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Mozilla employee here (albeit not on the mobile team): Relax, everybody. Fenix is a major rewrite. It takes time to reimplement all the WebExtension APIs. Neve

Mozilla employee here (albeit not on the mobile team): Relax, everybody. Fenix is a major rewrite. It takes time to reimplement all the WebExtension APIs. Nevertheless, the intent is to eventually add support for all the APIs that make sense on mobile. (See here, for example: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1632626#c1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1632626#c1, or just scroll through the list of bugs here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=GeckoView&component=Extensions&resolution=---&list_id=15396111 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=GeckoView&c...) If you go back and read old HN threads from the first public release of Fenix, people were afraid that the lack of extension support was a sign that Mozilla had given up on adblockers. I hope it's clear by now that's not true. (From what I recall of lunchtime conversations, back when those were a thing, the plan for extensions was "well, we're definitely not shipping without uBlock Origin, and we'll see what else we can get working from there".) Similarly, the fact that parts of the WebExtension API are not currently available doesn't mean Mozilla has given up on it. It just means that things take time. (If it were easy, other mobile browsers might support add-ons!) It takes a lot of resources to support two parallel codebases. At some point you have to rip off the band-aid. The sooner Fennec is cut loose, the more effort we can dedicate to Fenix improvements (like improving WebExtension support). The transition was always going to be a bit bumpy, but things should hopefully get better from here.

diegocg 6y ago
Well, it's not very relaxing when users like me were using addons on mobile perfectly fine, and then all of sudden there is a new stable version whose lack of support of addons was not considered a bug that should have been tackled before the release, and we are told that the regressed functionality will only be restored "eventually"
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  Mozilla has to try hard to keep losing market share. They are demonstrating they have a knack for it. I‘m a Firefox user on desktop but I see their poor choices around extensions haven’t ended. They’ve borked the extensions on desktop before as well.
  - konjin 6y ago
    At this point forking the browser and the foundation is the only sane solution. The charter should be: we support the browser for dorks first and always, and work on technical problems for dorks second. Turns out that I was right saying that any corp supporting diversity in tech is a corp that has no business being in tech.
    - pmlnr 6y ago
      - https://www.palemoon.org https://www.palemoon.org - https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/
jacquesm 6y ago
Why push out something half baked? You are essentially stabbing your users in the back, some of us depend on those add-ons to get through the working day. To come into the office one day and to find your work environment irreversibly borked is not something that I find it all that easy to forgive. You have a very large responsibility to your users to not mess up their workflows. Better to keep your update in-house until you are done than to push something half baked and not backwards compatible. 'a bit bumpy' doesn't begin to describe it, until this day there are many ways in which the current iteration of FireFox is behind where 56 was.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  You seem to have strong views on this. Perhaps you should write an article about the hazards of pushing unwanted "upgrades" on users and degrading their experience? Then every time a story like this comes up, it could help to make your point again.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I just might ;) Anyway, even if I did, it probably wouldn't make any difference.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      Perhaps not, but I and probably many others would thank you for trying to at least raise the issue.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
palant 6y ago
I actually updated the article today to address this very line of thought. You can see the added text here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgzgXUAXgAEkp-y?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgzgXUAXgAEkp-y?format=png&name=... It's not that I question the intentions. It's rather that, especially given the execution so far, I have my doubts about what these intentions will lead to in practice.
_Qeomash_ 6y ago
I'm just a user, but I really wish the web team had waited a bit longer to push it out. Not having any of the UI related about:config options available is really unfortunate. Stable just feels unfinished in its current state, I'm not sure about Nightly. I prefer my browser to not surprise me with much of anything, so I prefer not to be on the bleeding edge.
cinquemb 6y ago
Heaven forbid the useds have to wait a little bit for someone else for someone to do something for them! Must be placated, must be pleased, must be coddled at all costs!
pmlnr 6y ago
The problem is the whitelisted-only approach: > Will add-ons not part of the Recommended Extensions program ever be supported on the new Firefox for Android? > We would like to expand our support to other add-ons on the release channel. We’re currently evaluating how we can enable general add-on support in a secure way without creating compatibility issues. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension-support-in-new-firefox-for-android/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension... So, why relax exactly?! Even the extension that would work now are disabled.
Adverblessly 6y ago
It has been years since the switch to the WebExtensions API and Desktop FireFox is still missing important Addon functionality[0], so why should anyone feel relaxed with regards to Addon support on Mobile? [0] - Basically anything to do with fixing^W modifying the browser UI itself.
JeremyNT 6y ago
It's curious that you now gate extensions behind a walled garden that is curated by Mozilla. This is not a technical issue, this is an organizational choice. It's tough to read this in any way other than cynically. If Mozilla actually cared about extension support, they'd at least provide an advanced option to enable it outside of the curated list in Fenix. That they didn't speaks a lot to how much they really care. At the risk of going too far off topic, Fenix really is a disaster. The walled garden for extensions is just one of the user hostile anti-features. I immediately uninstalled it and switched back to Fennec from f-droid. To be frank, you do not have a large enough user base that you can afford to alienate power users in this way. Pretty much the only reasons to use FF on mobile are its power user features, which have been mostly ripped out in this update.

diegocg 6y ago

Well, it's not very relaxing when users like me were using addons on mobile perfectly fine, and then all of sudden there is a new stable version whose lack of support of addons was not considered a bug that should have been tackled before the release, and we are told that the regressed functionality will only be restored "eventually"

godzillabrennus 6y ago
Mozilla has to try hard to keep losing market share. They are demonstrating they have a knack for it. I‘m a Firefox user on desktop but I see their poor choices around extensions haven’t ended. They’ve borked the extensions on desktop before as well.
- konjin 6y ago
  At this point forking the browser and the foundation is the only sane solution. The charter should be: we support the browser for dorks first and always, and work on technical problems for dorks second. Turns out that I was right saying that any corp supporting diversity in tech is a corp that has no business being in tech.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    - https://www.palemoon.org https://www.palemoon.org - https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/

jacquesm 6y ago

Why push out something half baked? You are essentially stabbing your users in the back, some of us depend on those add-ons to get through the working day. To come into the office one day and to find your work environment irreversibly borked is not something that I find it all that easy to forgive. You have a very large responsibility to your users to not mess up their workflows. Better to keep your update in-house until you are done than to push something half baked and not backwards compatible. 'a bit bumpy' doesn't begin to describe it, until this day there are many ways in which the current iteration of FireFox is behind where 56 was.

Silhouette 6y ago
You seem to have strong views on this. Perhaps you should write an article about the hazards of pushing unwanted "upgrades" on users and degrading their experience? Then every time a story like this comes up, it could help to make your point again.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I just might ;) Anyway, even if I did, it probably wouldn't make any difference.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Perhaps not, but I and probably many others would thank you for trying to at least raise the issue.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

palant 6y ago

I actually updated the article today to address this very line of thought. You can see the added text here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgzgXUAXgAEkp-y?format=png&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgzgXUAXgAEkp-y?format=png&name=... It's not that I question the intentions. It's rather that, especially given the execution so far, I have my doubts about what these intentions will lead to in practice.

_Qeomash_ 6y ago

I'm just a user, but I really wish the web team had waited a bit longer to push it out. Not having any of the UI related about:config options available is really unfortunate. Stable just feels unfinished in its current state, I'm not sure about Nightly. I prefer my browser to not surprise me with much of anything, so I prefer not to be on the bleeding edge.

cinquemb 6y ago

Heaven forbid the useds have to wait a little bit for someone else for someone to do something for them! Must be placated, must be pleased, must be coddled at all costs!

pmlnr 6y ago

The problem is the whitelisted-only approach: > Will add-ons not part of the Recommended Extensions program ever be supported on the new Firefox for Android? > We would like to expand our support to other add-ons on the release channel. We’re currently evaluating how we can enable general add-on support in a secure way without creating compatibility issues. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension-support-in-new-firefox-for-android/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/02/11/faq-for-extension... So, why relax exactly?! Even the extension that would work now are disabled.

Adverblessly 6y ago

It has been years since the switch to the WebExtensions API and Desktop FireFox is still missing important Addon functionality[0], so why should anyone feel relaxed with regards to Addon support on Mobile? [0] - Basically anything to do with fixing^W modifying the browser UI itself.

JeremyNT 6y ago

It's curious that you now gate extensions behind a walled garden that is curated by Mozilla. This is not a technical issue, this is an organizational choice. It's tough to read this in any way other than cynically. If Mozilla actually cared about extension support, they'd at least provide an advanced option to enable it outside of the curated list in Fenix. That they didn't speaks a lot to how much they really care. At the risk of going too far off topic, Fenix really is a disaster. The walled garden for extensions is just one of the user hostile anti-features. I immediately uninstalled it and switched back to Fennec from f-droid. To be frank, you do not have a large enough user base that you can afford to alienate power users in this way. Pretty much the only reasons to use FF on mobile are its power user features, which have been mostly ripped out in this update.