[HN Gopher] Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for An...
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android
Author : rebelwebmaster
Score : 283 points
Date : 2023-12-14 17:58 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| briffle wrote:
| I wish they would push hard for proper support in IOS for running
| extensions (or their own engine, etc)
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I think it's still against Apple's TOS, stating that every web
| browser must be based on WebKit.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Indeed. Mozilla can complain about it (and they have) but
| blaming them for the situation serves little purpose. It's
| entirely in Apple's court.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are probably laws in some country they can use to
| fight this, but that is a hard legal battle.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| The US may be one of those countries depending on the
| result of the current Epic vs. Apple & Google
| cases.[0][1]
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/23994174/epic-google-trial-
| jury-ver...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38607424
| temp0826 wrote:
| Why can Kagi's Orion browser support extensions on iOS? I
| recently switched from Firefox because lack of uBO caused
| huge beef for me and have zero regrets. I'm not paying for
| Kagi's search service (happy enough with DDG for the majority
| of my searches), but I can really appreciate their business
| model and mission (they seem genuine afaict).
| mod50ack wrote:
| Orion is built on webkit, both on desktop and mobile. It's
| possible to build WebExt support into a WebKit browser, as
| they've done.
|
| While I definitely prefer FF and Android, I can support the
| notion of Mozilla integrating extension support into WebKit
| on their iOS version of FF. But it would take a lot of
| effort to do that, and Firefox for iOS is ultimately just
| totally separate from any other Firefox (whereas Android
| and Desktop Firefox share the same innards).
| tiltowait wrote:
| Orion on desktop supports Firefox extensions, so is
| integration possible? (Not all are compatible.)
| lxgr wrote:
| Browsers on macOS can use custom rendering engines. On
| iOS, they have to all use Apple's provided version of it
| (which does not support WebExtensions by itself), so the
| two are not comparable at all.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Interesting, I always thought the holdup was that third
| party things used in-app were expressly forbidden because
| they're not vetted by the app store onboarding process
| (in addition to the requirement of using webkit). Didn't
| occur to me that webkit could be extended to support
| webext either.
| wharvle wrote:
| There's _long_ been a grey area for downloading new
| program logic as e.g. Javascript--the distinction between
| content and program can be rather fuzzy--and IIRC they
| made an explicit exception years back for certain
| categories.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yeah, Apple likes to say that (and reject apps for
| violating that rule!), but then there's also things like
| Linux x86 userspace emulators in the app store that can
| run unmodified ELF binaries downloaded via curl from any
| random website...
|
| At this point it's just a polite fiction, maintained
| jointly by Apple and app developers, that allows Apple to
| maintain a somewhat straight face when saying things like
| "you can't download third-party code at all" or "all code
| extending app functionality must be downloaded through
| our designated mechanism".
|
| iSH is one such app, this blog post is very interesting:
| https://ish.app/blog/default-repository-update
|
| Given the current regulatory scrutiny of their app store,
| I believe they just don't want to open yet another can of
| worms by rejecting "browsers" (which are really WebKit
| wrappers) for injecting third-party JavaScript into all
| web pages displayed within them, even though by their own
| rules, they arguably totally should.
| bad_user wrote:
| Not sure what "userspace emulators" you're speaking of,
| but the apps I tried, for running a programming language
| (for education purposes) are rubbish due to limitations
| (you can only interpret, you can't compile). And the
| restrictions are mostly in place; otherwise, for example,
| there would be apps that allowed you to download
| torrents, or do other forbidden activities.
|
| Even if what you're saying is true, businesses that can't
| afford a ban from the App Store, can't afford to bend the
| rules. If Mozilla developed Firefox for iOS, with its
| engine, and Apple banned it from the App Store, the
| consequence would be millions of dollars going down the
| drain. And Mozilla would let their current users down,
| too, since the current Firefox for iOS is somewhat
| useful.
| lxgr wrote:
| I've linked one (iSH) in my comment. It really does run
| most completely unmodified x86 binaries for Linux,
| including CPython and Java.
|
| aShell [1] is very similar. It takes another approach -
| it compiles POSIX C source code to WASM and runs that
| using iOS's JIT-enabled web engine, which gives it much
| better performance than x86 software emulation. There's
| another one that uses lldb to interpret LLVM IR. In other
| words, if Apple doesn't want that type of app, they sure
| have been explicitly enabling the use case for a long
| time now.
|
| > And the restrictions are mostly in place; otherwise,
| for example, there would be apps that allowed you to
| download torrents, or do other forbidden activities.
|
| App store reviews don't exist to "prevent forbidden
| activities" in the legal sense; they are there to
| maintain their walled garden ecosystem financially, as
| well as protect their platform and products from
| reputational or legal harm.
|
| The issue of legality and passing the App Store review
| process are largely orthogonal: Just like you can already
| do plenty of illegal things using stock iOS (e.g. writing
| threatening emails, downloading copyrighted material
| using WebTorrent etc.), you can do infinitely many legal
| things using Turing-complete computing as enabled by
| first and third party apps on iOS.
|
| Now if you start offering an app that features a big
| button labeled "click here to dynamically load software
| facilitating copyright infringement", and Apple
| distributes it in their App Store after having reviewed
| it, that could get them into a tricky situation; offering
| a full-featured browser or OS emulator very likely
| doesn't, given that Google has been allowing these types
| of apps in their Play Store for more than a decade now.
|
| [1] https://holzschu.github.io/a-Shell_iOS/
| jwells89 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see how Mozilla approaches
| implementing Gecko on iOS, with how the engine stripped
| support for embedding years ago (prior to which they
| could've used an approach similar to that seen in
| Camino[0]).
|
| I guess they could take the approach of drawing the whole
| screen themselves but that's going to make Gecko-based
| Firefox for iOS feel noticeably worse than the current
| WebKit/UIKit version in terms of responsiveness and such
| and might require some legwork to properly support VRR on
| 120hz iPhones (which is critical for battery life on
| those models).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser)
| saagarjha wrote:
| This would currently be against the App Store guidelines,
| which do not permit the use of a third party browser
| engine. Also, Firefox has ProMotion support.
| SSLy wrote:
| Luckily that provision is going to be illegal under DMA
| within half a year.
| lxgr wrote:
| WebExtensions are (or at least can be) ultimately just a
| weird type of HTML+JS app, as far as I understand, so I
| suspect it's possible to run that in one WebView context on
| iOS and bridge the required APIs between the extension and
| browser context using content scripts.
| saagarjha wrote:
| That is indeed what Orion does, to the extent that this
| is possible.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| That's incredible. Just write anti-competitive behavior
| directly into the contract. No one will care.
| nikeee wrote:
| Actually, it has been mandated by the EU (and other
| regulators) that they have to allow other browser engines
| and AFAIK there are already teams at Mozilla/Google that
| are porting their respective engine to iOS.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/
| gloryjulio wrote:
| They can't push for that. Even chrome didn't get the engine
| deal.
|
| But EU is pushing for sideloading
| firebot wrote:
| > where we're the only major Android browser to support an open
| extension ecosystem
|
| Uhm, Kiwi browser is Chrome-based and supports Chrome-extensions
| on Android and has for years. It's pretty great.
| mod50ack wrote:
| 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!
| xnx wrote:
| > they've often fell far behind the upstream Chromium
| codebase
|
| I don't pay consistent attention, but these are the version
| numbers I currently see:
|
| Kiwi: 120.0.6099.26
|
| Chrome: 120.0.6099.110
| ajayyy wrote:
| Kiwi has historically faked the version number to prevent
| websites from telling you to update your browser. I would
| assume that number is not legitimate.
| firebot wrote:
| I wouldn't say that far, maybe a month. It gets regular
| updates.
| mod50ack wrote:
| Historically, it's gotten much further behind, but they've
| gotten better recently.
| xnx wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next
| davidy123 wrote:
| I use Kiwi, I take the risk for the ability to run my own
| extensions (though I use a two-fisted approach where I use
| Chrome for deep accounts). It's a shame it's not updated more
| often, it's an open source project I would support.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| You are vulnerable to the webp exploit
| (https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4863)
| firebot wrote:
| Mine states 120.0.6099.26, which was released a month ago,
| https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2023/11/chrome-beta-
| fo...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Your user agent string or the actual browser code? The
| former is notoriously just set to whatever makes websites
| happy. An easy way to test is see if a current feature
| actually works as expected e.g.
| https://jsfiddle.net/fxc9a8uc/1 "test1" should be green at
| the top right.
| gruez wrote:
| It's also possible that they updated the code but didn't
| push the changes to the repo, which I guess is better
| than running 15 month old code, but also is kinda
| suspicious because they're not honoring their commitment
| to open source.
| p1mrx wrote:
| I just tried this on Android. "test1" is green on Chrome
| 120 and Firefox 121, black on Kiwi 120.
| troyvit wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/mobile/world...
| Ridj48dhsnsh wrote:
| How does Opera have 3-4x the market share of Firefox? Is it
| installed by default anywhere?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| 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?
| capitainenemo wrote:
| 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!
| emestifs wrote:
| The Firefox paradox:
|
| 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?
| dmix wrote:
| "Why even try"
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Former Firefox dev for both desktop and Android here: I can
| definitely confirm that being constantly shit on wore me down
| a lot.
| emestifs wrote:
| Thank you and everyone else working on the Firefox browser
| and adjacent projects for your hard work. Don't let the
| noise of the internet lessen what you and the team have
| done and continue to do.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Gotta say, I fucking love Firefox. Be proud of your work.
| coldpie wrote:
| I'm sorry that happened. I wish there was some way to solve
| the "one jerk outweighs a thousand happy users" problem. I
| still vividly remember one guy being an asshole about my
| work on the Wine bug tracker a decade ago, regardless of
| how many happy users I know there were.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I wish there was some way to solve the "one jerk
| outweighs a thousand happy users" problem.
|
| We could downvote all that stuff to oblivion. Instead,
| comments like it are voted to the top comment on almost
| every page.
| pcwalton wrote:
| It's human nature, unfortunately. Reality television
| producers have known this for ages: the episodes that
| feature people who come off as irredeemable jerks always
| garner the highest ratings.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's human nature, unfortunately.
|
| If that ever really meant something, it has been so
| overused in the last few years that it's impossible to
| pick out any needles of serious use from the general
| default trendy grain silos of despair.
|
| I'm not trying to get all of humanity to give up sex. I
| believe we can do better, here on HN, in this one regard.
| I am that insanely optimistic!
| dandanua wrote:
| Haters gonna hate
| bloopernova wrote:
| I am very thankful for Firefox. It keeps the web sane for
| me, and I very much appreciate everyone who contributed to
| it.
|
| Thank you for your work!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Sorry. You did good things for everyone and deserve much
| better, but I hope you give yourself the recognition.
| Thanks for everything.
|
| HN should have an annual Appreciation Day, with no
| enshittification of threads.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > s*t on Firefox devs
|
| The nerd rage is targeted at Mozilla's dishonest and
| incompetent managers, no? The actual dev work is top notch.
| emestifs wrote:
| No, people go after the devs too. I was specific about
| distinguishing Firefox and Mozilla in my post. Firefox in
| too often caught in the political/flame crossfire.
| coldpie wrote:
| > dishonest and incompetent managers
|
| Even if it is, that kind of language doesn't help. These
| are all people you're talking about, trying their best to
| do a job they care about. Nothing gets better by your being
| a jerk.
| Ridj48dhsnsh wrote:
| > trying their best to do a job they care about
|
| I would not take that as a given for Mozilla's upper
| management. Many of their decisions seem to ignore what
| users want in deference to Google or other motivations.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Comments like yours are exactly the problem. Do you have
| any real knowledge anyway? Have you worked there? It's
| just spreading toxic sludge.
| toyg wrote:
| _> For what? What benefit?_
|
| Trolling used to be an amateur sport, but these days it's
| largely a professional endeavour. Astroturfing is an everyday
| occurrence on any decently-sized social media site, including
| this very one.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Those who care about competition among browser engines. Share
| is more likely to stay low if potential new users can't find
| the extensions they need.
| LegitShady wrote:
| you don't need to be a power user to do any of this. its just
| like using any other browser.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.)
| smilliken wrote:
| May I remind you that Firefox has over 300M users. If that's
| not worthy of admiration, scarcely anything is.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Sensitive power users.
|
| 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.
| emestifs wrote:
| You got downvoted and now you're original comment is greyed
| out. Now you're mocking people and calling them "sensitive".
|
| The fact news about Firefox gets upvoted clearly indicates it
| is newsworthy. You don't get to decide. The users of HN and
| their votes do.
| nix0n wrote:
| 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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| This is _Hacker_ News - if you don 't want things that are
| interesting, even primarily, to power users, this is a terrible
| forum to frequent.
| mod50ack wrote:
| 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?
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| (I used to work on this stuff)
|
| It was more complicated than that. Yes, GeckoView needed a
| separate WebExtension implementation, but that work was
| pretty much at parity with Fennec (the previous Firefox for
| Android that supported more extensions) when I left in 2021.
|
| It was a product management decision that held off on more
| complete WebExtension parity with desktop, as well as any
| artificial limits as to which extensions were supported in
| release.
| Zak wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the product management motivations?
|
| It seems to me projects like Iceraven demonstrated years
| ago that a great many extensions were usable without any
| changes. Why not just slap a "here there be dragons"
| warning on untested extensions and let users have at it?
|
| To be clear, I'm not asking you to justify decisions you
| didn't make, just to provide some visibility into the
| process if you can. Mozilla was pretty opaque about it.
| toyg wrote:
| Probably fear that bad extensions would tank performance,
| tarnishing the reputation of the overall browser. Now
| that such reputation is more or less established (i.e.
| people use FF on Android without big problems, it's not
| considered particularly slow etc), they can dare a bit
| more.
| cubefox wrote:
| That fear was obviously unjustified. Extensions that
| would tank performance would have gotten bad user
| ratings.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I believe it's that, and that with extensions living in
| their own processes, Android can at any moment decide to
| kill it (like it can do with any mobile app). With the
| changes required for Manifest V3, extensions are able to
| deal with that gracefully, rather than causing a deluge
| of bug reports.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| This is speculation based only on press releases but:
|
| - Google pays Mozilla more than 400m per year.
|
| - Its in Google's interests to not have good Firefox add-
| ons. (For both Ads and Chrome's market share).
|
| Google's negotiator could easily added some incentive for
| Mozilla's management to set the focus somewhere else.
|
| In fact, given what Google's team is likely earning, they
| wouldn't be doing a good job if Firefox's mobile strategy
| wasn't discussed before signing such deals.
| mod50ack wrote:
| Firefox for Android had add-ons before, and even during
| the past few years, they're fully supported the
| collection of recommended add-ons, including uBlock
| Origin from day one. So I don't see how it could be about
| preventing ad blocking.
| pcwalton wrote:
| The idea that Google has some secret underhanded deal
| with Mozilla to sabotage Firefox comes up here repeatedly
| and makes no sense. If Google wanted to prevent ad
| blocking on Android it would be much simpler to just ban
| ad blockers from the Play Store outright.
|
| There is a much simpler potential explanation for such a
| product management decision. Suppose Mozilla determines
| that 90% (made-up number) of users want addons because
| they want uBlock Origin. It then seems sensible to
| prioritize that addon and not others when determining how
| to spend limited engineering resources. Reasonable people
| can of course disagree with that decision, but there's no
| need to bring conspiracies into it.
|
| (NB: Even though I worked at Mozilla I have zero insight
| into this particular issue; it's entirely speculation.)
| asadotzler wrote:
| This is just silly. Firefox on Android has had uBlock
| Origin, the world's most effective ad blocker, since day
| one. But sure, go invent conspiracies rather than do a
| little research.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| 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.
| jraph wrote:
| Yes, indeed, AMO means addons.mozilla.org
| vallode wrote:
| I was also somehow aware of this acronym. Turns out the about
| page of Mozilla's add-ons page also uses it[1], so it's
| "official" so to speak.
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/about
| zerocrates wrote:
| The article currently does define it, but maybe that was
| changed.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| My crank unevidenced theory is that
|
| 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!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I'm impressed Mozilla!
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Did you read past that sentence you quoted?
| bad_user wrote:
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| In fairness, uBo has been supported even when most extensions
| were being artificially left out.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I'm so grateful that FF for Android exists with addon support.
| Using it with uBlock is the only way to make mobile not an awful
| experience for me.
| commoner wrote:
| 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.
|
| [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...
| DistractionRect wrote:
| 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.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I can confirm that sideloading .xpi does not work in Nightly
| (at least the one from the Play store -- I've never worked up
| the energy to build the apk from source and don't feel like
| using the F-Droid because reasons)
|
| I even tried creating my own collection to include
| Violentmonkey and it didn't work but I don't this second
| recall why
| jeffchien wrote:
| You can also directly sideload .xpi by tapping the Nightly
| logo in the About page a few times. I'm not sure when they
| added this back.
| Ikatza wrote:
| Extensions are nice to have, but pointless as long as FF for
| Android doesn't render most pages correctly (HN, for example).
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I've never seen HN rendered incorrectly in any desktop or
| android FF version, what do you mean?
| novemp wrote:
| I'm using HN on Firefox for Android right now and it looks
| totally normal. What are you talking about?
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Care to expand a bit?
|
| 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 wrote:
| Firefox paradox strikes again. User brings up an unrelated
| thing, even if valid, to lessen something positive.
|
| You seen this pattern again and again in Firefox news threads.
| leaf-node wrote:
| Iceraven, a fork of Firefox, already has these features.
| autoexec wrote:
| Nice! Now add about:config to stable releases
| Ridj48dhsnsh wrote:
| As an alternative, you can get a stable release with
| about:config by installing Firefox (or Mull) from F-Droid.
| yoavm wrote:
| curious, what do you want to do with about:config on FF for
| Android?
| autoexec wrote:
| Mostly, basic security things like disabling prefetch,
| disabling WebRTC, disabling redirects, disabling SVG,
| preventing sites from reading my battery level, preventing
| firefox from changing what I type in the address bar (fixup),
| etc
| kungfufrog wrote:
| 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!
| Vinnl wrote:
| 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.
| cubefox wrote:
| 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.
| pentagrama wrote:
| 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.
| ixmerof wrote:
| Can you please link the extension you use for that purpose?
| summm wrote:
| The 2nd most important addon after unlock origin is Multi-
| Account-Containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
|
| 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.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 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.
|
| Sometimes a joy.
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(page generated 2023-12-14 23:00 UTC)