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Holy cow - I am a regular user of Firefox on Android, and I just installed Firefox Preview - it's obviously a stark improvement. The lack of noscript and darkre

Holy cow - I am a regular user of Firefox on Android, and I just installed Firefox Preview - it's obviously a stark improvement. The lack of noscript and darkreader kept me from trying it before, but now I'm wishing I had tried it earlier.

blinkingled 6y ago
Seconded. It's great - old Firefox for Android was clunky and slow. The new one I am using as my primary browser with full sync enabled and with uBlock Origin and NoScript and apart from the occasional crash (they seem to fix it quick) it's great.
- rapnie 6y ago
  It is certainly great, but I'm confused.. I use Badger, uBlock and Sync for a long time already on my Android.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Firefox supported this with the normal Android app already. It is the new Firefox Preview that was limited in that regard.
  - blinkingled 6y ago
    I was using it with old Firefox for Android too, just that it was too slow and clunky compared to the new rewritten Firefox for Android, which being a complete rewrite in Kotlin, only recently started supporting extensions.
floatingatoll 6y ago
In a lot of role-playing games, people sometimes end up using low-level gear that can’t keep up because there are perks on that gear that they don’t want to lose. Sometimes it’s necessary to set aside perks and see if it’s better with more advanced gear without the perks is worth it, but there’s an emotional attachment to them that alters the evaluation of value. It’s interesting to see a relative to that sentiment show up about browser addons. Thank you for sharing!
- arkh 6y ago
  But noscript is like some sickness and poison immunity perk while your whole campaign is set in a swamp. Trading it for some bag of holding does not feel like a good thing.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    Weighing the perk "grants poison immunity" versus the perks "increased armor bonus, durability, and resistances" is indeed the crux of the problem. When is the general improvement in quality of life from replacing armor so great that it outweighs temporarily losing immunity?
bscphil 6y ago
> it's obviously a stark improvement I really wish people would say what they mean when they make comments like this. It's extremely vague and some of the obvious meanings are either subjective or can be easily shot down: * It has more / better features? No, it seems to have fewer features, at least if add-on support is a good indication. * The GUI is better? Subjective at best, I find it worse. * Web pages load faster / JS execution is faster? This is also subjective unless objective measurements are used, but this is what people most often mean. I've attempted to measure the objective speed of the browser myself. I've consistently found: Javascript performance is not significantly improved by the new browser. As measured by Speedometer [1], the new Firefox is less than 10% faster than the old one, and both are barely half as fast as Chrome on the same device. The performance of the GUI is also lacking: it takes so much more time to open menus and use GUI features that the difference is actually clearly visible to the eye. [2] Basically, I think it's very easy to be deceived by placebo effects when what we're talking about is the apparent performance of a browser. The objective metrics I've been able to capture often show the new FFA to be as slow or slower than the previous version, and when it's faster, it's not by much, at least (in my opinion) not close enough to catching up to Chrome to justify a complete browser rewrite, with everything that has entailed. [1] https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ [2] See: multiple open issues for animation jank. I found these with a quick search. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10065 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10065 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7797 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7797 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8863 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8863 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9746 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9746
- judge2020 6y ago
  You could reliably say that the addition of NoScript(?) would drastically improve page load times, but of course, that only goes to show how slow most website JS is.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    That's right, though of course NoScript etc ran on the previous FFA, so it's presumably not relevant to the comparison.
hnick 6y ago
Mine has an annoying quirk. When I switch to Firefox and type something in the address bar it doesn't work. It still seems to be trying to load the page from last time I was in the browser and forgets my query entirely until it has finished whatever is on its todo list then I can use it. Hopefully this is fixed soon, it makes casual searches annoying.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Mine was lagging when typing anything into the address bar till recently it was painful. I assume they fixed it since I havent had it happen in a while. I assumed it was my phone crapping out on me.
- Kelteseth 6y ago
  This happens to me _all the time_ on my Android tablet :(
- zith 6y ago
  I had this problem as well. After I cleared out my old tabs (99+) it disappeared. Might have been correlated.
  - hnick 6y ago
    Unfortunately this has happened since I installed it, and I rarely open many tabs on my phone. It's mostly for quick lookups when I'm out or cooking which makes it a problem.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bjoli 6y ago
I still have issues with the back button. Sometimes I have to open the location bar before being able to press back (and then back again to go where I want), but otheriwse I am a huge fan
- jml7c5 6y ago
  That bug has been around for a while. Issues: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8180 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8180 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8282 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8282
random9763 6y ago
I’m using it as my main mobile browser but the lack of amp redirector hurts quite a bit.
- sexy_seedbox 6y ago
  Kiwi Browser for Android has extension support plus built-in AMP removal.
coldpie 6y ago
Lack of NoScript support was the only thing holding me back. Mozilla really called my bluff here, I was super whiny about them not supporting NoScript, but here we are :) Time to eat crow and upgrade. Great work, Mozilla.

blinkingled 6y ago

Seconded. It's great - old Firefox for Android was clunky and slow. The new one I am using as my primary browser with full sync enabled and with uBlock Origin and NoScript and apart from the occasional crash (they seem to fix it quick) it's great.

rapnie 6y ago
It is certainly great, but I'm confused.. I use Badger, uBlock and Sync for a long time already on my Android.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Firefox supported this with the normal Android app already. It is the new Firefox Preview that was limited in that regard.
- blinkingled 6y ago
  I was using it with old Firefox for Android too, just that it was too slow and clunky compared to the new rewritten Firefox for Android, which being a complete rewrite in Kotlin, only recently started supporting extensions.

floatingatoll 6y ago

In a lot of role-playing games, people sometimes end up using low-level gear that can’t keep up because there are perks on that gear that they don’t want to lose. Sometimes it’s necessary to set aside perks and see if it’s better with more advanced gear without the perks is worth it, but there’s an emotional attachment to them that alters the evaluation of value. It’s interesting to see a relative to that sentiment show up about browser addons. Thank you for sharing!

arkh 6y ago
But noscript is like some sickness and poison immunity perk while your whole campaign is set in a swamp. Trading it for some bag of holding does not feel like a good thing.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Weighing the perk "grants poison immunity" versus the perks "increased armor bonus, durability, and resistances" is indeed the crux of the problem. When is the general improvement in quality of life from replacing armor so great that it outweighs temporarily losing immunity?

bscphil 6y ago

> it's obviously a stark improvement I really wish people would say what they mean when they make comments like this. It's extremely vague and some of the obvious meanings are either subjective or can be easily shot down: * It has more / better features? No, it seems to have fewer features, at least if add-on support is a good indication. * The GUI is better? Subjective at best, I find it worse. * Web pages load faster / JS execution is faster? This is also subjective unless objective measurements are used, but this is what people most often mean. I've attempted to measure the objective speed of the browser myself. I've consistently found: Javascript performance is not significantly improved by the new browser. As measured by Speedometer [1], the new Firefox is less than 10% faster than the old one, and both are barely half as fast as Chrome on the same device. The performance of the GUI is also lacking: it takes so much more time to open menus and use GUI features that the difference is actually clearly visible to the eye. [2] Basically, I think it's very easy to be deceived by placebo effects when what we're talking about is the apparent performance of a browser. The objective metrics I've been able to capture often show the new FFA to be as slow or slower than the previous version, and when it's faster, it's not by much, at least (in my opinion) not close enough to catching up to Chrome to justify a complete browser rewrite, with everything that has entailed. [1] https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ [2] See: multiple open issues for animation jank. I found these with a quick search. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10065 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10065 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7797 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7797 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8863 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8863 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9746 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9746

judge2020 6y ago
You could reliably say that the addition of NoScript(?) would drastically improve page load times, but of course, that only goes to show how slow most website JS is.
- bscphil 6y ago
  That's right, though of course NoScript etc ran on the previous FFA, so it's presumably not relevant to the comparison.

hnick 6y ago

Mine has an annoying quirk. When I switch to Firefox and type something in the address bar it doesn't work. It still seems to be trying to load the page from last time I was in the browser and forgets my query entirely until it has finished whatever is on its todo list then I can use it. Hopefully this is fixed soon, it makes casual searches annoying.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
Mine was lagging when typing anything into the address bar till recently it was painful. I assume they fixed it since I havent had it happen in a while. I assumed it was my phone crapping out on me.
Kelteseth 6y ago
This happens to me _all the time_ on my Android tablet :(
zith 6y ago
I had this problem as well. After I cleared out my old tabs (99+) it disappeared. Might have been correlated.
- hnick 6y ago
  Unfortunately this has happened since I installed it, and I rarely open many tabs on my phone. It's mostly for quick lookups when I'm out or cooking which makes it a problem.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bjoli 6y ago

I still have issues with the back button. Sometimes I have to open the location bar before being able to press back (and then back again to go where I want), but otheriwse I am a huge fan

jml7c5 6y ago
That bug has been around for a while. Issues: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8180 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8180 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8282 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/8282

random9763 6y ago

I’m using it as my main mobile browser but the lack of amp redirector hurts quite a bit.

sexy_seedbox 6y ago
Kiwi Browser for Android has extension support plus built-in AMP removal.

coldpie 6y ago

Lack of NoScript support was the only thing holding me back. Mozilla really called my bluff here, I was super whiny about them not supporting NoScript, but here we are :) Time to eat crow and upgrade. Great work, Mozilla.