Mozilla will open Firefox for Android for more extensions

About damn time, they should never have disabled it in the first place.

Let’s just appreciate the fact that basically no other browser has this.

With chrome/ium you can’t even block ads.

That’s a lie sir. Brave blocks ads out of the box. Vivaldi also has ad block filters. You can add custom filters to both browsers. Also edge has shitty ad blocker. Kiwi browser supports almost all chrome extensions. Basically almost all except chrome and still you can block most of the ads using correct dns server.

We’re talking about actual web browsers here, not spyware that uses your device to run a botnet

Sorry but even with all that said, you’ll never lure me to the evil side. I’m sticking with Firefox until it dies an atrocious death

Firefox already supported ublock origin on mobile and a handful of other extensions. This is just them opening it up to more extensions.

I use kiwi browser for the extension support.

It’s enabled in the beta version, although limited to a small number of extensions.

Now, if only iOS would allow true Safari alternatives. 🥲

They’ll soon be forced to allow sideloading, in the EU at least. Should open the doors for proper alternative browsers.

I loathe the very fact they made people call it “sideloading”. It’s just installing on your own terms, like it used to be the norm.

Well, it’s a carry over from its early days in how it used to work. You needed to install things via USB debugger. Generally that’s all sideloading ever meant, transferring information from one device to another using a generally “local” method (SD card, USB, etc). Now sideloading, on Android at least (as it retains its original meaning elsewhere), just means not from the official repository.

I wonder what the alternatives to App Store will be called. F-Store? iDroid?

They’d still be restricted to the Webkit rendering engine though, right?

If you can sideload anything you want, why would that be the case? I don’t think there’s a technical limitation, they just don’t allow it on the app store if it doesn’t use safari.

If you can sideload an app there’s nothing Apple can do to stop you from shipping a new rendering engine.

Very sad that Firefox does not provide an .ipa file of firefox without webkit. Jailbroken, trollstore and altstore users could benefit of extensions before apple allows sideloading.

I use FF on android for a couple months now. Solid browser and sync to desktol and add blocker are nice.

BUT: their page reloading is far too aggressive. You can’t buy anything online, since once 2FA is required and you need to open your bank app, confirm, and switch back, the page reloads and the 2FA didn’t get through. Tickets and such are the only reason I have still chrome installed.

This is Android aggressively killing apps, not Firefox.

Possibly, but previously I’ve been able to load a site, open a media-rich page in a new tab, then close that tab to go back to the original page.

On a newer build of FF for Android, that first page is re-loaded from the internet.

Hmm, I’m not experiencing that. Could Android (well, the flavour used by your phone) be killing background apps too aggressively or something like that?

Edit: could also be a RAM thing. I have 12GB.

I’m not experiencing that issue either and I have half the amount of RAM that you do. I’ve noticed an unnecessary autorefresh only after closing out of the browser for a long time, never in the middle of switching between apps. But, that does sound like annoying behavior.

Wow, I’m pretty sure my laptop has less RAM than that. ~Cherri

You can get 32GB of laptop RAM for like $60 to $80 if you find sales, and even one 16GB stick would be an upgrade for you. Modern bloat is so bad that having 8 gigs of RAM is the equivalent of having 4 a few years ago.

This annoyed me too. I use Firefox Nightly with accessibility.blockautorefresh set in about:config, and it helps.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1204335

I feel this pain. But you try to stop a video that started playing in Firefox. I dare you.

Its in notification with background play lol

Yes but a video should stop if you swipe away the apps card from multitasking view. This action is tantamount to closing the app.

had that issue since updating my phone to android 13, mozilla really needs to fix it

I also feel RAM too aggressive since A13, but it could be my custom ROM as well.

Yeah, I open my 2FA app in split screen when I do this

Huh, good to know.
I’ve found edge to be quite aggressive on the reloads as well (at least, on desktop).
Makes it difficult for developing anything that has to deal with tabs going to “sleep” (like websocket reconnects, rehydrations, reauths).

I’m a hair away from ditching chrome

why it was restricted in the first place?

Because there were enough incompatibilities to make it a hassle. But when they were sorting out the Web Manifest v3, they designed it with desktop and mobile in mind, so new extensions won’t have problems.

It makes less sense since extensions actually ran on Android, e.g. via Nightly and creating your own list of exceptions. Also if you downgrade and install in an old Fennec version, extension will continue to function if you then update to the latest.

I think the move was an attempt to create a walled garden. But for whatever reason, they have now decided against it. Thank goodness.

It would be nice to have stuff here to break this down

Maybe they couldn’t guarantee that the mobile version could run well with all of them? That’s what I’ve always assumed.

Which I think is kinda weird decision since they could’ve just hidden a setting that unlocks all addons in the options. But maybe they were so incompatible at the time that it wasn’t worth the headache.

If you use Beta or Nightly, you can turn on dev tools and use a custom addon list from a collection in your user account. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/

There is a hidden way to activate more extensions and most - if not the vast majority - extensions work fine.

There is a hidden setting for essentially that. It might be exclusive to Nightly though, idk since all I need is UBO

Can we have tabs when using a tablet please?

And why not phones too if the user prefers it that way. Can we have our user preferences back please?

You don’t have tabs using a tablet?

I think he means tabs along the top like on a PC browser.

No no, that would make way too much sense.

Written on a Fold 4 that’s currently not using Firefox ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

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