What the Firefox User Research team is doing: Translating team-focused product development insights into human-centered global public expert strategic knowledge to reduce risk.
What I would rather see it do: Whatever is necessary to get the url bar selection behaviour on linux fixed.
Another completely useless search engine for me.
It defaults to IP based country search regions (like the IP of my default VPN server) with no ability for international searches, and only a drop down menu to switch to other countries instead of a toggle, like DDG.
can’t I just have a fuckin web browser that I use to look at fuckin websites? not everything needs a god damn account. I’m so sick of it. like you can’t just sign in to a separate gmail account, you have to “add an account” Add to what? I don’t want it there permanently, I don’t want to keep any information about the account in the browser program, it’s a web based email account why can’t I just go to the website damn
I’m not saying it is – I’m just asking why you need an “account” and whether it’s a “Mozilla account” or a “Firefox account” doesn’t make a difference - why do you need it? it’s a web browser. has no one else been on the internet before the late 90s? didn’t have an “internet explorer account” or a “Netscape account” to deal with, I fuckin double clicked and went to stileproject.com or whatever. I’m mostly just shaking my fist at the clouds and I understand that.
To sync your bookmarks and saved passwords and stuff. Back in the netscape days you had a single device that could access the internet. The way you want to use a browser is still easily available to you. Yelling about a service you don’t have to use in any way existing is just childish.
You can though…? The account gives you some useful features if you want to use them, like syncing tabs and bookmarks across devices, and if you don’t want to use it, the browser still works normally.
This is great, though I really wish they would finally prioritize supporting site isolation and enabling isolated process on Android.
A big part of why a lot of us use add-ons is for privacy and security, but even with more robust extension support, it still won't be as secure as Chromium-based alternatives on mobile until they address that.
It’s about time. This has been a much needed feature since Firefox Android was first released. It basically is the only mobile browser that allows extensions.
What's really annoying is that a lot of existing extensions already work. Mozilla just makes it unreasonably difficult to install them.
Change your user agent (using Firefox Nightly and the user agent switcher extension, which is supported) and you can install extensions exactly as on desktop.
Installing directly from an .xpi is still seemingly impossible though, annoyingly.
There is a fork called Smart Cookie Web Preview that lets you sideload extensions with no rigmarole, no Custom Collection nonsense, I have yet to find an extension that does not work. Even things like Behave and Jshelter work fine. I have no idea why Mozilla has been dragging this out for so long, lack of extension support on Android is a very common complaint.
What’s really annoying is that a lot of existing extensions already work. Mozilla just makes it unreasonably difficult to install them.
Change your user agent (using Firefox Nightly and the user agent switcher extension, which is supported) and you can install extensions exactly as on desktop.
That’s only telling half the story because often features silently failed for many extensions because of the great idea to switch from proper Firefox to the GeckoView based one which actually did not implement many APIs used by extensions.
I mean, sure. That's not at all unexpected. But not even allowing the user to try at all, or making it unreasonably difficult to try, is very frustrating.
Place the option behind developer mode, with a disclaimer that features may fail and Mozilla makes no promises or guarantees.
But just flat-out denying the option, or making the user jump through ridiculous custom collection hoops is nonsense. In my case the custom collection method still failed, but the extension I was looking for does in fact work just fine, after installing it with the modified user agent string.
This has been a much needed feature since Firefox Android was first released
Actually, Firefox on Android did originally support desktop extensions when it was first released. But then they did a major rebuild of the app back in 2020 and lost its addons as a result.
Its current poor extension support is the reason I’ve been using Kiwi Browser, which is a basic Chromium build with full extension support, including loading from local storage.
At least when using Kiwi in desktop mode (via Samsung DeX), Kiwi doesn’t fill out passwords for me. There also is no interest in supporting Firefox Sync.
Same here. I use custom collections on Fennec F-Droid but the inability to properly sideload keeps me on the auto rebased builds of Kiwi Browser. That and support for the black OLED theme and night mode website retheming built in.
Very glad to see this come to Firefox though! Hopefully they can also get those other bits added in.
It also works on the Fennec branch for people who want a fully stable build that has full addon support, but yeah this is going to open it up to a lot more people, so hopefully more people will use Firefox
That’s just regular Firefox with the addon restrictions and trademarks removed,. That doesn’t just magically spawn API support. I thought you meant the 68.x branch which actually had broad extension support and received one additional update over Firefox 68 because the ESR branch was further updated for a bit: apkmirror.com/…/fennec-f-droid-68-12-0-release/
I was a bit hung up on the term ‘branch’ because in my understanding Fennec F-Droid falls more under patch set. Mozilla used Fennec as code name for Firefox Mobile before the GeckoView migration and I had hoped the old Fennec branch would live on in some shape or form.
Yeah I’m aware of that name’s origins. People use “branch” to describe Waterfox and Mull as well. If you ask about “Fennec branch” in current year, it’s what I’ve linked. Nearly anyone who talks about it is referring to that. Just a heads up.
Disclaimer, I’m not French. But it seemed like the alternative was Le Pen and from what I’ve read she would certainly be more of a shitstain fascist, just with a populist tinge.
We basically had the choice between eating shit or eating a cheese pie with shit inside. Next time I’m afraid people are simply going to give up or eat the actual shit because “at least it’s honest”.
Yup. We voted for him in the second turn of the elections because, it was either that or facism… and we got facism-lite (less and less lite, with each passing day) laying the ground work and colluding with Le Pen and her cronies. Fucking wonderful.
What in the ever loving hell is up with France’s current government right now? It’s like Macron has said fuck it, lets give the fascists a way to sneak in
Current government right now? I don’t remember any time when French politicians were friendly to the free and open Internet. Used to be that copyright was the main concern, nowadays not anymore.
It’s not just right now : this president has been here since 2017 and most of the core ministers are the same since then.
They have been cracking down on civil liberties from the start, but they make it more and more obvious since 2022 (because there is no re-election possible after 2 terms). Using anti-terrorist special legislatilns against environmental and himan rights activists, making demonstrations repression ever more violent…
At the same time, to guarantee that pseudo-centrist (actually right wing) keep getting elected, they have worked to make the far right more powerful. This way, in every election, they can end up being the “rational” choice.
Exactly. Besides, I really do believe they are stupid enough to believe their bullshit will allow them to keep winning at the polls. I’m not so sure anymore… The fascists are ready and our state is turning a blind eye.
Forcing browser to block certain sites is like making car manufacturers make the car shutdown if you are trying to smuggle foreign cheese in to France.
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