Firefox for Android users get a taste of what they can expect from open extensions before the big reveal next month

• Firefox for Android is reintroducing an open ecosystem of extensions, set to be available on December 14, with a dedicated extension page for easy discovery. • Mozilla has released a preview of the upcoming extensions, including popular ones like Bitwarden’s password manager and AdGuard’s ad blocker. • Firefox aims to gain an advantage over rivals like Google Chrome by supporting a wide range of third-party extensions on Android, while Firefox extensions availability on iOS remains uncertain.

  • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
    841·
    1 year ago

    It really hasn’t been that bad. Firefox mobile had ublock origin all this time, which is of course critical to being able to use the web today.

    There are a few other plugins too, and now they are going to add a lot more. Sounds like good news. I’m not unhappy about mobile Firefox at all, I’ve been on it all this time

  • yolo@r.nfEnglish
    17·
    1 year ago

    They should add the ability to switch the “Home” button to Addons button for quick access. I don’t remember if I ever used that home button, but I’m constantly using the menu button, going to addons, then the add-on itself. It would make it much easier since extensions are one of the main highlights of Firefox Android.

  • badbytes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago
    Mozilla is bringing back extensions for Firefox on Android, which were removed in 2020 for security reasons and interface overhaul.
Firefox extensions will officially be available on Android on December 14, with a dedicated extension page now available in preview to help users discover new content.
Firefox will be the only major Android browser supporting an open extension ecosystem, allowing users to create and explore new extensions for the browser.
    • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      1 year ago

      security reasons

      This is a bit of a weird justification given that they haven’t made any significant changes to extensions on desktop. Why should mobile be different?

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        They refactored the app in 2020 and they decided that they didn’t want to build robust support for the extension architecture that they were going to migrate away from. And the new architecture was going to be more open and more secure.

        It wasn’t that they were intentionally disabling a feature because of a security vulnerability. It was that they didn’t want to rebuild the old busted thing when a better solution was on the roadmap.

        Although, the planning around this was shit. A three year gap wasn’t great.

        • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          1 year ago

          I’m not sure that passes a sanity check. Third-party builds and nightly (after jumping through some arbitrary hoops) have been able to install extensions from AMO that aren’t officially supported on mobile since fairly shortly after the refactor. While it was possible for extensions to have performance, battery consumption, and compatibility problems specific to Android, that was also true prior to the refactor.

          Maybe there’s something I’m missing - I’d welcome a link to something rich in technical details.

  • TheMadnessKing@lemdro.idEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    Nice to see FF doing the work and opening doors to so many extensions. The few things I have encountered on FF that are still a major PITA for me:

    • Sometimes tabs gets corrupted in sense that they just wont load any data and show data of the tab that was shown previously. navigating to other domain and stuff wont work. (Encountered it in Private mode)
    • Downloads may sometimes stop in middle.
    • I feel the app consumes more battery
    • Kekzkrieger@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      first point drives me mad, happens every now and then, a workaround is to close the tab and undo that, gets it to work again. Happens in normal mode as well

      • TheMadnessKing@lemdro.idEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I remember seeing a GitHub Issue regarding this year or two ago. IDK what happened after that since they moved to BugZilla.

        If you know the BugZilla Link to the issue, then please do share with me, so that I can subscribe to it. I tried looking for it but maybe I wasn’t framing it right? This type of issue should not even exist at this point tbh.

        Found the link: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1812857

  • moitoi@feddit.deEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    When posting this, it’s 416 extensions. The number changes frequently. It was less than 400 at the beginning of the week.

  • kusivittula@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    61·
    1 year ago

    the only thing i really want is some startpage extension so i could have bookmarks there… but i’m afraid those will not work. currently it’s absolutely idiotic, there are a few last websites from history (which you can’t pin anymore) and recent bookmarks, which is useless with sync because everything i bookmark on pc fills up the few recents on mobile. on vivaldi you can decide what is on the speed dial.

    • graymess@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      uBlock Origin is always the obvious answer.
      SponsorBlock for YouTube.
      FastForward to skip the delay on link shorteners.
      Reverse Image Search does what it says.
      Imagus enlarges any image you hover over with your mouse and saves you clicks, but can get in the way sometimes.
      Flag Cookies has a lot of uses, but it’s mostly there to just grab my Google Drive cookies so I can download things a lot more efficiently with jdownloader2.
      Recipe Filter if you’re trying to cook something but don’t want the writer’s autobiography.
      ColorZilla if for whatever reason you want to steal the exact color code of a thing in your browser.

    • baatliwala@lemmy.worldEnglish
      112·
      1 year ago

      So is there a reason you removed that a privacy invasive company is being by a less privacy invasive one so the product can be less privacy invasive? I can’t understand this weird “Oh I’m so smart” gotcha.

      • Vilian@lemmy.caEnglish
        91·
        1 year ago

        exactly if the other company had bought firefox, now i could be concerned

        • aleq@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Right before the Mozilla buyout, Fakespot added a clause to their TOS giving them the right to give user data to Mozilla.

          There’s one possible interpretation of that, which would be my guess, that this was somehow necessary as part of the purchase. Before purchasing a company the company being purchased has to show the buyer what their assets are and give them a fair and accurate representation of what the company is. It’s possible that this clause was necessary in order to enable this.