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Firefox to become first mobile browser to support desktop extensions later this year
(blog.mozilla.org)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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No, no, no! It was supporting all the desktop extensions. For years. Until the damn buggy rewrite for no good reason. And then we were suddenly left with like 5 of them.
For a year after that I was still running the last stable release. But unfortunately the web evolves too fast.
"no good reason"
spoken like someone who has never tried to use that browser. it definitely supported addons, but tried to implement 2015 features to run on 2002-tier hardware
It still does, experimentally, if you enable developer settings, rather unintuitively through a Firefox Add-Ons account. Developer settings are not available in the official release but the Nightly builds as well as some forks, like 🦊Fennec, include them. Of course the addon settings often look out of place on a small screen and things like uBlock's Block Element picker do not work as intended.
fennec is just the code name for the rewrite, hence the fdroid built-from-source name
theres a limited number of available addons in fennec unless you go through hoops (used to be you could make a 'collection' dunno if thats still the dumbass-workaround-of-choice for the dumbass devs)
Well, the bizarre collection workaround is present in Beta and Nightly releases as well, and is intentionally well hidden. It also allows installing/uninstalling extensions quickly when testing on multiple devices, or sharing extension collections with testers. It is indeed needlessly convoluted for users but I would not describe the workaround as dumbass if it works well for the intended audience. You are correct, plenty of Firefox’s advantages can only be achieved by modifying the settings from defaults, often through developers’ hacky about:config keys. Mozilla thinks that mass adoption and their financial security is only possible if they make a noob-friendly browser with a few big buttons and Google search so tech-savvy people need to jump through hoops (profile importing etc.) to quickly set up the browser to their liking.
Its dumbass because if the addons work on mobile, let people use them. Instead they said "you can use these 5 addons, and you can use any addon you please if you jump through our hoops, like setting compact mode to enabled in about:config because we want to gather usage data that shows nobody misses compact mode".
I'm *genuinely *shocked the folks at mozilla are even bothering to finish addon support.
Like don't get me wrong, i love firefox and I support them in general, but holy shit is firefox gunning for its current userbase in an attempt to synthesize users that may or may not exist. And I think the way they manage these contentious choices is poor at best. Where the scale is from how-signal-removed-sms to the-windows-11-taskbar, they get 138.2.
At least with firefox beta, you can create your own collection of extensions and use those. That's what I do and I can install any extension.
More here: https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/
I have it on Firefox Nightly with the dev stuff. It's pretty great tbh
Not all extensions appear to be compatible at the moment. I know if I add a couple of my favorite desktop extensions to my collection that it breaks.
Hmm... interesting. I'm able to use ublock and two extensions for fanfiction. That's interesting that it just breaks for you.
Maybe you're lucky with your extensions of choice.
I'm not saying all extensions I tried adding broke the collection - only a couple did; the other extensions worked as expected.
Yeah I suppose so. I have a BUNCH of extension on my desktop Firefox, but I don't need much on my mobile version tbh. Especially since I have a few extensions that work for websites that already have apps (like I have sponsorblock and pockettube for YouTube but there's no point in installing them on my mobile FF since I have the YouTube app so...).
I actively don't use the YouTube app.
No adblocker, sponsorblock, or return the dislike button.
I also don't use the app for a website if the mobile website is good enough. Less software on my phone, so a reduced amount of storage used on apps, fewer updates, hopefully reduced CPU and battery consumption, fewer security issues, reduced data collection, and my phone is just a little cleaner to use. Everyone has their own preference, this is just mine :)
Fair enough. You're a far stronger person then I am haha.