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Android Firefox

Firefox Daylight For Android Arrives With Enhanced Tracking Protection, New UI (venturebeat.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
An anonymous reader writes: After more than a year of development, Mozilla today launched Firefox 79 for Android, branded Firefox Daylight. Like with Firefox 57 Quantum, Firefox Daylight gets its own name as it marks "a new beginning for our Android browser." The new version is "an entirely overhauled, faster, and more convenient product." Firefox Daylight includes Enhanced Tracking Protection on by default, a new user interface, Mozilla's own mobile browser engine GeckoView, and a slew of new features. Mozilla is rolling out the new Firefox for Android globally, starting in Germany, France, and the U.K. today, and North America starting August 27.
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Firefox Daylight For Android Arrives With Enhanced Tracking Protection, New UI More

Firefox Daylight For Android Arrives With Enhanced Tracking Protection, New UI

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  • A less sunny take.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @11:41AM (#60439193) Journal

    There seems to be reports of people less than happy about how the update is working

    https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

    • I wonder if murdering the only Android browser with a big extension library might have something to do with Google being their only lifeline.

    • Re:A less sunny take.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @12:02PM (#60439245)
      Good grief, Mozilla changed the API and messed-up plug-ins again?!?!?!? WTF is the matter with those people? Fro TheRegister article---"In fact, by last count, only nine add-ons are supported so far"

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Add ons were broken on mobile. The UI didn't work properly.

        Firefox is the only browser that properly supports add ons on mobile. Chrome based browsers all have a broken UI, it's luck if an add on happens to be usable.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I'm one of them, the new version is so bad that I reverted back to version 68 and disabled auto-update to ensure that the last good version isn't killed.

      The new version is crashing quite often for me and the UI is horrible. For some obnoxious reasons it opens in new tabs all the time instead of reusing the current tab. The "About:config" is no longer working either.

      Someone must have had an accident when they were thinking.

      For people that thinks that speed of the browser is more important than stability and

      • Someone must have had an accident when they were thinking.

        You're presuming the people working on Firefox even think any more.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Good point. Don't assume the developer suffered massive head trauma while writing this update, since after all the brain damage could have been pre-existing.

      • >"The "About:config" is no longer working either."

        That was *INTENTIONAL* and what I find COMPLETELY unacceptable. Now we won't be able change anything "under the hood". Can't control ALL the autoplay options. Can't set ALL the accessibility options. Can't suppress animated images. Much more. Some of those options are extremely important to some people, me included, (even if they are not in the "majority" of users).

        Look, you won't find a bigger supporter of Firefox on the desktop. Go look at my nume

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          This new browser should have appeared under a different name/channel.

          It's so radically different that it's no longer the same browser.

    • Did they seriously remove the back button? Ouch. Why does it seems like every major release of Firefox becomes some big experiment for their UX team? Add to that breaking the entire plug-in ecosystem, and unstable to boot? What's not to love?

      Mozilla just keeps displaying stunningly bad leadership and questionable technical competence. It's really depressing to me, because they're the only good browser alternative to Chrome, and I absolutely don't want them to fail, yet I see them circling the drain lik

      • Because UX/UI are things that managers (feel) like they have an understanding of, and can therefore direct minions to make this change and that change.

        Meaningful technical change requires technical skill and taking the time to grok the system.

  • Caution (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    it will kill all your extensions, no ublock etc
    set your updates to manual until this CF is resolved.

  • So what is this crap that my phone got weeks ago? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @11:51AM (#60439221)

    All the reviews at Google Play are pretty much condemning: https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]

    I got the upgrade without too much fanfare and it basically ruined everything. The entire point of Firefox on Android are the addons - and most of them are gone. UI changes I could perhaps live with.

    My interim solution was to restore Firefox 68 from Titaniumbackup, but obviously it will not last, some security hole i bound to come up. Any ideas? Does not look like there is anything like Waterfox for Android. I also had to turn off auto-upgrades at play store, since you cannot pin a specific app to a desired version apparently.

    • All the reviews at Google Play are pretty much condemning: https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]

      I got the upgrade without too much fanfare and it basically ruined everything. The entire point of Firefox on Android are the addons - and most of them are gone. UI changes I could perhaps live with.

      My interim solution was to restore Firefox 68 from Titaniumbackup, but obviously it will not last, some security hole i bound to come up. Any ideas? Does not look like there is anything like Waterfox for Android. I also had to turn off auto-upgrades at play store, since you cannot pin a specific app to a desired version apparently.

      I'm currently running "Fennec" from F-Droid. Hopefully it doesn't adopt that new UI anytime soon.

    • Re:So what is this crap that my phone got weeks ag (Score:4, Informative)

      by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @01:59PM (#60439797) Homepage Journal

      Currently on Firefox Beta. Probably will switch to stable once 79 comes out. (US doesn't get it until the 27th I believe)

      The big plus for the new Firefox is battery life. 68 tore through my battery. the latest beta (80) was night and day better on usage. Still doesn't beat Chrome in that regard but I can't add extensions to Chrome so...

      Speaking of extensions, add-ons are sparse, if you are a heavy add on user you will hate this build. In my case however, the only add on I use is ublock origin, which is currently supported and does work a lot better on this build vs 68.

      Also like the address bar on the bottom. takes getting used to but it's nice once you get the hang of it.

      Bookmarks are still crap to access. It drives me nuts that it doesn't stay in the bookmark folder that I previously opened. It also had an issue where after heavy use it appears to not be able to connect to the internet and you would have to force kill it, but I haven't ran into that recently.

      Overall, the new version is good, just don't expect a lot of add-ons to work.

      • Aside from battery life, which I haven't had issues with anyway everything else is just crap. url bar at bottom is bad for me, but that's one of the few things that could be configured.
        I have rarely encountered a more counter-intuitive ui. The start menu in Win 10 is probably at the same level - crap.

  • a new user interface

    I've got a bad feeling about this. Seriously, just stay out of my way, I've got enough issues with the UI presented by various websites. What's the point in moving all the doodads around so we have to work at finding them?

    • What's the point in moving all the doodads around so we have to work at finding them?

      The problem I have with the UI isn't just that they moved everything, but that they've made everything less accessible. You have to click on things a lot more to find the same information.
      It's like they are going backwards.

  • I wanted to use it as an alternative, but no I'll use any other browser. It's hard enough to read small text on screens without the fonts being off, or incorrect, or the scaling being wildly inappropriate for the screen size.

    But Chrome is a bucket of shit without an adblocker, so Samsung Browser it is.

  • The shit UI and the fact most of the add ons no longer work.
  • I just want pull down to refresh. Make it fucking happen Mozilla

  • Mozilla failed to learn from Fx57 debacle again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by billyswong ( 1858858 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @12:56PM (#60439511)

    Mozilla put too much concern to "speed" and "security". No matter what they drank themselves into, their core user base was and is never about speed. It's feature and customizability that won enthusiastic users, then those users spread the software to dummies. Some Firefox users in desktop may chose Firefox for speed in some era, but the Android version, as it was never as fast as Google Chrome in Android anyway, is 90% using it for add-ons, plus maybe 5-10% for not-being-Google.

    Firefox developers often pleaded that their abandonment of XPCOM/XUL old-style extensions is a must, as they have become a serious technical debt. But that doesn't explain why they couldn't introduce a feature-complete WebExtension API. No, don't call the current API feature complete. It's 3 years since "legacy extensions" are banned. But in-browser custom downloader is still nowhere. Custom FTP client is still impossible. In-browser BitTorrent client is gone forever. Even RSS reader, after removal of the built-in support, can only hacked into add-on by auto-redirecting to webpages hosted outside. All lost in the name of "security".

    Now 3 years gone, when we thought the mess is away as we had get used to those loss, Firefox developers went crazier. They now said they deliberately disable extensions they haven't "recommended" in Firefox Android to provide an exceptional, secure mobile experience [mozilla.org]. Wow. So exceptional. Wow. So they are making a walled garden like what Apple did to iPhone and iOS. This is uglier than Apple, as Apple as least can claim they are doing so for profit!

    Sorry, no. This won't bring security. This will only force a significant portion of Firefox Android users to either 1) never update the browser or 2) go back to Chrome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      You can actually improve security without killing existing interfaces. The caller and callback-routines may hook in differently, but the plugins should still work. Just leaving users dead in the water is the worst possible alternative.

    • uh, their core user base was us folks pissed off at Mozilla, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink OS. Firefox was popular because it was lightweight, minimal, and fast.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Performance and especially battery life matter to me.

      If they could fix the rendering to be as good as Chrome I'd switch in a heartbeat.

      • Performance and especially battery life matter to me.

        If they could fix the rendering to be as good as Chrome I'd switch in a heartbeat.

        But you are not yet their users. Chasing potential users without respect to existing users is irresponsible.

        I am totally fine if new versions of Firefox break out-of-maintainence extensions. It is extension developers' responsibility to keep on the support. But deliberately disabling 3rd-party not-yet-"recommended" add-ons is too *Apple*.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I am totally fine if new versions of Firefox break out-of-maintainence extensions.

          That's what they did. Extensions that are maintained and updated with a proper mobile UI work. New ones are added to the list as developers fix them.

          The previous situation was that a lot of add-ons were available but didn't actually work on mobile. You could install them but their UIs were broken.

          I really wonder if all the people moaning about this were actually using Firefox on mobile because the few extensions they claim to be missing now are all ones that didn't work anyway. Is there a particular extensi

          • No, that's not what they did. They are now adding an additional guard to extensions. Before, anyone can host/install their own extension as long as they mark it "Firefox version X compatible". Now they can't. They have to wait for Mozilla's "Recommendation". It is an ideological / political matter, a difference between liberty and tyranny.

            And there are now people complaining the latest Firefox for Android lost access to about:config too. See the trend?

  • Wait, so when I reload Firefox it won't open my last page anymore, but now opens an Opera-esque landing page with, wait, Google as the first icon? How, err, convenient for your paymasters. There literally doesn't seem to be a setting that allows me to avoid this.

  • Honestly, it doesn't need new features as much as bug fixes. My number one problem with Firefox on Android is that it randomly refuses to load pages and I have to manually stop it and restart it, on almost daily basis, for years. Beta, nightly, doesn't matter. They all do it.

  • I'm among the few delighted with the new version. Firefox finally feels fast on my phone and tablets, both purchased this year. Performance improvements are BIG and I'm back in love with Firefox!! Retake the web!!!

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