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Context is interesting here: uBlock Origin is one of the few extensions available in "Firefox Preview," the new Firefox app for Android. The app is somewhat con

Context is interesting here: uBlock Origin is one of the few extensions available in "Firefox Preview," the new Firefox app for Android. The app is somewhat controversial for breaking existing extensions, but they have been slowly adding some whitelisted extensions, with uBlock having been the first announced. I hope Mozilla is able to roll out full extension support sooner rather than later in FF Preview, but I do appreciate that they take it seriously enough to work with developers this closely.

toastal 6y ago
I'm eagerly awaiting getting back an extension that let me strip the tracking tokens from social media sites, along with redirecting away from AMP. You'd think these would be baked into the browser's tracking protection.
- tommica 6y ago
  That sounds like a bad idea - how would the browser know the tracking token is a tracking token and not just a token? And wouldn't redirecting away from AMP be taking away control from the user? As extensions those are fine, as core browser features, they sound a bit iffy.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    So is downloading amp pages in the background and bloating your phone by default though (chrome). I think something like that should be turned on by default but toggleable. It's a sensible option for a privacy focused browser.
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      AMP is just an ordinary page on google domain. If you're going to hard-code some anti-Google behaviour in Firefox, it means to start a war against Google. Not the wisest decision when Google is the main revenue source for Firefox AFAIK.
      - bad_user 6y ago
        Given Google's reach, not the wisest decision for any browser maker. Google being the main revenue source for Firefox is often cited and is true, but if you look at Brave, its competition, what they do is to block a publisher's ads, replacing them with their own, being essentially racketeering and I'm surprised how they weren't declared illegal already. Fact of the matter is, if people don't pay money for browser licenses, and they don't, and if ads don't fund those browsers, and they currently do, then alternatives to Chrome cannot exist, if not funded by another mega corporation that can burn money just so Google can't be the only player, like what Apple does. --- But back to decision making — we are talking about AMP pages being served by searching on Google.com, because that's the major source of these links. Given the search engine is Google's property and not some public utility, they can destroy any browser maker if they wanted to. Speaking of which, if you're so bothered with Google.com serving AMP pages, well, why not choose an alternative instead?
        sciurus 6y ago
        Google pays Apple an estimated 9 to 12 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine in Safari. https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-billion-to-remain-default-search-engine-on-safari-306082 https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-bi...
        bad_user 6y ago
        Right, forgot about that. It only makes my point stronger though. Given Google's reach with their search engine, with YouTube, with Gmail, starting a war with Google would be a death sentence for a browser maker, no matter the supposed source of funding, which is basically ads across the board anyway, an industry also controlled by Google and Facebook.
        searchableguy 6y ago
        Seems like anti trust can help here.
        6y ago
  - toastal 6y ago
    AMP breaks down some fundmental things about the internet. Obviously tracking tokens could be changed over time, but there's a blacklist in the popular Privacy Badger extension. Firefox's privacy protection features have varying levels of opt-in-ness, so I don't see why if pulling in Disconnects blacklist for one thing is okay, but tokens not. I'm fine with an extension too, but right now only one extension is whitelisted for the new Firefox on Android.
  - bad_user 6y ago
    There are a few standard tokens meant for tracking, like the utm_ parameters [1], which you could safely strip out. That said analytics software and publishers will simply adapt to using other names. [1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867
    - dmix 6y ago
      Historically extensions have moved faster than the companies. Also I highly doubt Google will ever change the utm parameter name. There’s thousands of JS libraries that extract it and use it for various additional analytics, hosted blog/wordpress hackery. and e-commerce/payment plugins that inject it across iframes and other stuff. Plus tons of server side apps that pattern match on utm_ or simply injects them into urls and views. It’d be a nightmare for tons of businesses which have complicated setups which reuse or inject the token for conversion tracking alone, not including all the other stuff.
  - zo1 6y ago
    Don't think of it that way. Think of it as cookie/token spam. Just like email spam, we'll have to employ various tactics in order to fight back. Heuristics, known bad-player Databases, punishment and domain-blocking, etc. How likely is it that any mail server will deny mails coming from facebook.com? The ability to "send" your browser tokens should be something that requires a reputation that the various entities/domains have to earn and retain. And if Facebook decides to abuse it, then their domain will start breaking because they rely on cookies.
- mssdvd 6y ago
  https://github.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://github.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls
- agi0 6y ago
  What extension do you use for that?
MikusR 6y ago
Mozilla had no plans to add extension support at all to that mobile preview. Only after the backlash they added those few extensions.
- commoner 6y ago
  An issue on WebExtension support was added to the Fenix tracker as early as September 2019: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315
  - fwn 6y ago
    ... after a long time of uncertainty and community complains, yes. That's what our parent said. The 9 month old issue you linked is not evidence of an early commitment to extension support. Here's a comment from myself on HN from 11 months ago where I highlighted that their extension commitment was - at that point - vague at best. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20138655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20138655 Notice that there's someone from Mozilla reassuring me that there won't be a update from Fennec to Fenix prior to feature parity. That's false by now. Apparently they changed their minds and absolutely will update from Fennec to Fenix without feature parity. The play store beta is already restricted, an update removed all non-approved extensions. Even now we don't know whether non-store extension support will ever come back.
  - Macha 6y ago
    September 2019 qualifies as "after the backlash"
    - agi0 6y ago
      I have personally been working on Extension support for Fenix/GeckoView since October 2018 :) It's just a massive project with a lot of moving parts.
    - st3fan 6y ago
      When _Preview_ 1.0 shipped in June last year people wrongly assumed that all the things missing were intentional and final and made of course a huge stink about it here and on Reddit. Reality is much simpler: we have a small team and we want to do all the things, but we simply can't because it is a lot of work. So what you are seeing is incremental updates that get closer and closer to a fantastic product that we hope you will love and use on a daily basis. Great Web Extensions support is part of that. It always was. We just never had working code until recently. (Disclosure: Engineering Manager of the Fenix 1.0 team)
yosito 6y ago
I've been using FF preview for the last month or two. I'm not in love with the UI, just like desktop Firefox, it's a bit tacky. But the reason I switched was because it's the only browser that allows mobile extensions and syncs bookmarks with my desktop. I'm waiting eagerly for the "I don't care about cookies" extension, since browsing the internet from my phone has become a chore since GDPR. But even with only a few available extensions, mobile extensions in Firefox are the one thing that has me hanging on to using it as my primary mobile and desktop browser.
- nana- 6y ago
  I dont care about cookies is working on standard firefox app available on google play. I dont know about the ff preview app.
  - fwn 6y ago
    It does not work on preview. ...however, it might help to add the "I don't care about cookies" and "easylist cookie" filter lists to ublock origin.
- xenocyon 6y ago
  > the only browser that allows mobile extensions and syncs bookmarks with my desktop That's not correct; the "regular" Firefox on Android also allows extensions and syncs bookmarks.
- Markoff 6y ago
  can't you sync bookmarks through some extension to desktop? then you could use Kiwi browser or Yandex on faster and much more stable chromium
retox 6y ago
>The app is somewhat controversial for breaking existing extensions Have Mozilla broken the extension landscape _again_ or am I misunderstanding?
- worble 6y ago
  Fenix is pretty much a complete rewrite of firefox on mobile, and they haven't implemented every extension api yet which is why only a subset of extensions are allowed currently. I've read that you can sideload any extension you want (although I've not tried this personally), it'll just be coin flip whether it actually works or not.
  - fwn 6y ago
    > ... you can sideload any extension you want ... That's amazing news! Do you have a source on that? I can't seem to find anything on it yet.
    - worble 6y ago
      Sorry, I just remember reading it somewhere and I think it was more likely I got confused with the announcement that web-ext supports Fenix: https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/releases/tag/4.1.0 https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/releases/tag/4.1.0 So developers can now test for Fenix but there's no permanent solution yet, unless there was something else and I just can't for the life of me find it anywhere. Sorry for getting your hopes up!
- Certhas 6y ago
  My understanding: They are not changing the extension model, Firefox Preview simply doesn't have the full extension API of old Firefox implemented yet. Some people are always ready to assume the worst when it comes to Mozilla and threw a hissy fit over the fact that Mozilla is running an open Beta with Firefox Preview [1] that is only slowly coming up to full extension support, hence the 'controversial'.
  - Macha 6y ago
glomph 6y ago
Has it been put in writing that they ever intend to enable full extension support?
- dblohm7 6y ago
  st3fan agi0 and myself are all people working on Firefox Preview and its underlying technologies. Is that sufficient?
  - hu3 6y ago
    That's very broad and doesn't answer the question.
    - dblohm7 6y ago
      We have posted answers elsewhere in this topic.
NGRhodes 6y ago
I am using FF Preview and in the past few days I have noticed the following extensions available: uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, NoScript Security Suite, Dark Reader, Search by Image. I suspect there is a level of curation/testing going on here. As a non-release product I can understand the need to allow/test extensions in a controlled manner.
JeremyNT 6y ago
The concern is that this is mostly just a play to create a walled garden with curated extensions, and not a technical issue. It's one thing to have this restriction in beta, but will they keep things locked down one they replace the old FF?
- st3fan 6y ago
  There is only a limited set available right now because not all WE APIs have been implemented yet.
agi0 6y ago
We're working really hard to make extensions a first class product on Firefox Preview. The team rewrote the Android side of things from scratch so there's a lot to rebuild but we're getting close. Stay tuned!
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Plans on uMatrix?
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    That UI would be crazy on mobile, no?
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      I am using it on regular mobile Firefox. It just opens a new tab for the matrix (to be fair on my phone even flyout would work nicely).
causality0 6y ago
What seems fishy to me is that all the news I hear about Firefox Preview is "this extension will be available" and so forth, when what I should be hearing about is whatever new innovation broke compatibility with existing extensions and what its benefits are.
- st3fan 6y ago
  We started from scratch with the WE implementation in Firefox Preview and are building things incrementally. So it is not that things broke, it is more that a lot of WE APIs are simply not available yet. Oh, what Agi says below :-)
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    Is there a plan to switch away from a whitelist model once a certain level of WE APIs are available?
    - drannex 6y ago
      Yes.
      - glomph 6y ago
        Do you have a source for that?
  - causality0 6y ago
    What percentage reduction in typical page rendering time does the rewrite result in?
surround 6y ago
Also note that these design changes affect the desktop extension as well.
neltnerb 6y ago
What's slightly mysterious to me is that through my firefox account it autoinstalled I think at least noscript and cookie autodelete even though they were not at the time in the mobile add-on store. I was surprised and confused to find that javascript wasn't executing by default and discovered that not only did they install but they seemed to be working. I removed them because it seemed accidental and figured they might not be ready, and they were no longer possible to install. Now I see that several other plugins are on the Firefox Preview add-on list including noscript and some others so I have the feeling that they're just being cautious about enabling them in the store but it's possible that they mostly will just work after a testing period.

toastal 6y ago

I'm eagerly awaiting getting back an extension that let me strip the tracking tokens from social media sites, along with redirecting away from AMP. You'd think these would be baked into the browser's tracking protection.

tommica 6y ago
That sounds like a bad idea - how would the browser know the tracking token is a tracking token and not just a token? And wouldn't redirecting away from AMP be taking away control from the user? As extensions those are fine, as core browser features, they sound a bit iffy.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  So is downloading amp pages in the background and bloating your phone by default though (chrome). I think something like that should be turned on by default but toggleable. It's a sensible option for a privacy focused browser.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    AMP is just an ordinary page on google domain. If you're going to hard-code some anti-Google behaviour in Firefox, it means to start a war against Google. Not the wisest decision when Google is the main revenue source for Firefox AFAIK.
    - bad_user 6y ago
      Given Google's reach, not the wisest decision for any browser maker. Google being the main revenue source for Firefox is often cited and is true, but if you look at Brave, its competition, what they do is to block a publisher's ads, replacing them with their own, being essentially racketeering and I'm surprised how they weren't declared illegal already. Fact of the matter is, if people don't pay money for browser licenses, and they don't, and if ads don't fund those browsers, and they currently do, then alternatives to Chrome cannot exist, if not funded by another mega corporation that can burn money just so Google can't be the only player, like what Apple does. --- But back to decision making — we are talking about AMP pages being served by searching on Google.com, because that's the major source of these links. Given the search engine is Google's property and not some public utility, they can destroy any browser maker if they wanted to. Speaking of which, if you're so bothered with Google.com serving AMP pages, well, why not choose an alternative instead?
      - sciurus 6y ago
        Google pays Apple an estimated 9 to 12 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine in Safari. https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-billion-to-remain-default-search-engine-on-safari-306082 https://searchengineland.com/report-google-to-pay-apple-9-bi...
        bad_user 6y ago
        Right, forgot about that. It only makes my point stronger though. Given Google's reach with their search engine, with YouTube, with Gmail, starting a war with Google would be a death sentence for a browser maker, no matter the supposed source of funding, which is basically ads across the board anyway, an industry also controlled by Google and Facebook.
        searchableguy 6y ago
        Seems like anti trust can help here.
      - 6y ago
- toastal 6y ago
  AMP breaks down some fundmental things about the internet. Obviously tracking tokens could be changed over time, but there's a blacklist in the popular Privacy Badger extension. Firefox's privacy protection features have varying levels of opt-in-ness, so I don't see why if pulling in Disconnects blacklist for one thing is okay, but tokens not. I'm fine with an extension too, but right now only one extension is whitelisted for the new Firefox on Android.
- bad_user 6y ago
  There are a few standard tokens meant for tracking, like the utm_ parameters [1], which you could safely strip out. That said analytics software and publishers will simply adapt to using other names. [1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867
  - dmix 6y ago
    Historically extensions have moved faster than the companies. Also I highly doubt Google will ever change the utm parameter name. There’s thousands of JS libraries that extract it and use it for various additional analytics, hosted blog/wordpress hackery. and e-commerce/payment plugins that inject it across iframes and other stuff. Plus tons of server side apps that pattern match on utm_ or simply injects them into urls and views. It’d be a nightmare for tons of businesses which have complicated setups which reuse or inject the token for conversion tracking alone, not including all the other stuff.
- zo1 6y ago
  Don't think of it that way. Think of it as cookie/token spam. Just like email spam, we'll have to employ various tactics in order to fight back. Heuristics, known bad-player Databases, punishment and domain-blocking, etc. How likely is it that any mail server will deny mails coming from facebook.com? The ability to "send" your browser tokens should be something that requires a reputation that the various entities/domains have to earn and retain. And if Facebook decides to abuse it, then their domain will start breaking because they rely on cookies.
mssdvd 6y ago
https://github.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://github.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls
agi0 6y ago
What extension do you use for that?

MikusR 6y ago

Mozilla had no plans to add extension support at all to that mobile preview. Only after the backlash they added those few extensions.

commoner 6y ago
An issue on WebExtension support was added to the Fenix tracker as early as September 2019: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5315
- fwn 6y ago
  ... after a long time of uncertainty and community complains, yes. That's what our parent said. The 9 month old issue you linked is not evidence of an early commitment to extension support. Here's a comment from myself on HN from 11 months ago where I highlighted that their extension commitment was - at that point - vague at best. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20138655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20138655 Notice that there's someone from Mozilla reassuring me that there won't be a update from Fennec to Fenix prior to feature parity. That's false by now. Apparently they changed their minds and absolutely will update from Fennec to Fenix without feature parity. The play store beta is already restricted, an update removed all non-approved extensions. Even now we don't know whether non-store extension support will ever come back.
- Macha 6y ago
  September 2019 qualifies as "after the backlash"
  - agi0 6y ago
    I have personally been working on Extension support for Fenix/GeckoView since October 2018 :) It's just a massive project with a lot of moving parts.
  - st3fan 6y ago
    When _Preview_ 1.0 shipped in June last year people wrongly assumed that all the things missing were intentional and final and made of course a huge stink about it here and on Reddit. Reality is much simpler: we have a small team and we want to do all the things, but we simply can't because it is a lot of work. So what you are seeing is incremental updates that get closer and closer to a fantastic product that we hope you will love and use on a daily basis. Great Web Extensions support is part of that. It always was. We just never had working code until recently. (Disclosure: Engineering Manager of the Fenix 1.0 team)

yosito 6y ago

I've been using FF preview for the last month or two. I'm not in love with the UI, just like desktop Firefox, it's a bit tacky. But the reason I switched was because it's the only browser that allows mobile extensions and syncs bookmarks with my desktop. I'm waiting eagerly for the "I don't care about cookies" extension, since browsing the internet from my phone has become a chore since GDPR. But even with only a few available extensions, mobile extensions in Firefox are the one thing that has me hanging on to using it as my primary mobile and desktop browser.

nana- 6y ago
I dont care about cookies is working on standard firefox app available on google play. I dont know about the ff preview app.
- fwn 6y ago
  It does not work on preview. ...however, it might help to add the "I don't care about cookies" and "easylist cookie" filter lists to ublock origin.
xenocyon 6y ago
> the only browser that allows mobile extensions and syncs bookmarks with my desktop That's not correct; the "regular" Firefox on Android also allows extensions and syncs bookmarks.
Markoff 6y ago
can't you sync bookmarks through some extension to desktop? then you could use Kiwi browser or Yandex on faster and much more stable chromium

retox 6y ago

>The app is somewhat controversial for breaking existing extensions Have Mozilla broken the extension landscape _again_ or am I misunderstanding?

worble 6y ago
Fenix is pretty much a complete rewrite of firefox on mobile, and they haven't implemented every extension api yet which is why only a subset of extensions are allowed currently. I've read that you can sideload any extension you want (although I've not tried this personally), it'll just be coin flip whether it actually works or not.
- fwn 6y ago
  > ... you can sideload any extension you want ... That's amazing news! Do you have a source on that? I can't seem to find anything on it yet.
  - worble 6y ago
    Sorry, I just remember reading it somewhere and I think it was more likely I got confused with the announcement that web-ext supports Fenix: https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/releases/tag/4.1.0 https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/releases/tag/4.1.0 So developers can now test for Fenix but there's no permanent solution yet, unless there was something else and I just can't for the life of me find it anywhere. Sorry for getting your hopes up!
Certhas 6y ago
My understanding: They are not changing the extension model, Firefox Preview simply doesn't have the full extension API of old Firefox implemented yet. Some people are always ready to assume the worst when it comes to Mozilla and threw a hissy fit over the fact that Mozilla is running an open Beta with Firefox Preview [1] that is only slowly coming up to full extension support, hence the 'controversial'.
- Macha 6y ago

glomph 6y ago

Has it been put in writing that they ever intend to enable full extension support?

dblohm7 6y ago
st3fan agi0 and myself are all people working on Firefox Preview and its underlying technologies. Is that sufficient?
- hu3 6y ago
  That's very broad and doesn't answer the question.
  - dblohm7 6y ago
    We have posted answers elsewhere in this topic.

NGRhodes 6y ago

I am using FF Preview and in the past few days I have noticed the following extensions available: uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, NoScript Security Suite, Dark Reader, Search by Image. I suspect there is a level of curation/testing going on here. As a non-release product I can understand the need to allow/test extensions in a controlled manner.

JeremyNT 6y ago

The concern is that this is mostly just a play to create a walled garden with curated extensions, and not a technical issue. It's one thing to have this restriction in beta, but will they keep things locked down one they replace the old FF?

st3fan 6y ago
There is only a limited set available right now because not all WE APIs have been implemented yet.

agi0 6y ago

We're working really hard to make extensions a first class product on Firefox Preview. The team rewrote the Android side of things from scratch so there's a lot to rebuild but we're getting close. Stay tuned!

lostmsu 6y ago
Plans on uMatrix?
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  That UI would be crazy on mobile, no?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    I am using it on regular mobile Firefox. It just opens a new tab for the matrix (to be fair on my phone even flyout would work nicely).

causality0 6y ago

What seems fishy to me is that all the news I hear about Firefox Preview is "this extension will be available" and so forth, when what I should be hearing about is whatever new innovation broke compatibility with existing extensions and what its benefits are.

st3fan 6y ago
We started from scratch with the WE implementation in Firefox Preview and are building things incrementally. So it is not that things broke, it is more that a lot of WE APIs are simply not available yet. Oh, what Agi says below :-)
- anonymousab 6y ago
  Is there a plan to switch away from a whitelist model once a certain level of WE APIs are available?
  - drannex 6y ago
    Yes.
    - glomph 6y ago
      Do you have a source for that?
- causality0 6y ago
  What percentage reduction in typical page rendering time does the rewrite result in?

surround 6y ago

Also note that these design changes affect the desktop extension as well.

neltnerb 6y ago

What's slightly mysterious to me is that through my firefox account it autoinstalled I think at least noscript and cookie autodelete even though they were not at the time in the mobile add-on store. I was surprised and confused to find that javascript wasn't executing by default and discovered that not only did they install but they seemed to be working. I removed them because it seemed accidental and figured they might not be ready, and they were no longer possible to install. Now I see that several other plugins are on the Firefox Preview add-on list including noscript and some others so I have the feeling that they're just being cautious about enabling them in the store but it's possible that they mostly will just work after a testing period.