3 ms·

> Android is slightly better in that on the surface you can switch out the browser for say, Firefox (although Firefox on Android is a disaster) When was the la

> Android is slightly better in that on the surface you can switch out the browser for say, Firefox (although Firefox on Android is a disaster) When was the last time you tried it ? It has been my daily driver for years and I can't complain (ublock origin works on it :).

noirscape 3y ago
About a year ago? The main issues I had mostly boiled down to "the app felt clunky to use", pages not rendering nicely, issues while scrolling pages and buttons not being in places where they seem logical. Similarly, the way Firefox handles external links from other apps feels... bad? Like that's really what a lot of it boils down to; Firefox as an app just feels outdated to use. Then there's the fact that extension support in Firefox Mobile is aggressively locked to the Mozilla extension store and only a whitelist of stuff Mozilla approves (it draws extensions from a collection on the Mozilla extension store, so if your desired extension isn't in it, the only option you have is to override the entire thing by making your own collection and messing in about:config), and that kinda compounds to a strong "I'd not recommend it" for me. Firefox to me is a browser that at it's core should be respecting user choice and the Android implementation on that alone doesn't meed the sniff test; Mozilla lock-in even on minor things like this is a big dealbreaker. Chrome's feel with the rest of Android, for all the issues I have with it, is really well done. Firefox makes you feel much more like you're constantly struggling against Android to make a square peg fit in a round hole. I personally do use a Chrome fork (Cromite, which is a Bromite fork since Bromite's lead dev is MIA), just so that feel is preserved (while also having a solid adblocker and other privacy oriented features).
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  Thanks for your detailed answer. I have only ever used firefox on android so I don't really feel its clunkyness and I only know of one major website I use (an e-commerce merchant website) with problems. Sometimes the sharing function is broken (no icons) but I can live with that. I also wish there were more extensions but as long as ublock is available it's okay for my usage. I should spend a day or two with Chrome or cromite to see what I am missing. All that being said, the latest firefox update pisses me of: now when you open a new tab and type news.ycombinator.com it will jump to any tab with the same url. I have >1000 tabs and the new behavior messses up the chronological order in which tabs were opened. It also jumps me back hundred of tabs backward at time. I dig a bit and found the bugzilla bug report, the original problem is about opening a new tab from the home tab and seeing how it took years to get the behavior changed and how the change has unintended consequences and people in the thread are "too much tabs is bad" kind of people I am giving up on reporting it.
7734128 3y ago
I used it for years until the update which removed most add-ons. Not because of that change though, that didn't bother me, but because the interface became and in my opinion remains absolutely awful. Some navigations went from literally 2 presses to more than 8 and I don't understand how people put up with it.

noirscape 3y ago

About a year ago? The main issues I had mostly boiled down to "the app felt clunky to use", pages not rendering nicely, issues while scrolling pages and buttons not being in places where they seem logical. Similarly, the way Firefox handles external links from other apps feels... bad? Like that's really what a lot of it boils down to; Firefox as an app just feels outdated to use. Then there's the fact that extension support in Firefox Mobile is aggressively locked to the Mozilla extension store and only a whitelist of stuff Mozilla approves (it draws extensions from a collection on the Mozilla extension store, so if your desired extension isn't in it, the only option you have is to override the entire thing by making your own collection and messing in about:config), and that kinda compounds to a strong "I'd not recommend it" for me. Firefox to me is a browser that at it's core should be respecting user choice and the Android implementation on that alone doesn't meed the sniff test; Mozilla lock-in even on minor things like this is a big dealbreaker. Chrome's feel with the rest of Android, for all the issues I have with it, is really well done. Firefox makes you feel much more like you're constantly struggling against Android to make a square peg fit in a round hole. I personally do use a Chrome fork (Cromite, which is a Bromite fork since Bromite's lead dev is MIA), just so that feel is preserved (while also having a solid adblocker and other privacy oriented features).

johnchristopher 3y ago
Thanks for your detailed answer. I have only ever used firefox on android so I don't really feel its clunkyness and I only know of one major website I use (an e-commerce merchant website) with problems. Sometimes the sharing function is broken (no icons) but I can live with that. I also wish there were more extensions but as long as ublock is available it's okay for my usage. I should spend a day or two with Chrome or cromite to see what I am missing. All that being said, the latest firefox update pisses me of: now when you open a new tab and type news.ycombinator.com it will jump to any tab with the same url. I have >1000 tabs and the new behavior messses up the chronological order in which tabs were opened. It also jumps me back hundred of tabs backward at time. I dig a bit and found the bugzilla bug report, the original problem is about opening a new tab from the home tab and seeing how it took years to get the behavior changed and how the change has unintended consequences and people in the thread are "too much tabs is bad" kind of people I am giving up on reporting it.

7734128 3y ago

I used it for years until the update which removed most add-ons. Not because of that change though, that didn't bother me, but because the interface became and in my opinion remains absolutely awful. Some navigations went from literally 2 presses to more than 8 and I don't understand how people put up with it.