleasant. Chrome's general UI interaction is definitely more polished and snappier all around, but browsing mobile with good ad blocking, and not getting blasted in the face by stark white pages more than covers for Firefox's warts.
  • eco 7y ago
    It should probably be noted that this Firefox Preview they are announcing doesn't yet have Add-On support. But I agree, uBlock Origin makes the mobile web far less painful. Also, I'll point out that you want to be using uBlock Origin, not uBlock. As I recall, Raymond Hill (the creator of uBlock) decided to hand over uBlock Firefox to one of the contributors to offload some of the maintenance burden but then the new owner immediately started trying to monetize it which prompted him to create uBlock Origin.
    • rando9297 7y ago
      Last time I checked, Raymond Hill's website didn't even have a donation button. This is an incredibly generous stance for him to take but if he doesn't want money himself maybe he could collect funds for a charity. I really feel I owe someone for this software.
      • the_pwner224 7y ago
        It's free (libre) software; you don't owe anyone. Eventually you will encounter a bug or translation/documentation error in some free software; taking some time to fix that would help everyone. And so would making software to fix a problem and then releasing it under a free license. It might not happen in the near future, but chances are eventually you'll get to contribute something. And even if you don't, just accept uBO as a gift from a nice person.
      • Qub3d 7y ago
        Raymond outlines his reasons for refusing donations on the ublock wiki, if anyone is curious: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-... One thing he (rightfully) points out is that the real power of ad-blocking solutions comes from the community-maintained blocking lists. In theory one could manually block every url they run across, but in practice we can use these tools (or a tool like pi-hole) almost effortlessly.
• beiller 7y ago
  I've been using Firefox on Android for about a year now, and it is great, except one major problem. Google news site (news.google.com). News I believe uses my entire phone's RAM and starts swapping (I am totally guessing, does Android use swap?) because the app will become unresponsive for about 2 full minutes while the page is rendering. Closing and re-opening a tab in this state actually breaks the app FYI (all other tabs freeze as well). Scrolling will give low resolution visuals below the fold. Horrible experience on google news. Actually all google properties are PAINFULLY slow. Is that on purpose Google? I got around it by installing Firefox Focus, and that seems to load google news quite fast, but Focus is like a permanent incognito mode, so that is quite inconvenient in itself. So now I just use Focus for google news and regular Firefox for everything else. Hopefully there will be performance improvements to come. My phone is an older Huawei Honor 8 so maybe I should just buy a new one... but the infrared on it is so great!
  • iamnotacrook 7y ago
    Memory management on Android is awful. My music player routinely gets killed; I've tried all options available to me to prevent this.. It's just too difficult for Android to work out "you're listening to music, even though there's no visible ui, so I won't kill it". I understand that there is a whitelist of music apps which don't get killed - so intractable is this problem - but the one I use (Rocket Player) isn't on it.
    • beiller 7y ago
      In my case I usually have actually nothing else running and my phone has 4GB of RAM so I am at a loss. I just tried Firefox Preview on Andriod with google news, and it loaded in about 2 seconds. So far so good!
    • ignaloidas 7y ago
      The killing isn't actually the fault of Android itself, but the smartphone vendors that try to push the battery time metrics to the max. Battery management from Android isn't that bad actually, but the vendors will always find a way to fuck it up. I really liked this insight from "Zombies, Run!" developer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18901006#18902273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18901006#18902273
• Causality1 7y ago
  Now if they could just fix Firefox Mobile's abysmal tab management. Chrome Mobile's tab screen is a stack of pages in the Z-axis with the one closest to the user being the most recent tab and so on. Firefox Mobile's is a grid with the number of rows and columns being variable depending on screen dimensions. Figuring out which ones you opened in what order is not immediately apparent. It also suffers from the frankly amateur Android programming mistake of varying the swipe limits directly with the width of the screen, so going from portrait to landscape on a 19.5:9 phone screen means dismissing a tab suddenly requires you to swipe over twice as far as it does in portrait mode. More than once I've found myself saying "oh my god, go away!" after trying and failing three times to swipe an unwanted tab away before remembering I have to drag the damn thing halfway to Timbuktu to dismiss it.
  • m-p-3 7y ago
    I hope they'll add some navigation gestures, I really miss the ability to swipe the address bar to switch tabs..
  • bscphil 7y ago
    > Now if they could just fix Firefox Mobile's abysmal tab management. Chrome Mobile's tab screen is a stack of pages in the Z-axis with the one closest to the user being the most recent tab and so on. Firefox Mobile's is a grid with the number of rows and columns being variable depending on screen dimensions. You can change it to a linear list easily. Settings -> General -> Compact Tabs. Personally I strongly prefer the way Firefox does it. The order is actually pretty simple. Left to right, top to bottom is oldest to newest.
    • Causality1 7y ago
      ...which does nothing to address the problem of inconsistent UI experience because the setting doesn't affect landscape mode so now it's even less consistent.
      • bscphil 7y ago
        You're right! I didn't realize it didn't affect landscape mode. That's probably a bug.
• thisisitnownow 7y ago
  I have been using Firefox on Android since 2013. It's been constantly improving. I am so glad that it exists so that I am not forced to use a browser (Chrome) that doesn't respect me or my privacy and has every incentive to fuck me over.
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    I used it in 2013 and found it constantly degrading with each update. They removed a major feature to reflow text to fit your screen nicely, worsened the UI, and other things I don't remember anymore. After using an old version for a while, I tried another browser, and holy crap that was 10 times faster as well as being customizable the way I was used to from Firefox desktop. Not open source, not as featureful (no add-ons), but that was so much better. Since then I switched to Lightning: even fewer features, but open source, very lightweight, and great UX. Whenever I raised issues with Mozilla about things that degraded, it was always either talking to a brick wall or a wontfix. They made the decision based on one person complaining about it being the old way, implemented the change, and no matter that other people liked the old way, it wouldn't be changed back or made configurable. I then tried to compile Firefox for Android myself and cherry pick only security updates, but that was enough of a pain in the ass that I gave up on it.
    • michaelmrose 7y ago
      The current version of firefox for android works very well and doesn't feel noticeably different from chrome on a several year old phone. The newest version mentioned in this article actually feels faster than chrome although I'm not crazy about the new ui it is usable without difficultly and a work in progress.
      • lucb1e 7y ago
        Have you tried other browsers? I must say that the effect has gotten smaller since I got my second Android phone about a year ago (yes, the first lasted 2013-2018), I think because the webview component itself just got more bulky, but it's still very noticeable how slow Fennec is (Firefox from F-Droid) compared to a bare webview browser.
• dralley 7y ago
  >At Firefox You mean, at Mozilla. This whole branding campaign to shove everything under the "Firefox" umbrella is silly.
  • piyush_soni 7y ago
    It's literally supposed to be the new Firefox for Android. So the 'Firefox' umbrella seems reasonable?
    • ptx 7y ago
      Reasonable for the product, which is not the same as the organization. At Microsoft they make Windows. At Mozilla they make Firefox.
      • dblohm7 7y ago
        And Firefox has much higher brand recognition than Mozilla.
• piotrkubisa 7y ago
  I am really glad they moved the URL bar to the bottom. As a former BlackBerry10 user I find it more UX friendly for touch-based devices.
• piyush_soni 7y ago
  Feedback : When you are making a new Firefox for Android, please fix this small problem but personally a big annoyance : I should not need to open a whole new page before trying to open a new tab. Just add a plus button next to the address bar, that's it. Currently the workflow just disturbs me in all Firefox browsers for mobile - you have to click the tabs button, then the 'Plus' button (or click the settings menu and then the new tab - both require two taps with some delay, for something that should be just one quick tap).
  • teekert 7y ago
    Meh the + is on the same spot as the tabs symbol so it's just a fast double tap and that means one less button in the interface. Edit: OK, the fact that you have to wait for the animation is annoying indeed.
    • piyush_soni 7y ago
      Yup. Even though in Firefox Android 'regular' that's at the same page, as you noted it's not always that fast, especially for low end phones. But with this new Firefox Preview even the Plus button is not at the same 'position', and the new page opening up with animation takes even more time.
      • iggldiggl 7y ago
        Horizontal space is somewhat of a premium though, especially if things like reader mode or buttons provided by addons as available in the current Firefox will return to the URL bar once more. And the current design for Fenix doesn't help in that regard by having quite a bit more white space - the tab counter and menu button take up approx. 50 % more width than they do in the current Firefox.
      • vmarsy 7y ago
        See my other comment, the "+" button is useless is Firefox Preview, there's not a single use case where you need it. It was probably added for people who didn't notice that the address/search bar is already here, or with "muscle memory" of searching for a "+" At the time you opened the tab menu, you're already in a new tab.
• gloflo 7y ago
  If there is one thing I miss from current mobile Firefox, it's text reflow. Opera mobile did it perfectly. I want to be able to zoom in or out and have text reflowed to the screen width. This makes the web magnitudes nicer to use on a small screen. No cut off lines, no 10 lines per screen. Just convenient freedom over the primary tool we interact on the web: Text.
  • bscphil 7y ago
    I wonder if this does what you expect? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fit-text-to-width/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fit-text-to-w...
    • gloflo 7y ago
      Nope, does not work on HN. But thank you!
  • lake99 7y ago
    I use this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fftextwrap https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fftextwrap
• Droobfest 7y ago
  I'm a huge fan of the navigation bar on the bottom. I've missed it since I had to give up Windows Phone. It's hard to believe that neither Apple or Google ever added the option. I can't think of a single reason it would be better on top, It's simply harder to reach and less usable. This also goes for all other apps...
  • yinyang_in 7y ago
    Exactly I also find the same, opera touch does it so well, but then it's opera and privacy things and also want to support firefox.
  • a_f 7y ago
    Its such a nice change, I cant believe I haven't come across this yet. From what little I have used of the app it feels really nice and slick.
  • zrobotics 7y ago
    Brave on Android has had bottom-bar for quite a while, it was the reason I switched from Firefox. I would switch back, but as there is no add-on support...
• simfoo 7y ago
  Wow. Just tried it out and it is fast! It feels more than just 2x as fast as the regular firefox mobile on the same device. Now just add proper settings (no settings menu yet to disable thirdparty cookies) and add addon support (ublock, skip redirect, cookie autodelete) and I will switch immediately even with smaller bugs
• m-p-3 7y ago
  Not fond of the bottom address bar, I guess I'm not used to it because I always tap the top-right corner to switch tabs... I just need to get it in my muscle-memory, not a big deal. I still cross my fingers this will be configurable at some point. My main gripe is that I feel like bookmarks are now a second-class citizen in Firefox Preview, they're not as accessible. I could see my mobile bookmarks right on the new tab screen in Firefox, now I have to press ⋮ > Your Library > Bookmarks and then click the bookmark I want. 4 clicks, while it took only one (or two) before with bookmarks as the default panel on my homepage on Firefox "classic".
  • lucideer 7y ago
    Funnily enough, top-address-bar has been one of my two biggest UX gripes about Android FF. Especially since iOS FF has the bottom adddress bar (which seems like a UI decision independent of their reliance on Safari's engine), and is so much nicer to use. With you on the bookmarks though. Especially since they're putting this new "Collections" feature front-and-centre but it seems to have no integration with Your Library. The whole "Tab Groups", etc. paradigm has been tried time and time again: the reason it never sticks isn't because it's a bad idea, it's because it's never integrated with idiomatic browser features.
  • kumarharsh 7y ago
    Bookmarks have become even more first-class now - just swipe up from your address bar anytime. Try it now ( in the Firefox preview). Also, I feel the opposite regarding the address bar position - give it a few days, you'll absolutely love it. Edge on Windows Mobile had the same position, and it was a very nifty and time-saving UX. You can now use the phone one-handed more easily, even for small-handed people.
    • iggldiggl 7y ago
      > Bookmarks have become even more first-class now - just swipe up from your address bar anytime. Try it now ( in the Firefox preview). Swiping up seems to only give me the option to share and/or bookmark the page, and in Fennec those things were already possible through the main menu, so not much of an improvement (though I suppose swiping might be a little easier than precisely hitting the menu button). Actually viewing my bookmarks has indeed become more cumbersome, though, and that is what your parent comment is referring to: In Fennec bookmarks were accessible through the about:home UI, which appears both when opening a new tab and when tapping the URL bar to enter URL edit mode, both of which feel quicker than "Open main menu -> Open library -> Open bookmarks" in Fenix.
• lucideer 7y ago
  - Talks about introducing a browser more focused on privacy - Comes with Google search suggestions enabled by default on first run (has a Google logo prominently displayed in the middle of the screen on first run in fact)
  • ec109685 7y ago
    Google pays a large amount to be default search engine.
    • roca 7y ago
      It seems highly unlikely that Google cares enough about suggestion data that they'd pay more for suggestion traffic than for just the searches. It is much more likely that users expect search suggestions to work out of the box and some will bounce if they try a new browser that doesn't do that.
• sanbor 7y ago
  Small tip: please avoid giving time estimations using seasons "coming this fall", as in the other hemisphere it is going to be spring.
• godelski 7y ago
  To any Mozilla/Firefox developer reading this. I try to convert people to Firefox. The number one reason people switch, by far, is because mobile has add on support. So I say to push this front and center in marketing (I know this is a preview). People are reluctant to switch their desktop browser because chrome pretty much has the same features. But it they switch their mobile browsers they also switch their desktops to take advantage of the full feature suite. And to anyone trying to convert your friends "mobile supports ublock" is usually all I have to say. Edit:unblock == uBlock Origin (sorry, on my phone)
  • Bombthecat 7y ago
    Tried to Google it, what is mobile supports unblock?
    • aesh2Xa1 7y ago
      He almost certainly means uBlock Origin.
      • godelski 7y ago
        Correct! And thanks, I fixed it.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • b3orn 7y ago
      Maybe he/she meant "ublock"?
    • Can_Not 7y ago
      It supports extensions in general, specifically one of the best ad blockers, ublock origin.
  • Jnr 7y ago
    I wish iOS version had addons to block ads. (I know Apple doesn't allow that) I still use it because of the synchronization and because Firefox is awesome. :)
• magissima 7y ago
  I've been using Firefox Preview for a while and I like it, especially the bottom navigation bar, but one thing that I hope survives from the old app is the tab queue, which sends links opened from other apps to Firefox in the background without stealing focus from the original app. To me it's a game changer on the level of tabbed browsing and I don't know why all mobile browsers don't have it.
  • briffle 7y ago
    I agree, one of the best parts about FF on android was the queue. I hate the clicking a link, and it forces you to task switch right then to that link. I like to read things, click for more info, and then follow up when I am done. I rate it higher than add-ons and ublock (I use a DNS server that filters out many ads for me already, https://www.nextdns.io/ https://www.nextdns.io/ )
• asveikau 7y ago
  One reason I like FF on Android better than Chrome: The Chrome user agent has your device model, even in incognito mode. If you have a relatively rare Android device in your market, I think you can be tracked fairly uniquely on that alone. I was creeped out when I discovered this.
  • cpeterso 7y ago
    > The Chrome user agent has your device model, even in incognito mode. For example, on my phone, Firefox's current User-Agent header is: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 8.1.0; Tablet; rv:67.0) Gecko/67.0 Firefox/67.0 while Chrome's is: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.1.0; Moto G (5) Plus) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/740.3729.136 Mobile Safari/537.36
    • asveikau 7y ago
      I would say it gets worse than this though. "Moto G (5) Plus" is probably pretty common. As are Pixels and many Samsung offerings. But since android has such a broad spectrum of devices, if you happened to get one that's more rare, you are sort of advertising that all over the web, and you will be one of a small number of people doing it.
• kumarharsh 7y ago
  Wow, this preview is incredibly good! I was not expecting such a good quality from a preview app (given how bad some of the other tries from Firefox have been on Android). And you know what absolutely clinches it for me? That you moved the address bar to the bottom!! Just like Edge on Windows mobile - that's the best position for address bar IMO. I also hope you do something about better battery management on the android app. Have a bow!
  • esalman 7y ago
    Agree about the address bar positioning, last time I used a browser that had this feature was dolphin browser, at least 5 years ago.
• polskibus 7y ago
  Seems you can't move open tabs to Preview from Firefox Beta on Android. What a pity!
  • mncolinlee 7y ago
    It's coming very soon. The feature almost made this version except for a late bug.
• jeroenhd 7y ago
  I can't get it to work with my custom certificate authority (which I use to analyse traffic coming from my phone every now and then to see if any apps are leaking personal info). Also, though I know better, I also have some intranet services running with a certificate signed by that authority because the domains are dynamically generated and I can't automate my DNS to get wildcard letsencrypt certificates. Normal mobile Firefox has their own cert store, so you can import it by clicking a link to the certificate and hitting OK. Other apps use the system certificate store so I have imported my certificate into there as well. Sadly, it still doesn't work. My specific use case may not be very common, but certificate authorities in BYOD companies aren't uncommon either. I can't use this for my daily driver until I can import my certificate :( The new system is very interesting though, the idea of separate browsing behaviours between devices can be a game changer if they implement it smoothly.
  • sciurus 7y ago
    There's an issue for this at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2286 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2286
    • jeroenhd 7y ago
      Thanks, I just subscribed to the issue. Seems like it's blocked by a Bugzilla issue that didn't get updated in five months. I guess it's gonna be a while until I switch browsers.
• mikelward 7y ago
  Don't bother sending feedback to the email address mentioned in the blog: it bounces. We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (firefox-preview-feedback) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group...
  • dblohm7 7y ago
    This has been fixed.
• sirfz 7y ago
  Does anyone suffer from degrading image/video quality on some websites while using Firefox Android? I have this issue with Facebook. I don't want the Facebook app installed on my phone (mostly to block notifications and for privacy reasons) so I access FB via Firefox but images look terrible and every video I click opens in a separate tab instead of in-page (at least I can download it tho). Only solution I have is using user-agent switcher to change my UA to either Chrome or Firefox for iOS (which is what I picked to keep Firefox in my UA) but this breaks other stuff on some websites. Question is, how to get Facebook and other sites to stop serving shit quality to Firefox users? How is this fair?
  • jddj 7y ago
    One option is to attempt (despite of all of the obstacles they might put in place..) to increase Firefox's market share, perhaps by spreading the word about privacy concerns and/or ux benefits. Another might be adblocker-esque trusted and shared community-maintained lists along with an add-on (does this exist?) for per-domain user agent mocking. Hopefully with enough adoption (i.e integrated into ublock) that it reduces the value proposition of investing the time. Thirdly, continuing to call out the companies who do this sort of thing.
    • sirfz 7y ago
      But why would market share matter if the browser is more than capable of handling whatever content a site serves. I don't see this relevant to the issue. I think the fact that Firefox doesn't announce the device's model in its UA could be a factor so some sites fall back to their lower quality version by default but it sucks that we can't force the higher quality version.
      • jddj 7y ago
        Alienating users for using adblocker-capable software might be a more difficult sell as the group gets larger.
• mehrdadn 7y ago
  Can they please provide a way to close all tabs instead of always having at least a blank one open. I'm probably just OCD on this but it's the most annoying thing I found about Firefox on Android compared to Chrome when I start using it.
• miohtama 7y ago
  Mozilla should do a deal with Huawei now when the trade war is raging. Hard Chinese money, desperate for a high quality Chrome alternative browser, might be better than wishing Google keeps paying for the default search engine spot.
  • cameronbrown 7y ago
    That's pretty damn risky. Not only would it draw the ire of the government, but they could have their entire company cut off at a whim.
• EastSmith 7y ago
  I use Brave on mobile (also has built in ad blocker). Is this version of Firefox for Android on par with Brave regarding ad blocking?
• k__ 7y ago
  Finally. I already switched on Windows and Linux. Now macOS and Android is missing.
• blaisio 7y ago
  This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to contribute to and use Mozilla projects. Bravo!
• drbytes 7y ago
  Add reflow... Opera does that really well. Doubletap to reflow and make text larger. Its the only android browser that does it afaik.
• silverwind 7y ago
  Why does the link to the preview release go through a tracking site and not directly to the Play Store?
  • dbtx 7y ago
    Why did I hope that app.adjust.com was somewhere that I could get the .apk without having anything to do with the Play Store?
    • mncolinlee 7y ago
      You can grab APKs on GitHub, but you'll need to update manually if you do so. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/releases/tag/v1.0.0 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/releases/tag/v1.0.0
      • dbtx 7y ago
        Thank you. I always expected this sort of thing (like pgeorgi's link) to be available but it isn't made as obvious and I stopped hunting too early.
• fmakunbound 7y ago
  Tried it out. Love it.
• arendtio 7y ago
  Most of the time it feels great already (sometimes it freezes for a few moments), but does someone know how/if it is possible to add Progressive Web Apps to the desktop with this Firefox for Android Preview?
  • cpeterso 7y ago
    The Firefox Preview team is actively working on PWA support for Q3 or Q4, including add to home screen.
    • arendtio 7y ago
      Thanks for the info. I am looking forward to it :-)
• Roy78 7y ago
  I and many others that I'm aware of truly desire a mobile browser that has the feature to disable all mobile sites/web pages.
• kace91 7y ago
  I'm aware that I'm reaching a Cartago-delenda-est situation here, but since I see some mozilla devs here I must ask: Is there any news about the deal breaker bugs that are still keeping thousands of people from moving to firefox on OSX? I'm referring to the bugs that cause extreme CPU usage and as a consequence extreme heating and battery usage, mainly on macbooks with retina screens set to "more space" resolution. I work in a whole building full of developers where every single mac user has stopped using firefox due to this issue, yet there seems to be a deep disconnection between how prevalent the issue is and the priority it seems to be assigned. I hope I'm not coming off as an ass here, I'm just sad that I've had to move away from firefox and to see all my coworkers also moving to chrome.
  • prike 7y ago
    I'm with you on this, Firefox for osx is in very bad shape, i can only use it on my strong imac. Chrome had to stay on macbook :(
  • dmix 7y ago
    Oh, that's why that kept happening on my Macbook pro? I thought I was loading a broken site or had too many tabs open like I always do. For me adding "Auto Tab Disard" [1] (a Firefox equivalent of The Great Suspender for Chrome) has reduced my FF memory/CPU footprint by 10x. It defaults to 10 minutes which is usually long enough where you've mostly forgotten about the tab, then it will refresh when you focus on it. A feature fortunately becoming native to FF. I don't seem to have the previous performance issues anymore but I'll be looking for it now. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
    • kace91 7y ago
      > Oh, that's why that kept happening on my Macbook pro? I thought I was loading a broken site or had too many tabs open like I always do. That's what I thought as well, but apparently it's something to do with the compositor and FF redrawing the whole window instead of just relevant pixels or areas - which provokes a lot of unneeded calculations -something specially damaging for users that have scaling set to more space (effectively a higher resolution). That was my understanding at least, when I first learned about the bug many months ago. I followed the development for a while with no (public) improvements and now I just wait for news about the issue or something, but all FF related news so far have been about new features or products.
• niftylettuce 7y ago
  It would be nice if they merged my open PR on GitHub with a core bug exposing global variables... https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/pull/4296 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/pull/4296
• electriclove 7y ago
  So how is this new Firefox for Android different than the Firefox I have installed on my Android right now? Will I automatically get upgraded to this when it rolls out or is it a separate product? It would be nice to have that explained on the page/blog post.
• zmmmmm 7y ago
  I keep using Opera because of a few small affordances that any browser could implement (and some do, but only Opera does all of them). The main one is text-reflow on zoom. It seems so ridiculous that I have to either stare at microscopic text or pan back and forwards just to be able to read things. Surely actually reading the contents of pages is a primary feature of a browser? The other one I just can't understand is why not implement pull-to-refresh? Surely that can't be hard? I know this is just ranting, but it's weird to see browser makers completely re-inventing their products when small, basic things could be fixed in their current versions.
  • jdc 7y ago
    https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3262 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3262
    • zmmmmm 7y ago
      Thanks!
• Eridrus 7y ago
  Is Firefox on Android ever going to build a sandbox architecture, or are the hard won lessons from the Desktop world going to be ignored?
• galaxyLogic 7y ago
  I think FF should implement an add-blocker which allows me to say which adds I like and which I don't. Many important services like news-papers can only survive if they get add-revenue. They also contain adds in their print-edition and people still subscribe to them. So I don't mind adds in general just adds which have no relevance to me.
• ekianjo 7y ago
  Again Telemetry on by default with asking anything to the end user. Mozilla, when are you going to learn?
• whalabi 7y ago
  This is a great step in the right direction …but I really don’t like the thing that slides up at the bottom of the screen. It takes the place of content which is 99.99% the reason I’m there. Not to share our bookmark. If I want to do that, I’ll find it in the menu. And is it just me that really, really needs a fast way to switch tabs to use a browser? Chrome lets me swipe across the bar at the top of the screen, but with Firefox it’s a tap, a visual scan to find the tab I want, and another tap. Otherwise I’d switch to this browser yesterday I like the collections concept, and the home screen. Also, it's a joke that Google's image search is horrible on Firefox, for no good reason. If you switch the user agent it works fine.
  • nh2 7y ago
    Please allow swiping the address bar to switch tabs. Otherwise it's just too slow. That is what keeps me away from using Firefox on mobile (15 years Firefox user).
    • whalabi 7y ago
      I'm wondering if I should fork Firefox mobile...
• toastal 7y ago
  I really wish I could still access about:confg
• Bob995 7y ago
  Why are they breaking their own stuff over and over again?! I updated their browser on Android and after the update it started hanging, refusing to load any website without a restart and eating up all the RAM? Why can't they invest in testers? WHY?
• Aissen 7y ago
  After a few years of using Brave on Android, I switched back to Firefox, since I now have a powerful enough device that the bad cold boot performance can be ignored. A few missing things: - Chromium's zoom on tap is really more intelligent. Hitting the [-] on HN is much easier on in Brave than Firefox. - The gesture to switch tab on Chromium is also more comfortable. That's a missed opportunity on Firefox Preview as well. - I wish there was a way for uBlock-Origin to integrate better on a webpage. Disabling javascript makes many websites much more usable (disabling most on-load popups). It's one more tap to do that on Firefox than on Brave.
• cptwunderlich 7y ago
  Last time I tried FF on Android, the Font Rendering was abysmal :( I've always been a faithful FF user on Desktop and I wish it would be a good alternative on mobile too. Let's see where this Preview goes.
• indeyets 7y ago
  Preview just lost 3 opened tabs replacing them with about:blank. Could be out-of-memory condition or smth else, but that doesn't give me trust. I'll stay with an old version for now Very hopeful for the future when it works and supports arbitrary add-ons though (containers pls!)
• Yizahi 7y ago
  Wow, usability is so much better - dark theme, support for Samsung OneUI, search on bottom. Full release will be great (and used by 0.00001% of droid users). PS: using FF mobile for 3 years exclusively. Googlenet can go in the known direction.
• enriquto 7y ago
  What is the point to have a different version of Firefox? Can't they simply remove the unneeded cruft from the standard version?
  • dao- 7y ago
    The new Firefox for Android should eventually have roughly the same feature set as the old one. It's faster because it uses a whole new technology stack, not because they decided not to add unneeded cruft, whatever that means.
    • neop1x 7y ago
      I wish that were true. But from other software redesigns and improvements, I learned that new designs often come with simplifications and reduction of functionality. Missing about:config and very simple Settings page is frightening me. Firefox and Mozilla saved the world from IE monopoly and it was always targeting power users but I fear that might change. :( So far I am happy with mobile FF but so far pretty unhappy with this preview. Almost everyone talks about bottom address bar (which after clicking moves on top anyway) and the speed. I am alergic to oversimplification ala new apple designs. I fear of: "We've reinvented mobile browsing. Now there is one big blowing button and an animation of colorful unicorns where you can customize the speed of movement and size of its horn. applause It loads 2x times faster but you can't configure anything else because it's using our next-gen AI which learns your habits and automatically enables pull to refresh after after 50 swipes down (no way to disable) and starts blocking some ads (except those participating in OurSafeAD(tm) program) once it detects from your eye movement you are trying to avoid looking at them"
• Markoff 7y ago
  reinventing by not even providing pull down to refresh as option? so much for Firefox customization, lacking for years such basic feature and don't tell me about buggy add-ons as substitute also by my experience it was crashing on regular sites and had problems with repeated words/characters and jumpy cursor in text fields making even writing comment on hacker needs impossible I mean first fix such horrible bugs and provide basic features before you start doing something else I use Firefox on desktop, but I am not really masochist to use it on Android
• Millennium 7y ago
  Not too shabby. - Performance is great. I'm already using it pretty much everywhere. - Ad blocking is about to become Firefox's killer app, and it was a major PR mistake to release a preview without enough extension support for ad blockers to work. They should have delayed the release, if necessary. - I wish the QR code reader had been released as a separate app (and on iOS too), but I'm actually quite glad to see Mozilla doing one. I look at my app store for QR code readers, and I'm confronted with a sea of questionable permissions, ads, obvious fake reviews, and tainted makers. I welcome a free QR code reader from a source I know and trust, but you can't build something like that into a browser without either bloating the browser or limiting the reader. It should be spun off into its own app, then allowed to grow.
• V-2 7y ago
  First impressions: 1. It doesn't properly "Follow device theme" (as per Settings) - I had to switch it to Dark manually; 2. Zooming text doesn't work on some pages, and on others it doesn't make the text rewrap. That's a pet peeve of mine as far as mobile browsers go. Only a handful gets this right (Opera, Yandex).
• cmurf 7y ago
  I now have Firefox Preview, Firefox Focus, and Firefox, on my Android phone. I'm not really clear what the strategy is, and future deliverable? I read that Firefox Focus development has stopped, and Firefox Preview will become Firefox on Android. But is Firefox Preview a whole new thing or is it based on what's been learned about Focus? Or? Also, it's kinda odd but I always have Twitter not fully loading on Firefox (on Android), where Firefox Focus always works fine. Typical is it hangs with spinners, if I reload it'll say "something went wrong" and the in-line retry/reload button doesn't work, same error, but reloading the whole page sometimes works. So far I haven't had this problem with Preview.
• neop1x 7y ago
  Ok, tried it. Almost no settings, no tab previews, no addons, not even about:config. So far unusable for me. And unfortunatelly as seless as Foxus - it's effectivelly Focus v2, so I uninstalled it. I hope some provacy features and speedups will eventually be backported to our awesome Firefox which I use daily. Instead of Focus v2, I would like to see Firefox as an alternative default webview for Android.
• thepra 7y ago
  The situation didn't change with this another version of Firefox for Android (and I have all of them): 1) A webpage with many and mostly made out of grid and flex elements does tender waaaaay too slowly and ugly (low quality artifacts on scrolling) 2) Animations like of the mere max-height to unhide content perform like garbage, as if it was performed by the CPU alone And I already did report this behaviour even with this version, let's see how it will turn out. Out of this experience, expecting mobile web apps to perform well enough is meaningless, lag and rendering artifacts will fill your patience meanwhile on Chrome like browsers everything is waaaay smoother.
• kamfc 7y ago
  Firefox Preview is dope. Hot off the shelf, and it's as swift as a fox. Maybe hopeful but I feel this browser is on fire. Now just need to work on the ux like the button for `read` mode. Bye, G.