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I am having a really hard time holding onto Firefox as my mobile (Android) browser. The interface takes several taps all over the display to accomplish basic t

by skrap 6y ago

I am having a really hard time holding onto Firefox as my mobile (Android) browser. The interface takes several taps all over the display to accomplish basic tasks. For example: Looking at a site and want to open your "hacker news" top site in a new tab? 1) Scroll up until you trigger the top bar reveal 2) Tap the boxed number button next to the address bar 3) Way at the bottom of the display, tap (+) to open a new tab 4) At this point the keyboard appears with the address bar focused. I don't want that, so tap in the tab home screen background where Top Sites can be seen 5) Tap on hacker news "top site" That's 5 gestures, each in a new area of the screen, just to open a web site. Palm Pilot famously put nearly every common feature in the entire OS within 3 taps of the home screen. I really hope Mozilla can do better than this!

colejohnson66 6y ago
Weird. On iOS, it’s: (1) scroll down a tiny bit to reveal bottom bar (2) tap the box with the tab count (3) tap “+” (4) tap HN Both (2) and (3) are at the bottom of the screen, and (1) can be done near the bottom. (4) is the only one with a reach up to the top. Which leaves the question: why are the UIs between the two platforms different?
- extra88 6y ago
  > why are the UIs between the two platforms different? I think there's been greater emphasis on conforming to the HID guidance and conventions on different platforms rather than consistency in the same app on different platforms.
- graton 6y ago
  My Android version does the same, but I did change the location of the toolbar to bottom in the settings.
- bartvk 6y ago
  The UI is different in other ways as well. One of the replies mentioned a setting to turn off hiding toolbars when you scroll. But I can't find it on iOS. In and of itself, I don't find it strange that the UI is different between platforms. That's called being a good citizen on a platform. In fact I wish they'd do it more. For instance, on macOS I'd expect close buttons for tabs in the top left.
ckosidows 6y ago
I really wish I could get off Chrome on mobile, but it just works so flawlessly. I hated Firefox. It always felt like a second-rate mobile browser. I tried Edge and it's better than FF, but Chrome still just feels like how mobile browsing is supposed to be. I wish Edge or FF could just look identical to Chrome sans being controlled by Google, which already knows far too much about me.
- scns 6y ago
  Check out kiwi browser
- Vrondi 6y ago
  Check out Vivaldi on mobile.
  - deathlight 6y ago
    Ironically (given Vivaldi's history) I find the opera mobile browser to be better on android. Maybe there's some good extensions for Vivaldi that change that but defaults vs defaults I prefer Opera. Obligatory caveat of Opera being bought by a Chinese company.
maccam94 6y ago
The placement of the address bar is configurable, but maybe the tab view should flip along with it...
- bhandziuk 6y ago
  For me that's not even a big deal. The location of the address bar doesn't bother me. It's that when I put focus into the address bar I can't see my bookmarks (which are different from my top site!?) anymore. I have to close my current tab, then open a new one then I can navigate to a bookmark. Not great.
pmontra 6y ago
This is the new UI. The old one was much faster to operate. It was like this: you are in this page, tap the tabs button at the top, the screen with all the open tabs appears, tap + at the same place of the other button and get to the top sites / bookmarks screen. Or tap the URL and get directly there. The new UI takes more taps and I don't understand what that is supposed to improve. I updated my tablet and my old phone to check the UI. I'm staying on the old Firefox on my main phone, partly because of the UI and 90% because of the add-ons I'm using. Not all of them are available on the new Firefox. Mozilla self sabotages every few years, then fixes things. Unfortunately they lose users along the way.
- campl3r 6y ago
  Agreed. I see no reason to upgrade to the new UI/versions on android.
  - rst 6y ago
    The old versions aren't getting security patches. Not sure there's a really good choice here.
mgbmtl 6y ago
I agree this behaviour is weird. When I look at iOS users on Safari, or Chrome, I feel like I'm using Windows 3.1. Here's what I do on FF: - When visiting a site, on the hamburger menu, there is a "add to main sites" icon, which adds the site to the home screen of Firefox. - In the global prefs, I changed back to always displaying the location bar at the top, and always present (the scrolling was annoying me). - We can long-press the tab icon, to open a new tab. So if I'm on a site, and want to open HN: - Long press "New Tab" - Tap "HN" icon on the screen. It's still annoying that it opens the keyboard by default. It sometimes adds a few milliseconds of lag, but I guess then search-heavy users would complain about the extra tap.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I have HN open permanently in a tab but I do face occasional keyboard issues on FF android on HN i.e. it doesn't get triggered when tapping on comment input. But the feature I miss the most from chrome is scroll to refresh, which I was told would be available soon.
graton 6y ago
Maybe change the location of the toolbar (URL bar) to the bottom. I changed mine to the bottom in the Settings.
wejick 6y ago
My problem with the new interface is I can't edit the speed dials, and it seems changing every now and then randomly.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  I think you're referring to the "Top Sites" feature. These will change based on how often you visit sites. You can pin sites so that they don't change. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-home-screen?redirectslug=customize-firefox-homepage&redirectlocale=en-US https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-home-...
  - wejick 6y ago
    You're right, thanks. In this kind of interface usually the edit functionality is on the tiles itself. It confused me until just now.
    - hundchenkatze 6y ago
      Yeah, it doesn't make much sense. They already have the a context menu when you long press a tile. I don't know why they don't allow you to pin from there.
    - bhandziuk 6y ago
      I don't get why there are Top Sites, Bookmarks, Bookmarks Toolbar (a special thing), and Collections. There are way too many ways to manage saved urls.Then providing access to exactly 0 of them when in the address bar is even more vexing.
kbrosnan 6y ago
Long press on the tabs button will give you a new tab option which provides direct access to top sites.
- thunderbong 6y ago
  Wow, didn't know about that. Now on, I'm doing a long press on every button just to discover hidden features!
  - foepys 6y ago
    I'm still missing the long tap on tabs to reorder them. It got removed with the switch to the new addon engine.
hundchenkatze 6y ago
The way mine is configured allows me to get to top sites in 3 taps if I'm already looking at a site. You can disable "Scroll to hide toolbar" in Customize to remove step 1. Steps 2 and 3 are still required but moving the address bar to the bottom keeps your taps closer together (The plus actually ends up right over the boxed number so you can double tap pretty quickly). You can also get rid of step 4 by disabling "Show search engines" in search settings. Now when you tap (+) the address/search bar will still be focused but the top sites are still accessible.
- bartvk 6y ago
  Interesting, Firefox on iOS doesn't seem to have this "scroll to hide toolbar" feature.
goda90 6y ago
I had been holding out on updating from the old version of Firefox for Android(yes I know, security issues), but some of my favorite add-ons weren't supported yet. The other day my add-ons stopped working right(I think they updated on their own within the browser), so I finally decided to make the jump, and so far its been horrible. So laggy and not intuitive.
SirYandi 6y ago
Love Firefox for Android but my how bad the history screen is. You can either delete one by one or delete everything at once. No option for multiple selection or time-based deletion (clear last hour's history).
bartvk 6y ago
This annoys me as well, but I checked on iOS and Safari is much the same. It seems that mobile browser makers prioritize screen real estate above access to the user interface.

by skrap 6y ago

colejohnson66 6y ago

Weird. On iOS, it’s: (1) scroll down a tiny bit to reveal bottom bar (2) tap the box with the tab count (3) tap “+” (4) tap HN Both (2) and (3) are at the bottom of the screen, and (1) can be done near the bottom. (4) is the only one with a reach up to the top. Which leaves the question: why are the UIs between the two platforms different?

extra88 6y ago
> why are the UIs between the two platforms different? I think there's been greater emphasis on conforming to the HID guidance and conventions on different platforms rather than consistency in the same app on different platforms.
graton 6y ago
My Android version does the same, but I did change the location of the toolbar to bottom in the settings.
bartvk 6y ago
The UI is different in other ways as well. One of the replies mentioned a setting to turn off hiding toolbars when you scroll. But I can't find it on iOS. In and of itself, I don't find it strange that the UI is different between platforms. That's called being a good citizen on a platform. In fact I wish they'd do it more. For instance, on macOS I'd expect close buttons for tabs in the top left.

ckosidows 6y ago

I really wish I could get off Chrome on mobile, but it just works so flawlessly. I hated Firefox. It always felt like a second-rate mobile browser. I tried Edge and it's better than FF, but Chrome still just feels like how mobile browsing is supposed to be. I wish Edge or FF could just look identical to Chrome sans being controlled by Google, which already knows far too much about me.

scns 6y ago
Check out kiwi browser
Vrondi 6y ago
Check out Vivaldi on mobile.
- deathlight 6y ago
  Ironically (given Vivaldi's history) I find the opera mobile browser to be better on android. Maybe there's some good extensions for Vivaldi that change that but defaults vs defaults I prefer Opera. Obligatory caveat of Opera being bought by a Chinese company.

maccam94 6y ago

The placement of the address bar is configurable, but maybe the tab view should flip along with it...

bhandziuk 6y ago
For me that's not even a big deal. The location of the address bar doesn't bother me. It's that when I put focus into the address bar I can't see my bookmarks (which are different from my top site!?) anymore. I have to close my current tab, then open a new one then I can navigate to a bookmark. Not great.

pmontra 6y ago

This is the new UI. The old one was much faster to operate. It was like this: you are in this page, tap the tabs button at the top, the screen with all the open tabs appears, tap + at the same place of the other button and get to the top sites / bookmarks screen. Or tap the URL and get directly there. The new UI takes more taps and I don't understand what that is supposed to improve. I updated my tablet and my old phone to check the UI. I'm staying on the old Firefox on my main phone, partly because of the UI and 90% because of the add-ons I'm using. Not all of them are available on the new Firefox. Mozilla self sabotages every few years, then fixes things. Unfortunately they lose users along the way.

campl3r 6y ago
Agreed. I see no reason to upgrade to the new UI/versions on android.
- rst 6y ago
  The old versions aren't getting security patches. Not sure there's a really good choice here.

mgbmtl 6y ago

I agree this behaviour is weird. When I look at iOS users on Safari, or Chrome, I feel like I'm using Windows 3.1. Here's what I do on FF: - When visiting a site, on the hamburger menu, there is a "add to main sites" icon, which adds the site to the home screen of Firefox. - In the global prefs, I changed back to always displaying the location bar at the top, and always present (the scrolling was annoying me). - We can long-press the tab icon, to open a new tab. So if I'm on a site, and want to open HN: - Long press "New Tab" - Tap "HN" icon on the screen. It's still annoying that it opens the keyboard by default. It sometimes adds a few milliseconds of lag, but I guess then search-heavy users would complain about the extra tap.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I have HN open permanently in a tab but I do face occasional keyboard issues on FF android on HN i.e. it doesn't get triggered when tapping on comment input. But the feature I miss the most from chrome is scroll to refresh, which I was told would be available soon.

graton 6y ago

Maybe change the location of the toolbar (URL bar) to the bottom. I changed mine to the bottom in the Settings.

wejick 6y ago

My problem with the new interface is I can't edit the speed dials, and it seems changing every now and then randomly.

hundchenkatze 6y ago
I think you're referring to the "Top Sites" feature. These will change based on how often you visit sites. You can pin sites so that they don't change. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-home-screen?redirectslug=customize-firefox-homepage&redirectlocale=en-US https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-home-...
- wejick 6y ago
  You're right, thanks. In this kind of interface usually the edit functionality is on the tiles itself. It confused me until just now.
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    Yeah, it doesn't make much sense. They already have the a context menu when you long press a tile. I don't know why they don't allow you to pin from there.
  - bhandziuk 6y ago
    I don't get why there are Top Sites, Bookmarks, Bookmarks Toolbar (a special thing), and Collections. There are way too many ways to manage saved urls.Then providing access to exactly 0 of them when in the address bar is even more vexing.

kbrosnan 6y ago

Long press on the tabs button will give you a new tab option which provides direct access to top sites.

thunderbong 6y ago
Wow, didn't know about that. Now on, I'm doing a long press on every button just to discover hidden features!
- foepys 6y ago
  I'm still missing the long tap on tabs to reorder them. It got removed with the switch to the new addon engine.

hundchenkatze 6y ago

The way mine is configured allows me to get to top sites in 3 taps if I'm already looking at a site. You can disable "Scroll to hide toolbar" in Customize to remove step 1. Steps 2 and 3 are still required but moving the address bar to the bottom keeps your taps closer together (The plus actually ends up right over the boxed number so you can double tap pretty quickly). You can also get rid of step 4 by disabling "Show search engines" in search settings. Now when you tap (+) the address/search bar will still be focused but the top sites are still accessible.

bartvk 6y ago
Interesting, Firefox on iOS doesn't seem to have this "scroll to hide toolbar" feature.

goda90 6y ago

I had been holding out on updating from the old version of Firefox for Android(yes I know, security issues), but some of my favorite add-ons weren't supported yet. The other day my add-ons stopped working right(I think they updated on their own within the browser), so I finally decided to make the jump, and so far its been horrible. So laggy and not intuitive.

SirYandi 6y ago

Love Firefox for Android but my how bad the history screen is. You can either delete one by one or delete everything at once. No option for multiple selection or time-based deletion (clear last hour's history).

bartvk 6y ago

This annoys me as well, but I checked on iOS and Safari is much the same. It seems that mobile browser makers prioritize screen real estate above access to the user interface.