Wait what? Extensions are the biggest reason I'm using Firefox on my mobile and the only way I got people to switch to it. How can they just be removing them for any period of time?
Extensions is the ONLY reason to use Firefox on Android. It's not good browser compared to Chrome on slower Android phones, apart from being customizable.
To me it's even the single biggest reason to use Android over iOS as there's no full featured browser on iOS.
> Extensions is the ONLY reason to use Firefox on Android.
Well, no. I don't want to use a browser that is developed by an advertising company, and I want to encourage the development of more than one web rendering engine. But yes, killing extensions would be a major regression in Firefox's usability.
The "Linux" kernel even in something like LineageOS is heavily forked and in practically every case relies on userspace binary blobs for critically-important functionality. It's a far cry from what you can run on PC's, although postmarketOS is moving towards that goal. BTW it's not like Android itself is to blame for this, since other varieties of embedded Linux (by and large) are the same deal; the buck stops with SoC- and embedded-hardware manufacturers.
I've given up on custom ROMs. There's always only an extremely limited set of devices that are supported, and those devices are EOL rather too quickly, forcing us to use custom builds from someone not directly affiliated with the project.
To be clear, not one of the Android devices I've purchased have ever had official support. I'm using a Samsung a8 at the moment.
I hope the custom rom community finds a better mechanism for providing better device coverage.
Custom ROMs are rarely developed for Samsung devices these days because Samsung locks the bootloader and makes everything extremely difficult. Buy a device that is more developer-friendly like a Nexus, Pixel or OnePlus and you'll see a much larger selection of custom ROMs.
I'm personally a big fan of iOS, but coldpie's (and others in this thread) needs seem to be in third party browser capability that doesn't exist in iOS so with that, I wouldn't recommend it to them. I don't think it is a matter of spending money on competitor's devices so much as competitor's devices don't meet their needs.
iOS doesn't allow anywhere near the level of customization that Android does, nor does it allow 3rd party browser engines at all, however there's Sailfish OS and maybe the Librem 5 soon.
True, me neither. But politics aside, it's the only technical reason, for me. I'd rather switch to iOS and Safari than Android and Chrome, which I will consider.
To be fair, the new Firefox Preview (aka fenix) seems to go a long way towards changing that. I agree that they damn well better release with extension support (and I think they will), but it's pretty reasonable to get the core browser stable first.
Give Kiwi Browser a shot on Android. It's a fork of Chrome with all the google tracking removed and fully supports Chrome Add-ons. I love it and it's fast (I was a long time Firefox on Android user but it just got to slow to use).
>No. The browser is not fully open source like open in open source. It is a common myth and misconception about Kiwi Browser.
>Damn, 1 commit and nothing else but keeps updating and releasing apks? Looked into the issues and scarcely seen replies.
>I think this repo is just to show that "hey, I provided the so-called source code (even though not fully open-source as said above) so trust me and install me" thing.
The way you share quotes sounds like you personally have a problem with the browser :D
Kiwi was started as a fun+independent project, then more and more people asked access to some source to be able to develop their own hacks (new tab page, extensions, bottom toolbar, import/export bookmarks, AMP, etc) and they are shared when the devs ask politely.
At the end of the day, if you use Samsung, Kiwi, Fennec or Yandex, what matters is to understand why the developers are doing their project, what do they get from it (not necessarily money), and what are the influences around. The source-code is one indicator, and, unless you actually have reproducible builds (and only Fennec has them from all the mentioned browsers) you have to use your intuition.
Yeah, no kidding. Seems pretty significant, like pretty much a non-negotiable reason to switch to another browser if there is one with extension support.
Hopefully the ESR version of Firefox will support add-ons on Linux/Android and will be supported (security fixes, I don't care about other changes) until any replacement browser supports add-ons on Linux/Android.
I've honestly looked, and while there are several versions of Firefox in the play store. None of those I've tried seem to support extensions. Can you tell me where to find one that does?
To me it's even the single biggest reason to use Android over iOS as there's no full featured browser on iOS.