Mozilla Launches GeckoView-Powered Firefox Preview For Android (venturebeat.com) 62
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today announced Firefox Preview, a pilot of its new Android browser. Firefox Preview, which is powered by Mozilla's own GeckoView engine, will ultimately replace the current Firefox for Android mobile app "this fall." At the same time, Mozilla has put Firefox Focus for Android development on hold. If you're a developer or just an early adopter, you can download Firefox Preview from Google Play.
On desktop, Firefox is the second most popular browser after Chrome. Firefox holds about 10% desktop market share, according to Net Applications. On mobile, however, Firefox has less than 0.5% share. Despite regular releases alongside the desktop browser over the years, Firefox's mobile share has not improved.
On desktop, Firefox is the second most popular browser after Chrome. Firefox holds about 10% desktop market share, according to Net Applications. On mobile, however, Firefox has less than 0.5% share. Despite regular releases alongside the desktop browser over the years, Firefox's mobile share has not improved.
Amazed more people don't use Firefox on mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm as annoyed as the next person about the recent changes they made to extensions, however an upside to it is that a tremendous number of Firefox addons currently work well or perfectly on their mobile browser. As far as I know this makes firefox mobile by far the most extensible mobile browser.
Some addons have better configuration pages on mobile than others, but all the ones I actually want at least perform their stated function. They should really work on publicizing that, it's a real killer feature. I won't use this new Firefox mobile if it loses this functionality.
Firefox's privacy policy scares me (Score:2, Informative)
The thing that worries me about Firefox is its privacy policy.
Please read it for yourself. [mozilla.org] Don't take my word for it.
It contains terms like "telemetry", "Google", "SalesForce", and "share", which aren't what I want to see in a privacy policy.
Firefox can collect and send out far more user data than I would have expected prior to reading its privacy policy.
I think a lot of other users are naive like I was, thinking that Firefox respects user privacy, when I now think it does not after reading its privacy poli
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Facebook are more likely to buy Brave.
Hijack regular ads into Facebook ones and instead of earn Bravecoin (or whatever Brendan calls his tokens), you get to mine Libra.
Re:Firefox's privacy policy scares me (Score:4, Informative)
If you read closely the privacy policy, you find that most of it is related to install time and only to mobile (ie: they want to understand why you install it and what campaign worked, salesforce and IIRC, 2 other external services are just for that), cloud sync and email notification if you accept then, geoip service access (that may be used to track you, but you can also disable it), safebrowsing check to the google service (so the reference to the google terms... and you can also disable it), anonymized metrics ( generic hardware specs and resolution, how many tabs, how many startups, crashes, http1.1 vs http2, tls version, etc plus what GUI features you use, to better understand what can change or should change)
if you read the terms and understand where they are being applied, they are very clean and one of the best examples of detailed info on everything they can even remotely use to track you, even if anonymized. Most of other web privacy policies are way too generic, obscure and fail to give you any reason on why they do gather that info.
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If you read closely the privacy policy, you find that most of it is related to install time and only to mobile (ie: they want to understand why you install it and what campaign worked, salesforce and IIRC, 2 other external services are just for that), cloud sync and email notification if you accept then, geoip service access (that may be used to track you, but you can also disable it),
As someone who has done extensive profiling of all major browsers I disagree.
Geo location is a good example. The location management options operate independently of geoip service and can only be disabled from about:config. You can go into settings turn off all of the location bits and yet Firefox itself still calls out to geoip lookup URLs within its configuration registry upon request.
safebrowsing check to the google service (so the reference to the google terms... and you can also disable it), anonymized metrics ( generic hardware specs and resolution, how many tabs, how many startups, crashes, http1.1 vs http2, tls version, etc plus what GUI features you use, to better understand what can change or should change)
It's the sheer volume of levers and knobs that lead to deaths by a thousand cuts.
Why can't there simply be a master swit
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It contains terms like "telemetry", "Google", "SalesForce", and "share", which aren't what I want to see in a privacy policy.
Firefox can collect and send out far more user data than I would have expected prior to reading its privacy policy.
I think a lot of other users are naive like I was, thinking that Firefox respects user privacy, when I now think it does not after reading its privacy policy.
Yes exactly. The sheer number of excuses embedded into Firefox is ridiculous as are the insanely long configuration guides involving poking around in about:config end users must manually follow to achieve something that should be default or at the very least toggled with simple user friendly master switch.
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Re:Amazed more people don't use Firefox on mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reasons other browsers like Chrome and Edge appear to launch faster is because they stay resident in the background, using RAM and CPU even when not active. At least Firefox properly stops running when you close it.
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>"The only reasons other browsers like Chrome [...on Android...] appear to launch faster is because they stay resident in the background, using RAM and CPU even when not active. "
+1
Exactly. Chrome has a leg-up on anything else in Android because the rendering engine is *always* loaded. Once up, I don't typically notice much difference in speed between Chrome and Firefox, unless the phone is low on RAM and ends up swapping out Firefox when I need it later... but it won't do that with Chrome or its libra
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Firefox starts pretty much instantaneously on my Android phone. And it's far from top-of-the-line by the standards of today.
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There must be some kind of significant difference between your configuration and mine. I open news sites regularly, and Firefox opens the current content just fine: I don't have to refresh them.
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Being able to install an add-on to block ads saves a bunch of bandwidth and CPU. And it's not spying on your usage. And Firefox really is a nice mobile browser besides all that.
In my experience, Firefox mobile is much slower than Chrome mobile even with ads. Being able to block ads doesn't improve performance enough to make up for its inherent slowness.
That said, I still use Firefox mobile, because the web is unusable without ad blocking.
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In my experience, Chrome mobile is much slower than Firefox mobile even with ads. Being able to block ads doe improve performance enough to make up for its inherent slowness.
That said, I still use Chrome mobile, because the web is unusable with ad blocking.
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This article is about the new GeckoView-based Firefox, which is supposed to be faster. You should try it.
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Firefox isn't on F-Droid.
"On desktop, Firefox is the second most popular b" (Score:1)
"On desktop, Firefox is the second most popular browser after Chrome."
Correction: it is the *only other* browser.
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I use Firefox as the main browser both on my desktop and on my phone.
I haven't seen a need for any other browser.
Trying it now. (Score:2)
Handles Slashdot better than Samsung Internet or other AOSP browsers, and seems lighter than Chrome.
Pinch and zoom (Score:1)
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Firefox has supported pinch and zoom on Android since release. It also supports Sync, and all the add-ons I use.
Re: Pinch and zoom (Score:1)
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Someone on another forum suggested the following addon
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
NB: I am not an opera user, just passing on the info which might not or might be helpful!
better than chrome (Score:1)
Once chrome started forcing AMP pages on me, I switched right over to Firefox. Works great.
Why do you use Chrome for Android? (Score:4, Interesting)
On Android I use Firefox because it's so much better than anything else I've tried, though I've only tried a handful. Chrome was one of them, though, and it lost spectacularly because it doesn't work with things like uBlock and PrivacyBadger, whereas Firefox does. (If anything, this "Firefox Preview" announcement worries me since it sounds like they might be killing off Firefox's main advantages. Not sure.)
There are other Android browsers than these two, but the numbers really do appear to say that people run Chrome, which I find to be really weird. If you're one of those people who runs Chrome on Android: why? Do you just not care about ad-blocking, or have you figured out a way to make Chrome not suck, or what?
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That is difficult to believe but I don't have any other explanation. I thought mobile users were accustomed installing apps all the time (and casually granting all permissions, etc, leading to Android becoming the hottest malware scene since Windows). Not the case?
I see some other threads where people talk about Firefox having some kind of slowness issue, but my phone is pretty low end (Galaxy J7) and Fi
It's quite nice (Score:3)
I gave it a quick spin (I currently use Firefox Beta on Android.) Firefox Preview is very fast and minimalistic. However, it doesn't yet support add-ons. I'll wait until it does and then switch; I have to have Ghostery.
Solid, my new default browser (Score:1)
I'm happy with the load times, smooth rendering, new bottom-bar UI, and its focus on user privacy and prevention of tracking.