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Firefox is the only option for mobile webdev since it's the only mobile browser with devtools. However I won't use it as my main browser because of insanely fre

Firefox is the only option for mobile webdev since it's the only mobile browser with devtools. However I won't use it as my main browser because of insanely frequent (and pointless) major ui changes. It messes with your muscle memory. This isn't beta software, is it?

veselin 6y ago
I use Firefox on Android all the time. When I occasionally open Chrome, I see the UI there changes quite often. Now it has tab groups. Maybe a month ago it changed the url bar.
- fctorial 6y ago
  > Now it has tab groups It's hidden behind a right click menu. So it's a muscle memory friendly change. I don't remember the url bar change to be too disorienting either.
  - Zababa 6y ago
    >So it's a muscle memory friendly change It's not really. Now when you right click (long press) to open a link on a new tab it opens it in the same tab group as your tab. If you then use the button at the top to switch tabs (how it worked before), you are now switching tab groups. To switch tabs in your tab group, you have to do it at the bottom.
viraptor 6y ago
In the last two years I only noticed: address bar can be on the bottom (user setting), open sites changed from tiles to a list. What other major UI changes have happened? (Or are you talking about desktop UI?)
- fctorial 6y ago
  On desktop, url bar click behavior. It was changed from full selection to cursor, and then reverted.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > What other major UI changes have happened? It's slow as molasses and loses UI events. I had auto-update turned off so I didn't use the new Firefox for Android until recently, and now I sincerely regret I updated it. They also did something silly with trying to match your tap to closest link even if your tap falls squarely outside of the link's activation area. It's super annoying on sites with small text, like HN. On the flip side, the UI being garbage made me stop browsing HN on my phone, so overall, perhaps that's an improvement in terms of my productivity.
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Yeah I just have a pinned beta apk from a while back that I will never, ever update. Same with Firefox on Desktop, for that matter.
- SecurityLagoon 6y ago
  Please update your browser - sitting on old versions is just asking for trouble. If you really want to maintain a consistent interface then use the ESR releases which should basically just be security updates.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    Unfortunately, Firefox ESR already doesn't have TabMixPlus support. I'm on Waterfox Classic on desktop, but that's probably not gonna last forever either. And when that eventually drops support, I'll just stay on the last version until some browser vendor brings multi row tabs back. On mobile, I visit maybe five websites, and the three most common ones don't have ads, so I'm happy with my pinned old Firefox Beta version. And no matter what happens, I'm not upgrading to current Firefox on Android - well, unless the thing that happens is they take that abomination of a UI back behind the shed and put it out of its misery... The way I look at it, it's unfortunate that the one single browser actually worth using sadly no longer gets security updates. That sucks for me, but I'm also not gonna stop using the browser.
heywherelogingo 6y ago
Doesn't chrome do the same? I used it last night, opened the history and that was considerably different.
ihuman 6y ago
Safari on iOS kind of has devtools, but they're not available on the go, since you still need a desktop computer to access them. Enable the "web inspector" setting in iOS safari and the "show develop menu" in macOS (both in the advanced settings section). When you plug in the iOS device directly into the Mac, it'll show up in the Mac's Safari's develop menu. Unfortunately, this is completely useless if you don't have access to a mac or are away from your computer.
throwaway077445 6y ago
I'm not a webdev, but I think you can use the Desktop Chrome webviews to debug remotely. https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remote-debugging https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remo... This should be possible on Firefox too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Remote_Debugging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Remote_Debugg...

veselin 6y ago

I use Firefox on Android all the time. When I occasionally open Chrome, I see the UI there changes quite often. Now it has tab groups. Maybe a month ago it changed the url bar.

fctorial 6y ago
> Now it has tab groups It's hidden behind a right click menu. So it's a muscle memory friendly change. I don't remember the url bar change to be too disorienting either.
- Zababa 6y ago
  >So it's a muscle memory friendly change It's not really. Now when you right click (long press) to open a link on a new tab it opens it in the same tab group as your tab. If you then use the button at the top to switch tabs (how it worked before), you are now switching tab groups. To switch tabs in your tab group, you have to do it at the bottom.

viraptor 6y ago

In the last two years I only noticed: address bar can be on the bottom (user setting), open sites changed from tiles to a list. What other major UI changes have happened? (Or are you talking about desktop UI?)

fctorial 6y ago
On desktop, url bar click behavior. It was changed from full selection to cursor, and then reverted.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> What other major UI changes have happened? It's slow as molasses and loses UI events. I had auto-update turned off so I didn't use the new Firefox for Android until recently, and now I sincerely regret I updated it. They also did something silly with trying to match your tap to closest link even if your tap falls squarely outside of the link's activation area. It's super annoying on sites with small text, like HN. On the flip side, the UI being garbage made me stop browsing HN on my phone, so overall, perhaps that's an improvement in terms of my productivity.

FeepingCreature 6y ago

Yeah I just have a pinned beta apk from a while back that I will never, ever update. Same with Firefox on Desktop, for that matter.

SecurityLagoon 6y ago
Please update your browser - sitting on old versions is just asking for trouble. If you really want to maintain a consistent interface then use the ESR releases which should basically just be security updates.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Unfortunately, Firefox ESR already doesn't have TabMixPlus support. I'm on Waterfox Classic on desktop, but that's probably not gonna last forever either. And when that eventually drops support, I'll just stay on the last version until some browser vendor brings multi row tabs back. On mobile, I visit maybe five websites, and the three most common ones don't have ads, so I'm happy with my pinned old Firefox Beta version. And no matter what happens, I'm not upgrading to current Firefox on Android - well, unless the thing that happens is they take that abomination of a UI back behind the shed and put it out of its misery... The way I look at it, it's unfortunate that the one single browser actually worth using sadly no longer gets security updates. That sucks for me, but I'm also not gonna stop using the browser.

heywherelogingo 6y ago

Doesn't chrome do the same? I used it last night, opened the history and that was considerably different.

ihuman 6y ago

Safari on iOS kind of has devtools, but they're not available on the go, since you still need a desktop computer to access them. Enable the "web inspector" setting in iOS safari and the "show develop menu" in macOS (both in the advanced settings section). When you plug in the iOS device directly into the Mac, it'll show up in the Mac's Safari's develop menu. Unfortunately, this is completely useless if you don't have access to a mac or are away from your computer.

throwaway077445 6y ago

I'm not a webdev, but I think you can use the Desktop Chrome webviews to debug remotely. https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remote-debugging https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/remo... This should be possible on Firefox too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Remote_Debugging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Remote_Debugg...