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I wish someone would release a good mobile fork. Firefox Mobile probably has the worst UX of any mobile browser I've used since 2009 and I'm convinced whatever

I wish someone would release a good mobile fork. Firefox Mobile probably has the worst UX of any mobile browser I've used since 2009 and I'm convinced whatever intern they have locked in a closet coding it doesn't use it themselves. It's as if they used a supercomputer to predict user behavior for the sole purpose of making sure their obnoxious purple toast messages cover the exact button you need to use and that they last exactly one second short of the time required to make you uninstall it in fury.

cuu508 2y ago
What are your main gripes?
- causality0 2y ago
  If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks the view of the next tab. If I full-screen a video, the "you fullscreened a video!" message blocks the entire video progress bar so I can't move forward or back. I don't need the damn browser to tell me what I just did. I was there. Adjusting the volume while watching a full screen video drops the whole browser into a 4mmx4mm picture-in-picture window on my home screen. Oh, and the bug where using the back button sometimes completely breaks the "view desktop site" button until I manually kill the app is still there.
  - jorams 2y ago
    > If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks the view of the next tab. This only happens if you close a tab just above the bottom of your screen. You can scroll the entire list up past the point where any tabs will be obscured by the toast (which has an undo button), and it even does so by default when you open the list with one of the lower tabs active. To reproduce your complaint I have to either explicitly scroll the tab I want to close into the area that will be obscured, or I have to have a tab higher in the list active, then open the list, and then close one of the tabs at the bottom of the screen. > If I full-screen a video, the "you fullscreened a video!" message blocks the entire video progress bar so I can't move forward or back. This is/was indeed annoying. It's been resolved in a recent update for me on Beta. I've never seen the other two things you mention and I can't reproduce them, but they don't seem like UX issues, just bugs.
    - causality0 2y ago
      Bugs that go years without being addressed are UX issues.
- bornfreddy 2y ago
  Not GP, but mine are: - I open link in new tab, a button to switch to it appears - and disappears right before I manage to click it (unless I'm on redbull, then it's fine). Every. Single. Time. - extensions - why do I need to create my own list of extension and publish it, just to include some extension Mozilla didn't approve? It's not like they are checking them much anyway. - stop the telemetry. Seriously. If I wanted someone spying on me I would have used Chrome. And even worse, stop contacting Google (firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com)! I'm blocking it all with NetGuard, but it's annoying knowing I can't trust the browser. Not much else really. It works pretty nicely once you have the obligatory uBlock Origin installed and blocking in NetGuard set up.
- yesco 2y ago
  Bad Parts: - Installing custom addons is so obnoxiously complicated it makes me think Mozilla has it out for me sometimes. It's actually easier to sideload apps on Android than it is to "sideload" addons into Firefox mobile. - You can either close all tabs or methodically select and close every individual tab, no in-between. Makes cleaning them up super tedious. Wish there was atleast an option to close all above or below (like close all left/right on desktop) - Swiping left/right on a tab in the tab page will close it, closing tabs this way is slower than hitting the x button and seems to have some kind of rate limit? In practice it exists solely so I can accidentally trigger a swipe when scrolling and close an important tab I wanted (the undo pop-up only lasts a couple seconds so I only manage to undo about 2/3s the time. It seems to get dismissed if I don't perfectly select the right spot, but maybe that's just in my head). - No way to duplicate existing tabs, this is honestly the silliest one to me, why wouldn't they let you do this? Who thought it was okay to leave this one out? Perhaps I've simply missed the option for this because I certainly can't find it anywhere. This isn't even a power user feature, it's like not being able to close the passenger window in the drivers seat of your car. - The process for making new tabs is confusing, it will have an option to "jump back in" to the last tab you had opened but sometimes it will also replace that tab entirely and I can't understand why. Wish it was just a normal new tab page instead of whatever this is. - Scrolling always seems fucked up on a bunch of sites, it sort of forces you to move the address bar to the top to make things work but the interface is so over-designed for your thumbs this ends up always being terrible. - The interface just objectively sucks on tablets because of the over-designed for thumbs thing, Chrome reverts to standard tabs like you see on desktop, wish Firefox did the same, or at least something similar. Looks ridiculous. Good Parts: - I liked the way bookmarks/pinning works, use that all the time - I love that I can use uBlock Origin, frankly this is the main reason I'm even using this thing - I like the general idea of a page that shows all my tabs as little window boxes, just wish it was executed better. - Reader mode is awesome, I barely use on desktop but it's critical on mobile. This is indirectly because the scrolling is fucked up on most sites because of the bar thing though so maybe this one only half counts. It would also be nice if they put the slightest bit of extra effort into the customization options for the reader page. This is literally just updating some values in a style-sheet after all... I would do it myself if addons weren't so painful - It actually plays media when I change the app focus unlike the user hostile Chrome does, in practice this still doesn't actually work very reliably but I appreciate the effort - I can install it from F-Droid - I like that really old tabs get smushed into a menu that makes it easy to delete them. It's sort of niche and makes me wonder why they would implement this before any of the other more obvious features for managing tabs, but I digress, better than nothing.
- amid11 2y ago
  In my experience, Firefox for mobile falls short in several key areas compared to other modern browsers. - From a UX/UI perspective, its design feels outdated and lacks intuitive features that have become standard elsewhere. - Features like 'tab previews', 'tab grouping', or built-in 'swipe gestures' for back/forward navigation are noticeably absent. - While extensions may offer some workarounds, these should ideally be core functionalities, as relying on third-party solutions adds unnecessary complexity for users. - It would be a significant improvement if Firefox natively supported these features or, at the very least, provided clearer documentation to help users seeking these features.
  - ac29 2y ago
    > Features like 'tab previews' This has been in Firefox mobile for as long as I can remember. Swiping for back navigation also works fine, but not forwards as near as I can tell. Maybe these features are specific to Android?
cdrini 2y ago
It's been my daily driver for years and I've never had any issues. There are some bits of the UI I would change, but they're minor, and every application is like that
wkat4242 2y ago
I like it especially now that it has pull to refresh. I really missed that. And ublock origin on mobile really makes the web actually useful.

cuu508 2y ago

What are your main gripes?

causality0 2y ago
If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks the view of the next tab. If I full-screen a video, the "you fullscreened a video!" message blocks the entire video progress bar so I can't move forward or back. I don't need the damn browser to tell me what I just did. I was there. Adjusting the volume while watching a full screen video drops the whole browser into a 4mmx4mm picture-in-picture window on my home screen. Oh, and the bug where using the back button sometimes completely breaks the "view desktop site" button until I manually kill the app is still there.
- jorams 2y ago
  > If I dismiss a tab the "you dismissed a tab" popup blocks the view of the next tab. This only happens if you close a tab just above the bottom of your screen. You can scroll the entire list up past the point where any tabs will be obscured by the toast (which has an undo button), and it even does so by default when you open the list with one of the lower tabs active. To reproduce your complaint I have to either explicitly scroll the tab I want to close into the area that will be obscured, or I have to have a tab higher in the list active, then open the list, and then close one of the tabs at the bottom of the screen. > If I full-screen a video, the "you fullscreened a video!" message blocks the entire video progress bar so I can't move forward or back. This is/was indeed annoying. It's been resolved in a recent update for me on Beta. I've never seen the other two things you mention and I can't reproduce them, but they don't seem like UX issues, just bugs.
  - causality0 2y ago
    Bugs that go years without being addressed are UX issues.
bornfreddy 2y ago
Not GP, but mine are: - I open link in new tab, a button to switch to it appears - and disappears right before I manage to click it (unless I'm on redbull, then it's fine). Every. Single. Time. - extensions - why do I need to create my own list of extension and publish it, just to include some extension Mozilla didn't approve? It's not like they are checking them much anyway. - stop the telemetry. Seriously. If I wanted someone spying on me I would have used Chrome. And even worse, stop contacting Google (firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com)! I'm blocking it all with NetGuard, but it's annoying knowing I can't trust the browser. Not much else really. It works pretty nicely once you have the obligatory uBlock Origin installed and blocking in NetGuard set up.
yesco 2y ago
Bad Parts: - Installing custom addons is so obnoxiously complicated it makes me think Mozilla has it out for me sometimes. It's actually easier to sideload apps on Android than it is to "sideload" addons into Firefox mobile. - You can either close all tabs or methodically select and close every individual tab, no in-between. Makes cleaning them up super tedious. Wish there was atleast an option to close all above or below (like close all left/right on desktop) - Swiping left/right on a tab in the tab page will close it, closing tabs this way is slower than hitting the x button and seems to have some kind of rate limit? In practice it exists solely so I can accidentally trigger a swipe when scrolling and close an important tab I wanted (the undo pop-up only lasts a couple seconds so I only manage to undo about 2/3s the time. It seems to get dismissed if I don't perfectly select the right spot, but maybe that's just in my head). - No way to duplicate existing tabs, this is honestly the silliest one to me, why wouldn't they let you do this? Who thought it was okay to leave this one out? Perhaps I've simply missed the option for this because I certainly can't find it anywhere. This isn't even a power user feature, it's like not being able to close the passenger window in the drivers seat of your car. - The process for making new tabs is confusing, it will have an option to "jump back in" to the last tab you had opened but sometimes it will also replace that tab entirely and I can't understand why. Wish it was just a normal new tab page instead of whatever this is. - Scrolling always seems fucked up on a bunch of sites, it sort of forces you to move the address bar to the top to make things work but the interface is so over-designed for your thumbs this ends up always being terrible. - The interface just objectively sucks on tablets because of the over-designed for thumbs thing, Chrome reverts to standard tabs like you see on desktop, wish Firefox did the same, or at least something similar. Looks ridiculous. Good Parts: - I liked the way bookmarks/pinning works, use that all the time - I love that I can use uBlock Origin, frankly this is the main reason I'm even using this thing - I like the general idea of a page that shows all my tabs as little window boxes, just wish it was executed better. - Reader mode is awesome, I barely use on desktop but it's critical on mobile. This is indirectly because the scrolling is fucked up on most sites because of the bar thing though so maybe this one only half counts. It would also be nice if they put the slightest bit of extra effort into the customization options for the reader page. This is literally just updating some values in a style-sheet after all... I would do it myself if addons weren't so painful - It actually plays media when I change the app focus unlike the user hostile Chrome does, in practice this still doesn't actually work very reliably but I appreciate the effort - I can install it from F-Droid - I like that really old tabs get smushed into a menu that makes it easy to delete them. It's sort of niche and makes me wonder why they would implement this before any of the other more obvious features for managing tabs, but I digress, better than nothing.
amid11 2y ago
In my experience, Firefox for mobile falls short in several key areas compared to other modern browsers. - From a UX/UI perspective, its design feels outdated and lacks intuitive features that have become standard elsewhere. - Features like 'tab previews', 'tab grouping', or built-in 'swipe gestures' for back/forward navigation are noticeably absent. - While extensions may offer some workarounds, these should ideally be core functionalities, as relying on third-party solutions adds unnecessary complexity for users. - It would be a significant improvement if Firefox natively supported these features or, at the very least, provided clearer documentation to help users seeking these features.
- ac29 2y ago
  > Features like 'tab previews' This has been in Firefox mobile for as long as I can remember. Swiping for back navigation also works fine, but not forwards as near as I can tell. Maybe these features are specific to Android?

cdrini 2y ago

It's been my daily driver for years and I've never had any issues. There are some bits of the UI I would change, but they're minor, and every application is like that

wkat4242 2y ago

I like it especially now that it has pull to refresh. I really missed that. And ublock origin on mobile really makes the web actually useful.