[cercatrova]

I've been using this specifically for its extension support, and I'm just waiting until Firefox Preview can get extension support fully as I use Firefox on the desktop and I'd like for them to sync. I looked at other browsers like Brave but I just cannot trust them.

[emteycz]

Firefox on mobile has extension support, I am using it right now?

[input_sh]

It's gonna be replaced during this year with a complete rewrite.

Extension support is coming, but at the moment only uBlock Origin is available.

[Thriptic]

So to be clear, the existing Firefox on Android which has broad extension support is going to be replaced with a version with less extension support? Why? One of the biggest value adds of Firefox on Android is broad extension support.

[NikolaeVarius]

Only way to make it suck less

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/06/27/reinventi...

[TomMarius]

It sucks? I switched from Chrome last year and am nothing but happy. Who decided it sucks?

[ta1771]

Single process for all tabs/sites, no sandboxing, for a start.

I personally won't touch Gecko anymore, and I've been a FF advocate since it was called Mozilla, ha

[solarkraft]

That article doesn't explain anything about it. The previous Firefox runs (almost?) all extensions impressively well, with little required optimization.

[detaro]

That link doesn't seem to address why plugins need to be restricted to a whitelist? (Which might not be the end-goal, but Mozilla is quite cagey about it)

[gnomewascool]

> So to be clear, the existing Firefox on Android which has broad extension support is going to be replaced with a version with less extension support?

Probably not. By the time the switch for release (non-nightly/beta) Firefox comes, I expect all the currently supported extensions will still be supported.

In the long-run, since the new architecture will be generally easier to develop, I hope that some of the WebExtension APIs supported on Desktop, but currently not on Android (on Fennec), will also become available on Android (on Fenix).

[iggldiggl]

> Probably not. By the time the switch for release (non-nightly/beta) Firefox comes, I expect all the currently supported extensions will still be supported.

I think you're being too optimistic - the fact that the regular Nightly and Beta release channels have already been transitioned to the rewrite means that at the same time you've lost all large-scale capacity of doing any pre-release testing on the old version. While that one has been getting ESR-style bug fixes only for quite a while anyway, even those still need some amount of testing. So barring some major hold-ups, they're now committed to transitioning the Release channels in the near future as well, even if that means mediocre add-on support and quite a few other missing things.

And it's been clear for quite a while that they've decided on a https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... -style rewrite for better or for worse...

[Fnoord]

I suppose that is why the replacement is called Firefox Preview, for the time being.

[0x38B]

I'm using the nightly preview and it has:

- uBlock Origin

- NoScript Security Suite

- Dark Reader

- HTTPS Everywhere

- Privacy Badger

- Search by Image

I like the new UI: quick and intuitive. When you open a new tab, you see your most-visited sites, open tabs, and collections.

Liking collections, currently have 'Web dev' for my in-progress projects & servers and '{My city}' for local (health) news and other resources.

When I tried it a couple months ago, I remember being impressed but put off by missing features - downloads didn't work, etc. But it's looking better, good enough to use daily with Brave as a backup.

[input_sh]

Ah, I'm on Preview stable, looking forward to some of these landing there.

[NikolaeVarius]

They released a few more

[enitihas]

The parent meant Firefox preview, the new version of Firefox on android, which only supports ublock origin as of now. Firefox preview will become the main Firefox browser on android as of now.

[TomMarius]

Oh, I thought it's some alpha version of the one I am using. My bad

[photon-torpedo]

Not for much longer. Future versions of Firefox Mobile (i.e. what is Firefox Preview now) will, as far as I know, at best have support for the Mozilla "Recommended" extensions, which is only a small fraction (e.g. no Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey).

[Eldt]

The new one has very limited support

[csagan5]

And you trust instead a closed-source browser which has not been updated in months? Aside from the trust component I suggest you to use an up-to-date browser because of the security vulnerabilities which affect them.

[cercatrova]

What are you referring to, Firefox? If not, Kiwi is open source, and I trust Firefox a lot more than Brave.

[csagan5]

Kiwi: it is severely outdated and you installed it before it was open source.

[rvnx]

csagan5: I give all the code of a large project, for anyone to use, with detailed and functional build instructions.

I don't ask for anything in return, and you can do basically what you want with it.

Ok, you repeat on this thread that your own browser (Bromite) is better and so on essentially spreading FUD, but for what result ?

We both have something else to do than spending time on that.

[csagan5]

I did not mention Bromite at all, what are you talking about?

There is no FUD here, let me write down some facts for you:

* users install Kiwi which does not contain all the security fixes of upstream stable Chromium (v81); this is been going on for several months now

* users do the same for Bromite and the Bromite SystemWebView

I warn everyone equally about this problem, nobody should run an outdated browser because of all the security issues, look at 2019 alone here: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...

More facts:

* the current version of Kiwi, in Play Store and in source form, still is not up to date and covering the security issues fixed by upstream Chromium

* Kiwi was not open source until now and its repository was plain lying about it (https://web.archive.org/web/20190719191635/https://github.co...), making people think it was open source while you published only a few unusable patches

* even now there is no commit history making the source code unusable and unauditable

* you included trackers at some point in Kiwi and visits were going to some search server of yours

Did I miss anything? I am glad you decided to open source it but it does not change the above facts.

[rvnx]

I thought it was you when seeing the Bromite posts (but apparently no).

There is some confusion about the notion of up-to-date, from a Kiwi perspective, we do not see the most recent version of Chromium as improvements.

We created Kiwi (with other users) because we disagreed with Chromium on functionalities like Duet, or APIs changes like with Manifest V2 and adblockers.

This is the reason to completely fork Chromium (or why Samsung diverged from Chromium 77 in 2019)

By definition will always diverge from Chromium v81+.

It's a choice.

About security fixes, yes, between end of 2019 and today, new problems emerged in Chromium (not specific to Kiwi though), and there is some work to backport. Should it have been done earlier ? Certainly.

About the last point, Kiwi makes money if you use Microsoft Bing or Yahoo, that's life, and that's how I pay for the build servers, some contributors, advertising Kiwi, logo designer, sometimes the programmers, etc.

Firefox does the same but with Google, Brave with DuckDuckGo, etc.

I see you have StartPage, DuckDuckGo, AdGuard, already in partners, and if they don't pay you, I encourage you to contact them, as they should.

Regarding the policy of Kiwi:

====

We do not collect the websites that you visit. What you do in the browser is your own freedom and responsibility.

We do not collect or sell location data. We do not collect telemetry data. We do not collect history data. We do not track users. We do not integrate third-party analytics SDKs.

We collect and store: how many installs are active, where the person has installed the browser from.

Our business model:

When you enter a search query, the query is sent to the Search Engine that you have selected (Microsoft Bing or Yahoo by default, Google, DuckDuckGo, or any provider of your choice).

If you choose to use the recommended search engine by Kiwi, Kiwi will process the request and will receive money for every search query it forwards to the partner search engine (example: Microsoft Bing).

====

and you know, with the releasing of Kiwi as a free software (and not just open-source), now there is no limitation. If you disagree with how the project is managed, then you can absolutely make your own product (or just use another search engine heh), or take the pieces you want (and over time, a better picture over commit history will build), and this is a very good thing.

Also, thanks for the kind words at the end, you really pushed onto open-sourcing Kiwi too. Though sometimes you are a bit extreme for me :)

[cercatrova]

How is it outdated when the versions on the Play Store are automatically built with the open source version, which got an update 7 hours ago? Even if I had used a previous version, my current version is up to date by now.

[rvnx]

He is referring to the fact that Kiwi is based on a mix of different Chromium versions of 2019. Chromium does new release almost every month. It's difficult to keep track of Chromium modifications with such large forks (and Chromium had lot of performance issue at the end of 2019 too with stuttering and lags).

UCBrowser for example is an engine of 2017, Samsung Internet from 2019, etc

[csagan5]

You have not answered to the user's concern whether his browser is up to date with all the security fixes found in Chromium after v77.

[busymom0]

Why can’t you trust Brave?

[Youden]

Brave seems well-intentioned but really dodgy to me. In addition to the other issues that have already been raised, they were initially collecting money on people's behalf without their consent or knowledge [0]. The problem has since been resolved but their handling of it at the time put me off them for good.

[0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prominent-youtuber-claims-bra...

[cercatrova]

Replacing ads with their own ads, running a cryptocurrency within the browser. I don't want microtransactions to view sites which I feel like is what Brave is hoping for in the future. I mean, microtransactions are the name of the game in cryptocurrency but doing so for online content is especially egregious.

[infinityplus1]

Isn't it opt-in? I simply don't enable those features. You can even hide the Brave Rewards button in the settings.

[SahAssar]

Even if it's opt-in I still think it's shady and reflects on what the company thinks the future of its browser is.

[kodablah]

When able to do so, many choose products based on principles regardless of how they use them specifically (hypocrisy and comparison of evils notwithstanding).