Firefox's Android Browser Adds 450+ New Extensions (techcrunch.com) 22
Firefox's Android browser now has over 450 new extensions available on Mozilla's Firefox Browser Add-ons page. "These extensions allow users to customize the mobile browser to their needs, whether that involves adding anti-tracking privacy tools, content blockers, productivity tools or other features that introduce new experiences, like streaming music, or those that allow users to personalize the browser's user interface -- like switching all websites to a dark mode or offering a better way to manage tabs," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The lack of extensions has been an issue for Firefox for Android users for years following the 2020 launch of a rebuilt version of the mobile browser that replaced the app's previous codebase with "GeckoView," a new, faster and more customizable browser engine. At the time, the company said it made a decision to limit the supported extensions to only those within the "Recommended Extensions" program -- meaning those that were commonly installed by end users. This choice allowed Mozilla to quickly get the new browser into consumers' hands, but squashed the long tail of extension development -- and opportunity for software developers focused on this market.
While Firefox's nightly builds later enabled more extensions, the publicly available Firefox for Android browser did not have access to these hundreds of extensions, meaning most of Firefox's mainstream users were also without. In August of this year, Mozilla said it had finally completed the infrastructure needed to bring the open extension ecosystem back to Firefox for Android. It then began to test and make hundreds more extensions available to Firefox for Android users, culminating in today's news that there are now 450+ extensions available.
While Firefox's nightly builds later enabled more extensions, the publicly available Firefox for Android browser did not have access to these hundreds of extensions, meaning most of Firefox's mainstream users were also without. In August of this year, Mozilla said it had finally completed the infrastructure needed to bring the open extension ecosystem back to Firefox for Android. It then began to test and make hundreds more extensions available to Firefox for Android users, culminating in today's news that there are now 450+ extensions available.
About time. (Score:2)
This seems fairly arbitrary. What is the reason it took so long? TFA doesn't really explain that. Initially only a handful of extensions were supported (uBlock Origin among them, thankfully),but some essential extensions such as Cookie Autodelete were missing. It seems Mozilla simply flipped a switch three years later to allow other extensions.
Re: (Score:2)
"it had finally completed the infrastructure needed to bring the open extension ecosystem back to Firefox for Android"
Literally stated at the end of the summary.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The article referred to in the article is this:
https://blog.mozilla.org/addon... [mozilla.org]
Where they gave an actual explanation:
"We recently introduced support for multi-process in Firefox for Android Nightly. This means extensions are no longer hosted in the main process as Firefoxâ(TM)s user interface. This is a key consideration since Android is prone to shutting down resource-intensive processes, such as extensions. To mitigate the risk of unexpected extension termination, weâ(TM)ve introduced event page architecture to be non-persistent and more resilient to process termination."
So my understanding and translation- had Mozilla opened the doors to tons of additional extensions before they got multi-process working on Android Firefox, the experience would probably have been bad. And people would blame the browser, not the OS. Considering Android Chrome has ZERO extension support, their decision is understandable. Plus, the most important ones, like uBlock Origin, were there from nearly the start.
What are the most important extensions? (Score:2)
What are the most important extensions? Definitely, uBlock Origin is one of them. Most people don't have the time to consider 450 extensions.
Re: (Score:2)
>"You said, "Plus, the most important ones, were there from nearly the start."
Besides uBlock? I don't know (sorry, I didn't pay attention at the time, since that was all I installed on Android Firefox). When last I checked there aren't many (there were 21) approved addons for Android Firefox. The most popular seven were: uBlock, Privacy Badger, Dark Reader, Ghostery, Bitwarden Password Manager, SponsorBlock, and NoScript Security. I don't know the Android Firefox release dates of each. Maybe I shoul
Re: (Score:3, Flamebait)
What they're doing with extensions appears to be designed like they'd have special objectives to make it as outrageous as possible for the sake of it, trying to push it as much as possible to see what is the point where they get called out.
See the workflow for Expanded extension support in Firefox for Android Nightly https://blog.mozilla.org/addon... [mozilla.org] , it's beyond ridiculous. One would think it's just get the right "unstable" FF version, enable some (possibly hidden) switch and that should be it. No, noooo
Literal insanity for THREE FUCKING YEARS (Score:3, Troll)
gkextensions Aug '20
Irvin: We need to get this out to public as soon as possible to get most user had best experience on performance and latest UX, and fully add-on support is something we can fix later.
That is literally insane.
Nobody cares about the UX/performance if you’re going to destroy custom addons for god knows how long.
Do you guys understand that the only reason many people use Firefox Android is for the add-ons? Chrome Android doesn’t offer addons and all the other browsers are too small for developers to consider.
Fix add-ons ASAP.
"
ASAP was THREE FUCKING YEARS
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/my-addon-stop-it-is-blocked-by-mozilla/65550/16
Re: (Score:2)
Have you actually tried add ons for Firefox on Android? You have been able to manually enable them for years.
I did, and two things stand out:
1. Most add ons don't work properly, or at all, with the mobile UI. They expect desktop, right click, landscape layout etc.
2. Many of them are battery hogs. Built for performance, not efficient, if any thought went into that aspect of them at all.
This is a desperate move by Mozilla. People are going to find that the experience is largely terrible.
Re: (Score:2)
It's bad for me.
It would be horrendous nannyism of the government to ban it.
Then after three years admit they were wrong, but only let some sorts of alcohol be sold.
It's OUR choice.
Fuck Mozilla.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I have used Firefox as my sole browser on Android for all those years (albeit with very few extensions) and found the experience totally acceptable.
Re: (Score:1)
And even where the addon tried to support mobile the experience tends to be meh. Ever tried with ublock Origin on Android to unblock just a single component website?
What I mean is, I'm on www.one.com which loads a ton of other stuff including www.two.com; I want to unblock only two.com but keep ublock active on everything else. Good luck.
I'd like to be able to reorder my bookmarks. (Score:2)
Please sir, just a crumb of bookmark reordering.
Cookies (Score:2)
Switch again? Meh... (Score:2)
They already lied to me once. I switched from Chrome everywhere (phone and computers) to Firefox everywhere, after Google prevented ad-blocking on Android. I even waited patiently for years. It felt stupid that they block all extensions except the magic list that didn't seem to change (grow).
Then gave up when big sites stopped supporting Firefox. Tried out Chrome and Edge again. Didn't love either, but Microsoft's behavior (can't install Windows 11, ads on the start menu!!?!?!, etc) pushed me to Chrome
We Need Scrabook Back Just Like it Was (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Video Pause on Background = Non-Feature (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
That's easily fixable by blocking the visibility API [mozilla.org] (on select websites).
There already are extensions which do just that. One of them was already on the list of "accepted" extensions even before (together with ublock origin, etc).