
Things about the new Firefox browser for Android - maverick74
https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-android-new-features/
======
ajnin
I'm using Firefox Preview regularly for a few month now, and it really is a
huge step up in performance. Javascript and CSS-heavy sites now behave as they
should, and browsing feels smooth overall. However the UI changes are a big
step back and the main reason why I've not completely switched over from the
regular Firefox (now I won't have that choice it looks like) :

\- The address/search bar is much much inferior. Much less relevant results
now come up first. When typing the domain name of a site I visit daily said
site will come up low on the list, needing to scroll, while some autocompleted
address I've never visited once will be on top.

\- Extensions are not supported. A single supported extension does not count.

\- The thumbnails are removed from the tab list. Not a huge loss but I had
gotten used to it

\- Popups each time you close a tab use up unnecessary screen space. Also they
often just stay there.

\- The address bar is now at the bottom. Change for the sake of change.

I don't know if all of these issues will transfer to the new Firefox, but I
wish they would have brought in the engine changes only. Current UI is fine.

~~~
isbjorn16
I know you say a single supported extension does not count, but they did
include the one extension that was an absolute deal breaker for me if it
didn't exist.

They -don't- support extensions yet, but they did make it approachable for
people like me who simply won't browse the web without an adblocker.

~~~
endemic
Agreed, to be honest uBlock Origin is the only extension I'm currently running
on mobile, and "deal-breaker" is exactly how I'd describe browsing without it.
I'll probably give this new build a try.

~~~
SECProto
Yup. uBlock Origin on mobile is what made me switch back from chrome a couple
years ago. Definite dealbreaker if it was unsupported

------
kibwen
I'll keep using Mobile Firefox, and my experience with the new version is
indeed favorable, but I admit that I'm frustrated and confused that this is
being pushed to stable users before complete extension support is implemented.
Thankfully uBlock Origin is supported or I'd be looking for a new browser, but
my less-important extensions aren't so lucky.

At best I could imagine that Mozilla is privy to internal metrics showing that
some overwhelming proportion of users have uBlock Origin as their only
extension, which I could absolutely believe. Still, what sort of timeframe
will it take to support the remaining addons, and why couldn't the new browser
have baked on the nightly channel for a while longer until extension support
was completed?

~~~
kwierso
I think the metrics actually show that most users don't use extensions. But of
the group that _do_ use extensions, I'd guess an adblocker is the top one.

~~~
Drdrdrq
The question is - _an_ adblocker or _the_ adblocker (ublock)? As a long time
FF Android user I prefer uMatrix and will wait with upgrade, hoping they fix
this quickly. Otherwise... Not sure what I'll do. This is bad. :-(

~~~
bscphil
As far as I know, uMatrix is not a (dynamic) ad blocker. That is, if some
requests to subdomain.domain.net are for ads and some of the requests are for
important page content, uMatrix isn't capable of distinguishing between the
two. A real ad blocker uses block lists compiled (at least in part) by other
people that can distinguish between two different URLs on the same domain.

~~~
Drdrdrq
Fair point, except - I am more concerned with tracking than the ads
themselves. Which means I want to block Google fonts anywhere, and only allow
domains when I want to. So no, I prefer uMatrix approach.

------
wging
Am I reading this right? They're going to launch a browser update that removes
support for most extensions and claim it's an upgrade?

~~~
coldpie
God Damnit I Hoped They Wouldn't Do This. I love you Firefox but you make it
so hard. I've come to depend on NoScript on mobile (the mobile web is a
_nightmare_ with JS enabled by default) and now they're going to break it on
me. The worst part is the part of this article about how their browser is not
ready for extensions is labeled "Extension-ready". No it fucking isn't.

Fuck this is so frustrating.

~~~
kd913
It's not like there isn't really a solution to this. You don't really need
NoScript if you can learn how to use ublock origin in advanced mode.

~~~
coldpie
I've never tried the uBO script blocker, but NoScript's UI is really nice for
performing common tasks related to blocking JS. Stuff like allowing temporary
permissions per domain, or allowing all on the current tab. Does uBO have
similar features?

~~~
enitihas
You can try the brave browser on Android. Disabling and enabling js
temporarily is easy. Even better, enabling js on a website in private mode
does not persist. So you can disable all js by default, enable it on trusted
sites via 1 click easy to use UI, and enable anywhere in private mode without
worrying about forgetting to disable it later.

~~~
boring_twenties
> enable it on trusted sites via 1 click easy to use UI

Does this just enable all scripts loaded by that site, or does it allow
filtering by domain the scripts themselves are loaded from?

E.g. when browsing site.com you want to allow site.com (and often
sitestatic.com or something), but still not allow doubleclick.net even though
it's loaded by the same page.

------
Misdicorl
I'm on nightly on my phone so have had this experience for a while. I very
much dislike the new homescreen with collections instead of the 2x4 of most
frecently visited sites.

Collections would be ok if it kept the old UI of a 2x4 grid. Instead I get to
see 2 sites at first, and have to scroll to see more. If I close a tab, I'm
not able to use the bottom 1/4 of the screen for ~2 seconds while the undo
popup hangs out. This means even more scrolling. This decluttering really
sucks imo.

The other annoying thing is that the upgrade starts up with an empty
collection screen. The upgrade should have created a default collection
populated with my 2x4 grid for me. Come on Mozilla, stop giving me paper cuts
like this.

~~~
stronglikedan
Ah, the old "we know what's best for our users" mentality. Take something good
away in favor of a worse UX, with no config setting to switch back, even
though old and new _could_ co-exist.

~~~
Misdicorl
I definitely understand them not wanting to maintain two parallel settings
here. I think this failure sits squarely on the project manager who decided to
couple the new behavior (collections instead of frecency) together with a new
ui. I'd bet dollars to donuts that they didn't test the changes independently,
and they're probably tightly linked in the code.

I imagine collections were the driving force here. If the new behavior
(collections) were shipped separately, I imagine they would have certainly
migrated installations to have a default `recents` collection that users could
then easily delete (or migrate and maintain manually)! What a nice situation
that would have been as everyone would have gotten exactly what they wanted.

If the new UI were tested separately, I can't imagine it would have gotten
positive feedback. But maybe I'm just an old grump and most people like it
better? It seems like shipping the UI change as a separate feature would have
easily identified that the grid view was something a lot of people liked.

------
mqus
> "[...]everyone using the Firefox browser on their Android phones and tablets
> will get the update."

Well, everyone who has at least Android 5... which excludes about 10% of the
android landscape[1].

Most of these people probably still haven't upgraded because they a)can't
afford it or b) use their devices until they're broken and will not buy a new
device simply because it's newer.

I understand the move, but still, Mozilla has to communicate this in the right
way and not "Everyone will have to update and if you can't, sorry for you, not
our business"

[1]
[https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/)

~~~
jsjddbbwj
Android 5 was released in 2014. It's time to move on.

~~~
mqus
Is anything which is older than 6 years considered legacy now? Should this be
the expected lifetime of smartphones? Please not.

~~~
BorgHunter
Smartphones, no (although with batteries being almost universally not
replaceable now, six years is usually a difficult prospect without some
delicate surgery), but a particular version of an OS, I think six years is
plenty reasonable.

The root of the problem is that phones have so much proprietary hardware with
closed source drivers that prevent the end-user from keeping the OS up-to-date
like we can on PCs. If I wanted to, I could put a completely modern version of
Linux on a 15-year-old desktop and it'd work fine, assuming the hardware's
still fine. But with phone OSs you're completely at the mercy of your phone's
manufacturer for OS releases, and so "six year old smartphone" necessarily
means "smartphone missing probably at least 2-3 years of security updates and
multiple OS versions behind the latest". It doesn't _have_ to be that way, but
that's the world phone manufacturers have created for us, and they have no
incentive to change it.

------
yjftsjthsd-h
> 3\. Extension-ready

> This update will initially include support for one of the most popular
> extensions on Android, uBlock Origin. Additional extensions will be
> supported in subsequent releases

... if it supports exactly 1 extension, it is absolutely _not_ "extension-
ready"!

~~~
sfink
I'm guessing the wording was meant to suggest extension ready vs extension
supporting. As in, the codebase is capable of adding full extension support,
no rearchitecture needed.

No user-facing advantage yet, sadly.

------
davidy123
The github issue discussing extension support is here
[https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/5315#issuecom...](https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/5315#issuecomment-582309086)

I find the attitudes about extensions and UX in general to be evolving in a
strange way. People used to focus on the 80/20 rule, make what 80% of people
want to do easy, and the remaining 20% possible. But now many people seem to
be saying "if most people don't need it, it's not important." But that just
takes products down a path of diminishing ability that is dictated by a few UX
people and the personas they test with, and when we're talking about a general
purpose product like a browser it means fewer opportunities for anyone to
create and use innovative features.

~~~
anoncake
Even worse, it means people can't rely on your features anymore. A feature
that could disappear at any time might as well not exist.

------
h4waii
If you're not very happy with Firefox for Android, consider switching to
Bromite [0]. It's based on Chromium, but includes many privacy patches,
including ad blocking, and is completely open source.

Releases are available through an _official_ F-Droid repository as well as
GitHub. It is a very well run project.

0\. [https://github.com/bromite/bromite](https://github.com/bromite/bromite)

------
AdmiralAsshat
Glad to see support for uBlock Origin landing, finally. Although to be honest,
I've been using FF Preview for about a month now, and I haven't observed any
ads to speak of. The tracking blockers may be enough on their own.

~~~
Semaphor
I’ve seen a few, but the majority gets caught :)

------
warnhardcode
I like this browser and usually have it set as my default on my phone. I like
that I can set links to open in private mode by default quite a bit.

My wishlist: 1. collections syncing to my Firefox account and desktop Firefox
2. a menu option to move a page from private mode to normal mode where I'm
logged into things; right now I copy/paste the url 3. (sadly) an easy way to
open the current page in Chrome.

The biggest issue I've run into is some app sign-in flows that roll through
the browser or webview break when using Firefox private by default. I switch
Chrome to the default temporarily to work around this.

------
dreamcompiler
I hope they make it impossible for sites to determine whether you're in
private mode. Lots of sites refuse to work in private mode, and frankly, they
shouldn't have any way to tell. Private mode is nice because it's the easiest
way to delete all their tracking cookies when you leave the site.

------
adadahdjej
The top comments are so negative. I find the steps towards making uBlock
origin directly available, and extensions available in subsequent releases
laudable. I have been using Firefox mobile for at least 8 years and it's been
getting faster and better with every new release.

------
kaeforas
Well this is worrying, afaik Firefox Preview still kernel panics some
LineageOS roms (like mine) [1].

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/5663](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5663)

~~~
jeroenhd
To be honest, if a userland application is capable of kernel panicking a
phone, that's a bug in the kernel, not in the application.

There's also a bug in Android (official and LOS) which I've encountered many
times related to location detection in certain always-on GPS apps, causing a
systems freeze and a reboot. This sucks, but it's a bug with Android, not with
the application itself.

The Android/LOS peeps should really take a look at this though. I don't expect
this to be the only app that can cause this and with some severe bad luck the
crash might even be exploitable.

------
agluszak
But you still can't change tabs with a swipe like in Chrome, and to be honest
it's the only thing keeping me from switching to FF

~~~
agluszak
Well, at least I could contribute this feature myself someday, while many
annoyances in Chrome I won't be ever able to fix :)

~~~
vntok
What prevents you from contributing to this feature targeting Chrome?

~~~
hu3
Their bias.

------
unwiredben
I just tried this again after being back on Firefox Beta on Android for a few
months. It's really gotten quite nice, and they added back the reader mode
which I use a lot to simplify long pages on my phone. The only thing I
occasionally use that's not there right now is the ability to open a site from
a tab open on my desktop.

------
dwheeler
Sounds good. Does lastpass work on this version of Firefox? Lastpass is a
really popular password manager, but last I checked it didn't work on Firefox
on Android (Lastpass works fine on Firefox on desktop).

~~~
hashhar
LastPass's Android app works. But maybe you can try out Bitwarden while you're
at it. It's open source and can be self-hosted (and is audited).

------
lousken
Firefox preview has two really annoying bugs -

a) when closing a tab the option to revert that action gets stuck most of the
time on my screen and it's hard to get the timing right - if you do it too
soon you gonna actually restore the tab but if you do it later it'll stop
working and just disappear

b) downloading some attachments creates 0byte or incomplete file in my
download folder, not sure what's going on there

------
Tistron
I really wish they'd get around to implementing saving credit card info,
that's one reason I go back to chrome now and then. and there are some bugs
with opening Firefox, clicking the address field on a tab that is loading and
writing a search and pressing enter. That search is somehow lost if the timing
of loading what was already in the tab is unfortunate. Maybe this never
happens on a brand new phone on a high speed connection, but for me it is the
biggest nuisance with Firefox mobile.

------
toastal
I wish there was still about:config. It's much more fine-grained and you can
turn on experimental features like lazy loading images.

------
csande17
I've heard that extensions aren't supported in the new Firefox for Android,
but did they also drop support for Personas/Themes? The blog post mentions
light or dark themes, but not custom ones. (Am I the only person in the world
who installed a theme on Firefox for Android?)

------
pmontra
Maybe the could publish the current version with a different name (Firefox
Rusty?) for the ones of us who want to keep using their extensions. The
current Firefox feels fast enough on my phone. I can wait to install the new
one when extensions support is complete.

------
Sindisil
If they fix the frequent crashes, and even more frequent inability to render a
page at all (just a white screen, even after refreshing), then I'll definitely
give it a go. I'd love to switch back, but had to retreat to Brave for the
time being...

~~~
jamienicol
What phone are you using?

~~~
landtuna
I have this issue on the Galaxy S10e (stock). I get the white screen of death
after a while. I uninstalled it because my phone was swapping out the second
to last app when I had Firefox Preview installed, even when not using it.
(Maybe it was being the default web view inside other apps?) The phone seems
fine with it gone as I use regular Firefox.

------
Brakenshire
Any progress on Servo? What the mobile web needs is a parallel layout engine.

------
conradfr
We'll see. To be honest I don't really have a problem with the current Firefox
on Android. Maybe I'll get accustomed to the bottom url bar.

I also use Firefox Focus for links from external apps.

~~~
andrewshadura
The bar position is a setting, you don't to get used to it.

------
mnm1
The Firefox Preview Nightly (with ublock) is an incredible improvement,
especially regarding speed. I got a new phone this past August (moto g7) and I
was already wondering if I needed another new phone because FF on android was
so slow. It was unbearable. I was about to ditch it completely and resign
myself to ads. FF is doing a great job overall with their browsers on android
and desktop (except for the loss of sourcemap support for some that makes it
unusable for JS debugging). I suppose there was a lot of room for improvement
since the old FF was incredibly slow. I hope they do not let this new version
degrade into what it was in the future.

------
loufe
I've been using Firefox Preview for months and it is the first time I don't
hate using the browser on my phone. Huge props to the Firefox team for it.

------
drummer
Is there a way to download a .apk of the preview?

~~~
v0lta
Just download 'Firefox Preview' in the Play Store. That's the version which
will eventually replace the old one.

~~~
drummer
I want to avoid the play store. So I was looking for an official apk source.

~~~
severine
From [https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/8350#issuecom...](https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/8350#issuecomment-585246432)

> _We do a staged roll-out before publishing APKs. As far as I 'm aware
> neither are at 100% which is a requirement for posting the builds. The APK
> is available from automation in the meantime if you want: [https://firefox-
> ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/proje...](https://firefox-ci-
> tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/project.mobile.fenix.v2.production/latest*)

------
mike-cardwell
Can I use this, or does it come with DoH? I hate that I have to even ask this
question.

------
The_rationalist
It's nice that they used Kotlin, the codebase is beautiful to look at.

------
justlexi93
I don't have Firefox on my smartphone, I still use Chrome.

------
oftenwrong
I use many extensions on Firefox for Android. It's why I use Firefox, and
Firefox is a big reason for why I use Android.

I already switched from Nightly to the Release version to continue using
extensions.

