Firefox For iOS Gets Tracking Protection, Firefox Focus For Android Gets Tabs

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today released Firefox 9.0 for iOS and updated Firefox Focus for Android. The iOS browser is getting tracking protection, improved sync, and iOS 11 compatibility. The Android privacy browser is getting tabs. You can download the former from Apple's App Store and the latter from Google Play. This is the first time Firefox has offered tracking protection on iOS, and Nick Nguyen, vice president of product at Mozilla, notes that it's finally possible "thanks to changes by Apple to enable the option for 3rd party browsers." This essentially means iPhone and iPad users with Firefox and iOS 11 will have automatic ad and content blocking in Private Browsing mode, and the option to turn it on in regular browsing. This is the same feature that's available in Firefox for Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as the same ad blocking technology used in Firefox Focus for Android and iOS.

I give it two months

[DrStrangluv]

I give it two months following the first widespread implementations before there's a open source library the accurately duplicates the mandatory closed-source portion. Maybe three if they did an especially good job on the algorithm.

Re:

[DrStrangluv]

Okay, somehow this comment is appearing on a different post than the one I was reading when it was submitted.

Firefox for Android has tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they have a second browser for Android? Textbook Mozilla fragmentation.

Re:

[tepples]

The providers of browser usage share statistics probably count every iOS browser as Safari, as all* browsers on iOS are skins around the Apple WebKit engine.

* With the exception of Opera Mini, which is less a browser than an X session to a browser running on Opera's server.

Re:

[Chryana]

Does it even matter if Firefox has no users on iOS? I remember a /. discussion on this topic that happened some time ago... The gist of it was that the rendering engine used on iOS could not be changed, making all so called browsers on that platform little more than window dressing used to create brand awareness (except for Safari, of course). Has the situation changed?

Re:

[tlhIngan]

The providers of browser usage share statistics probably count every iOS browser as Safari, as all* browsers on iOS are skins around the Apple WebKit engine.

Only if you're too lazy to actually change it - Web Views could change the User-Agent since iOS 3, and iOS 5 made it even easier. Knowing what is sent, you can differentiate between someone u sing the mobile Safari, an app using Web Views, and Chrome for iOS.

Of course, if's up the maintainer of the website to notice the differences - if you only look fo

Depends on the purpose for gathering UA data

[tepples]

Of course, if's up the maintainer of the website to notice the differences - if you only look for WebKit or KHTML and assume it's Safari, well, you're gonig to count it all as Safari then. But that's a problem with the website gathering the usage stats.

You say "problem"; I say "appropriate detail".

Say someone starts a website about the extent to which web developers can rely on features of the web platform, such as caniuse.com. The operator of this particular website wouldn't consider it "a problem" to conflate all iOS browsers into "Safari" because all browsers using Apple WebKit have the same set of unimplemented features. What's labeled "Safari for iOS" in the charts might be labeled "Safari for iOS and other browsers using the Apple WebKit engine" in

Re:

[Chryana]

What these numbers seem to show is that most people tend to use the default browser that came with their phone. Those IE installs are probably running on Windows phones. I just don't see any browser in that list that seems like it's being installed because of its merits. The situation cannot be compared to the desktop, where Chrome is massively popular in a large extent because of the amazing visibility it gets on the Google homepage and that it can be installed easily even in corporate environments without

Re:

[brianerst]

Mozilla even realized this and so started the Firefox OS project.

The people who ridicule Mozilla's lack of market share on mobile are the same people who complain about Mozilla's "lack of focus" for ever working on Firefox OS.

Mobile is where all the growth is for browsers and Firefox is shut out without an OS it controls. Its market share will continue to drift down as desktops make up a smaller and smaller part of the pie. With no good way of matching the integration of mobile to desktop that Google, Apple

Re:

[Chryana]

Sorry to reply so late in the discussion. I agree that, in retrospect, the Firefox OS makes a lot more sense than what I've given them credit for until now. With that said, I still think that Mozilla is not free of blame. They used to get massive amounts of money from Google (300 million in at least one year, I heard). They've been known to give relatively large compensations to their executives... My opinion is that, being a charity, they did not have the skills required to make something out of the money

I don't see tabs

[TWX]

2.0 Build 12571412 does not make it obvious that it has tab support. Does anyone else see tabs?

Re: Adblocking in Firefox for Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ublock Origin and Ad-Block Plus are both available as add-ons for Firefox for Android. That to me is FFA's killer feature: add-ons. The mobile versions of Chrome and Safari don't have them because FU that's why. They don't even try to compete in that area, as they know most people will just use the browser that came with the phone. Makes one wonder if Chrome would even have add-ons on its desktop browser had it not had to compete with a then-already established Firefox, which did.

I recommend Firefox for And

How?

[Kristofer Vesi]

Wat, it didn't be have tabs? I use chrome beta (pretty good stability, pretty much same features as dev, but still more than normal edition. Canary is just too much unstable for me)