This is good. Now, all extensions marked by the developer as being compatible with Android are shown on AMO. (If you toggle to Desktop mode, you can actually install any other extension on AMO, too.)
The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. FF for Android supported add-ons from the beginning. That's the best thing about Firefox for Android! They decided to rewrite the UI in 2020, and there were fair reasons to do that. Obviously this required some reimplementation time for extension support.
But they then launched the rewrite of FF for Android with extension support... but hidden. Only a small set of recommended extensions were enabled, and a few were drip-fed over time (that is, added to the list). Thankfully, this included the single most important extension, uBlock Origin, from the very beginning. (The lack of uBO why Chrome for Android is borderline unusable for me!)
But from almost the very beginning, we've also had the ability to activate custom extension collections in Nightly (and in Fennec F-Droid, which is a rebuild of stable Firefox). The vast majority of extensions worked fine for... well, years now.
So why in the world was this delayed the whole time?
I managed the team that did a lot of the integration of web extension support in Fenix, the new Firefox for Android. We were all on the brink of burnout. There was too much work. Unrealistic deadlines. And high expectations. So we decided to only support a limited set of APIs tuned for the most popular web extension. Which were basically all ad blockers if I remember correctly.
Proud of the team to have finally gotten to this point. Miss you all.
> The baffling thing is why this took so damn long.
I'm surprised it's baffling in a community of developers and other IT professionals.
It's not baffling to me that two significantly (wholly?) different applications on different platforms and form factors would require quite a bit of work to both be generally compatible with the same third-party software via the same API - and all while maintaining the same compatibility with another application, made by another company, completely outside Mozilla's control.
And it needs to work reliably enough to release to a world of developers - of every skill level, motivation, writing every kind of software (within the domain of browser add-ons) - with confidence that it will work for them and users.
And you need a way to maintain all that over the long term.
For those who are wondering, I _think_ AMO is supposed to mean "addons.mozilla.org" although neither the author of the article nor this comment define the acronym.
AFAIK it was because firefox for android was on a slightly different codebase than desktop firefox, and thus had supported a different set of webextension apis. The user contexts api (container tabs) was missing entirely, for instance.
Mozilla isn’t an independent entity and hasn’t been for some time now. Sorry, but if one company is responsible for 87% of your revenue and your CEO receives a $7 million salary, then they are a puppet and therefore so is the entity as a whole.
I won’t be surprised if at some point in the future we learn that Google had a discreet veto over any aspect of Mozilla’s software roadmap, as a condition of the money faucet continuing to flow.
Google is known to make underhanded deals (just Google “Epic v Google” for details); they provide the funding that allows Mozilla to exist; and a Firefox with a capable extension model is indeed a serious threat to Chrome’s marketability and Google’s strategic interests.
Given all that, it’s difficult to believe that a key differentiating feature was legitimately starved of resources for a decade.
1. they wanted an Apple-level of verified review process for AMO, because the Chrome store and even Android app store have problems with malicious content.
2. This costs money.
3. They didn't want to open a free for all because they didn't know exactly how to go about solving 2. yet, and if they introduced some payment system then it would be easier to do from a clean slate, without an AMO full of existing extensions to somehow grandfather through.
As said before, this is fully unfounded and probably unfair speculation. I like it more than the 'google conspiracy against adblockers' though because Mozilla's motivations in this case are quite reasonable and can be taken in good faith. Keeping credit card skimmers out of AMO at the cost of restricting access to 'Firefox Pro'/'AMO Pro'/author-pays would honestly be quite a good thing for Mozilla to consider imo.
In any case it's great to see them allowing things now!
There are other mobile browsers which incorporate adblocking directly (though not extensions generally).
The Einkbro browser, optimised for e-ink devices (as the name suggests) is one. I believe Brave does as well.
As much as I'm a fan of Firefox (using it now on desktop), on my mobile e-ink device, Einkbro's optimisations make for a vastly superior browsing experience.
Excellent, finally in stable. Have been using Nightly and more recently Mull specifically for extensions like 'I still don't care about cookies', 'ublock origin' and 'dark reader' which make the web on mobile at all practical.
Firefox browser share is like 2-3%. Please consider using it, the internet will be a lot shittier without Firefox as an option, and it is the best option for privacy and ad-blocking.
This was a clincher for me that made me switch from Chrome/Chromium on my Pixel. Previously, I was using Kiwi Browser because it supported Chrome extensions however while it works it has a lot of annoying quirks. I just couldn't stomach the experience of browsing the web without an ad blocker though. Now Firefox and UBlock work on Android, Firefox has quickly become my preferred browser. Still using Chrome on desktop though for now.. maybe that'll change too!
Give it a shot! It can import your bookmarks, passwords, etc. from Chrome, and it's great to be able to quickly send a tab from desktop to mobile, or vice versa.
Thanks to Firefox extensions I get an automatic dark mode on HN, and almost any other website, as soon as my device is switched to dark mode. Normally this would have to be supported explicitly in the website CSS.
Great! Now I can finally install an extension to autodelete cookies for certain domains. This feature is available on stock Firefox Desktop but not Mobile.
One of the newly-available extensions is mine for Hacker News [0] - it highlights new comments when you revisit an item and somewhat improves some of the UX on mobile:
Amusingly I returned to this comments section and was scrolling down looking at the time stamps for new comments and this was the first new comment I hit. Thanks. It's clearly going to come in handy.
This is great news. On GrapheneOS, every time I use the stock browser without the benefit of my uBlock Origin setup, I feel a bit creeped-out and violated.
Best news in the mobile browsers' space since Firefox supported extensions!
If Firefox goes back to being THE browser of choice for tech savvy people, I'll stop thinking I made a bad choice supporting it everyday since it came out.
You could get extensions working on FF for Android, for some time now, by setting a custom collection ID, allowed in the Beta version.
The problem is that many extensions have been incompatible with Android. And of those compatible, many have poor UX. For example, LeechBlock has been compatible and listed as available for some time, but its settings page isn't mobile-friendly. And LeechBlock can't restore settings from “sync storage”, you have to load them from a local file (on mobile, having local files is a challenge in itself). Many people may have a bad experience.
On the other hand, extensions are the primary reason to use Firefox on Android. Therefore, I'm glad about this news.
This would enable proper isolation between browsing contexts, and therefore make progressive web apps truly usable and a good alternative to native apps.
Currently PWAs leak cookies to the browser, therefore you cannot login on the PWA while browsing "anonymously" in the browser.
According to their github repo, it was last rebased with chromium version 105.0.5195.24, which was from August 2022. Using a 15 month old browser seems hilariously insecure.
While I respect Kiwi for implementing extension support, they've often fell far behind the upstream Chromium codebase and they're significantly smaller than even Firefox for Android. So I don't think they'd really be a "major" Android browser.
Then again, Firefox could easily be said to not be a major Android browser either!
I was about to be like, "Yah well is Kiwi a 'major' browser?" Then I looked at android browser share[1] and realized that Firefox certainly isn't either.
I was a longtime Firefox on Android user until the extension situation got increasingly fragile and complicated. I've been very happy since switching to Kiwi. It's faster, more frequently updated, and supports all the extensions I want. Highly recommended.
Can anyone recommend an extension that can be used to limit the total number of tabs in Firefox for Android? "Limit Tabs"[0] works great on the desktop and I was hoping it would become available on mobile now, but sadly it didn't.
Last time I check Firefox on Mobile still break sites' layout and not render video player properly (cannot touch seek and play/pause button, it's under view window) on my Samsung Note 10. I love Firefox but it needs to be at least usable.
If it wasn't for extensions collections that allowed all extensions alll along, I would have quit Firefox a long time ago.... About time they get their head out of their asses
This is progress, but Mozilla needs to do more. Firefox for Android still lacks the ability to sideload add-ons, a feature that works on the desktop version of Firefox. This means Android users aren't able to install extensions outside addons.mozilla.org (AMO) unless they switch to a Firefox alternative that supports it, such as Iceraven[1] or SmartCookieWeb-Preview.[2]
For me, the most important add-on that has been removed from AMO is Bypass Paywalls Clean, which is the easiest way to bypass paywalls on popular news sites. In April of this year, a French website filed a DMCA copyright takedown notice, causing Mozilla to remove the extension from AMO.[3] The add-on developer (magnolia1234) did not want to challenge the DMCA notice, probably because it would require them to break anonymity and be subject to legal liability.[4]
Fortunately, in September, another developer (dbmiller) was willing to reupload the add-on to AMO as "Bypass Paywalls Clean (D)" with no changes.[5] The hope is that dbmiller will keep this add-on up to date with the source and challenge any DMCA notices filed against this new upload.
However, the fact remains that Bypass Paywalls Clean was unavailable on Firefox for Android for 5 months because the browser did not allow sideloading. In the announcement, Mozilla says their mission is to maintain "an open and accessible internet for all" and that extensions are meant to help users obtain "more personal agency out of their online experience". To achieve this mission and better distinguish Firefox from browsers that gate add-ons through app stores (Safari on iOS), Mozilla should allow users to enable sideloading on Firefox for Android as an option.
AFAIK, it was available in nightly. You could curate your own add on list which you could then install on Firefox for Android Nightly, and I'm fairly certain you can still do that if you want something that isn't in this new, expanded list.
I've been daily driving FF Android for a few years now and I've had the opposite experience: the vast majority of pages work and render fine (including HN) and it's an extremely rare occasion that I switch to Chrome to use a website. Even then, I often find that Chrome isn't any better and the underlying issue was the website's mobile handling in general (e.g. touch events working differently than mouse events, or just a completely broken mobile-only component swaps)
We've had lots of news about this coming for months, but with Mozilla's quite low market share, and the share of those users that use extensions - who's really caring about this other than some power users?
People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format)
Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs
FFS, something good happened. No other browser has this. Yet people will find a way to lessen it. For what? What benefit?
Well, you might be right that it is power users, but I know that extensions and greater extension freedom are one of the things that is the draw that keeps the remaining Mozilla Firefox users (like me) loyal. Basically I'm arguing power users are a disproportionate percentage of the remaining Mozilla Firefox user base, which is why things like supporting tracking protection and privacy measures also makes sense for them to focus on, even if the majority of people online might not care about this.
So, I'm glad they are expanding the extensions available. I just hope that this isn't tied to creating an account still.
[EDIT] I was overjoyed to see that I was able to add an extension without creating an account. Yay!
Techies and power users often create network effects, in how they contribute to and promote what they use.
This is one of the reasons it's so troubling when some techies latch onto some very closed platform (sometimes by a known-underhanded company) and start making it more attractive to others, by making open source software specific to it, making tutorials on hot employability topics that implicitly use the platform, etc. When open platforms exist, and could also benefit from this contribution and promotion.
At first it was "Jeebus, I wonder what's going on with that one person, who normally uses open source, stabbing themself in the back like that." Then it became "Jeebus, are we losing open platform ground with the majority of an entire generation of techies, after we'd finally won." (I have good guesses about why, and I also know at least a couple early maneuvers that I can't talk about, but it's still dismaying how vapid the collective behavior can be.)
Power users matter a lot for web browsers, because web developers are power users of web browsers.
Firefox's loss of market share in general is a direct consequence of its loss in market share among web developers, because web developers stopped testing their websites in Firefox.
Any time Firefox does something good for power users, it's a good thing for the whole web ecosystem.
I didn't say it was sh*t. I'm saying it's not newsworthy.
Clap for the devs. And install all the extensions. But we don't need a hundred posts about it. This isn't the big story Firefox marketing might think it is.
mod50ack|2 years ago
The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. FF for Android supported add-ons from the beginning. That's the best thing about Firefox for Android! They decided to rewrite the UI in 2020, and there were fair reasons to do that. Obviously this required some reimplementation time for extension support.
But they then launched the rewrite of FF for Android with extension support... but hidden. Only a small set of recommended extensions were enabled, and a few were drip-fed over time (that is, added to the list). Thankfully, this included the single most important extension, uBlock Origin, from the very beginning. (The lack of uBO why Chrome for Android is borderline unusable for me!)
But from almost the very beginning, we've also had the ability to activate custom extension collections in Nightly (and in Fennec F-Droid, which is a rebuild of stable Firefox). The vast majority of extensions worked fine for... well, years now.
So why in the world was this delayed the whole time?
st3fan|2 years ago
Proud of the team to have finally gotten to this point. Miss you all.
wolverine876|2 years ago
I'm surprised it's baffling in a community of developers and other IT professionals.
It's not baffling to me that two significantly (wholly?) different applications on different platforms and form factors would require quite a bit of work to both be generally compatible with the same third-party software via the same API - and all while maintaining the same compatibility with another application, made by another company, completely outside Mozilla's control.
And it needs to work reliably enough to release to a world of developers - of every skill level, motivation, writing every kind of software (within the domain of browser add-ons) - with confidence that it will work for them and users.
And you need a way to maintain all that over the long term.
I'm impressed Mozilla!
mvdtnz|2 years ago
gruez|2 years ago
antman|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
SheinhardtWigCo|2 years ago
I won’t be surprised if at some point in the future we learn that Google had a discreet veto over any aspect of Mozilla’s software roadmap, as a condition of the money faucet continuing to flow.
Google is known to make underhanded deals (just Google “Epic v Google” for details); they provide the funding that allows Mozilla to exist; and a Firefox with a capable extension model is indeed a serious threat to Chrome’s marketability and Google’s strategic interests.
Given all that, it’s difficult to believe that a key differentiating feature was legitimately starved of resources for a decade.
sedatk|2 years ago
[deleted]
akdor1154|2 years ago
1. they wanted an Apple-level of verified review process for AMO, because the Chrome store and even Android app store have problems with malicious content.
2. This costs money.
3. They didn't want to open a free for all because they didn't know exactly how to go about solving 2. yet, and if they introduced some payment system then it would be easier to do from a clean slate, without an AMO full of existing extensions to somehow grandfather through.
As said before, this is fully unfounded and probably unfair speculation. I like it more than the 'google conspiracy against adblockers' though because Mozilla's motivations in this case are quite reasonable and can be taken in good faith. Keeping credit card skimmers out of AMO at the cost of restricting access to 'Firefox Pro'/'AMO Pro'/author-pays would honestly be quite a good thing for Mozilla to consider imo.
In any case it's great to see them allowing things now!
Night_Thastus|2 years ago
benkaiser|2 years ago
I wish I could switch to FF, but I still need PWA support + rich media notifications for a web based music player I wrote.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowse...
dredmorbius|2 years ago
The Einkbro browser, optimised for e-ink devices (as the name suggests) is one. I believe Brave does as well.
As much as I'm a fan of Firefox (using it now on desktop), on my mobile e-ink device, Einkbro's optimisations make for a vastly superior browsing experience.
mike31fr|2 years ago
replete|2 years ago
Firefox browser share is like 2-3%. Please consider using it, the internet will be a lot shittier without Firefox as an option, and it is the best option for privacy and ad-blocking.
aqfamnzc|2 years ago
kungfufrog|2 years ago
Vinnl|2 years ago
cubefox|2 years ago
pentagrama|2 years ago
ixmerof|2 years ago
insin|2 years ago
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hn-comments-owl/
eco|2 years ago
neilv|2 years ago
yjftsjthsd-h|2 years ago
briffle|2 years ago
ivanjermakov|2 years ago
gloryjulio|2 years ago
But EU is pushing for sideloading
worik|2 years ago
peoplefromibiza|2 years ago
If Firefox goes back to being THE browser of choice for tech savvy people, I'll stop thinking I made a bad choice supporting it everyday since it came out.
Sometimes a joy.
Zuiii|2 years ago
stavros|2 years ago
bad_user|2 years ago
The problem is that many extensions have been incompatible with Android. And of those compatible, many have poor UX. For example, LeechBlock has been compatible and listed as available for some time, but its settings page isn't mobile-friendly. And LeechBlock can't restore settings from “sync storage”, you have to load them from a local file (on mobile, having local files is a challenge in itself). Many people may have a bad experience.
On the other hand, extensions are the primary reason to use Firefox on Android. Therefore, I'm glad about this news.
summm|2 years ago
This would enable proper isolation between browsing contexts, and therefore make progressive web apps truly usable and a good alternative to native apps. Currently PWAs leak cookies to the browser, therefore you cannot login on the PWA while browsing "anonymously" in the browser.
autoexec|2 years ago
Ridj48dhsnsh|2 years ago
yoavm|2 years ago
firebot|2 years ago
Uhm, Kiwi browser is Chrome-based and supports Chrome-extensions on Android and has for years. It's pretty great.
gruez|2 years ago
https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next
mod50ack|2 years ago
Then again, Firefox could easily be said to not be a major Android browser either!
troyvit|2 years ago
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
xnx|2 years ago
codethief|2 years ago
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rudolf-fernan...
vietvu|2 years ago
chupapimunyenyo|2 years ago
leaf-node|2 years ago
kilolima|2 years ago
Helmut10001|2 years ago
pshirshov|2 years ago
pdn1|2 years ago
commoner|2 years ago
For me, the most important add-on that has been removed from AMO is Bypass Paywalls Clean, which is the easiest way to bypass paywalls on popular news sites. In April of this year, a French website filed a DMCA copyright takedown notice, causing Mozilla to remove the extension from AMO.[3] The add-on developer (magnolia1234) did not want to challenge the DMCA notice, probably because it would require them to break anonymity and be subject to legal liability.[4]
Fortunately, in September, another developer (dbmiller) was willing to reupload the add-on to AMO as "Bypass Paywalls Clean (D)" with no changes.[5] The hope is that dbmiller will keep this add-on up to date with the source and challenge any DMCA notices filed against this new upload.
However, the fact remains that Bypass Paywalls Clean was unavailable on Firefox for Android for 5 months because the browser did not allow sideloading. In the announcement, Mozilla says their mission is to maintain "an open and accessible internet for all" and that extensions are meant to help users obtain "more personal agency out of their online experience". To achieve this mission and better distinguish Firefox from browsers that gate add-ons through app stores (Safari on iOS), Mozilla should allow users to enable sideloading on Firefox for Android as an option.
[1] Iceraven: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
[2] SmartCookieWeb-Preview: https://github.com/CookieJarApps/SmartCookieWeb-preview
[3] https://www.ghacks.net/2023/04/20/mozilla-removes-bypass-pay...
[4] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
[5] Bypass Paywalls Clean (D): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
account42|2 years ago
DistractionRect|2 years ago
jerrygoyal|2 years ago
mortos|2 years ago
inquirerGeneral|2 years ago
[deleted]
Ikatza|2 years ago
scottbez1|2 years ago
I've been daily driving FF Android for a few years now and I've had the opposite experience: the vast majority of pages work and render fine (including HN) and it's an extremely rare occasion that I switch to Chrome to use a website. Even then, I often find that Chrome isn't any better and the underlying issue was the website's mobile handling in general (e.g. touch events working differently than mouse events, or just a completely broken mobile-only component swaps)
emestifs|2 years ago
You seen this pattern again and again in Firefox news threads.
berkes|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Aardwolf|2 years ago
novemp|2 years ago
oblio|2 years ago
What are you going on about?
HN is a basic site, Lynx on MS DOS could render it.
ChrisArchitect|2 years ago
emestifs|2 years ago
People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format)
Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs
FFS, something good happened. No other browser has this. Yet people will find a way to lessen it. For what? What benefit?
capitainenemo|2 years ago
So, I'm glad they are expanding the extensions available. I just hope that this isn't tied to creating an account still. [EDIT] I was overjoyed to see that I was able to add an extension without creating an account. Yay!
neilv|2 years ago
This is one of the reasons it's so troubling when some techies latch onto some very closed platform (sometimes by a known-underhanded company) and start making it more attractive to others, by making open source software specific to it, making tutorials on hot employability topics that implicitly use the platform, etc. When open platforms exist, and could also benefit from this contribution and promotion.
At first it was "Jeebus, I wonder what's going on with that one person, who normally uses open source, stabbing themself in the back like that." Then it became "Jeebus, are we losing open platform ground with the majority of an entire generation of techies, after we'd finally won." (I have good guesses about why, and I also know at least a couple early maneuvers that I can't talk about, but it's still dismaying how vapid the collective behavior can be.)
nix0n|2 years ago
Firefox's loss of market share in general is a direct consequence of its loss in market share among web developers, because web developers stopped testing their websites in Firefox.
Any time Firefox does something good for power users, it's a good thing for the whole web ecosystem.
squidbeak|2 years ago
smilliken|2 years ago
yjftsjthsd-h|2 years ago
LegitShady|2 years ago
ChrisArchitect|2 years ago
I didn't say it was sh*t. I'm saying it's not newsworthy.
Clap for the devs. And install all the extensions. But we don't need a hundred posts about it. This isn't the big story Firefox marketing might think it is.