Can you dismiss (most) of my arguments in this post? https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24160559&goto=threads%...
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The recent mobile Firefox is worse in every way that matters to me:
° Breaking recent add-ons (for the few add-ons that exist). I added a close-tab icon to compensate for the bad tab-ui. It's gone now.
° URL-bar hiding is wonkey. Some overlays disable hiding due to recent phising attacks. Now, for overlays, it is always present and hides the bottom of the page. This is very annoying when links are hidden behind the bar.
° URL bar (2): where have my bookmarks gone?
° URL bar (3): no more editing the URL if anything was *ever* searched in the current tab. Instead it edits the search. The URL is inaccessible.
° After 'Open in new tab' there is an annoying delay for 'Switch' again hiding links.
° Tab selection is just bad now. Preview is broken. If anything is displayed, it is often the image of two sites ago, even if the page has rendered.
° Tab selection (2) no more moving the tabs?
° Tab selection (3) why waste so much space? Using only 80% of the screen. And every tab wastes two lines and a half of useful space. Why is only the domain shown? Why not truncated or cut in the middle?
° Tab selection (4): newly opened tabs are hidden, you always have to scroll up as the current tab is always first, older tabs are lower.
° about:config is broken. Certificate error. Certificate error is broken too. Thus no disabling reader mode.It also starts up a lot slower than the old one, and there's a bug where sometimes a page will just stay white and I have to flick back and forth between tabs or restart it to get it to load.
But I do notice there's less delay when clicking on a link from a page, so that's nice I guess.
- In the previous version when you search something in the URL bar you could long tap the search suggestions to insert them into the URL bar for editing. Gone.
- To open a new tab you have to open the tab selection with the icon on the top (or bottom) of the screen and then tap the "+"-icon in the middle of the screen. In the previous version you could just double tap the icon.
- No way to create a new search shortcut from a search box on a website. You have to manually enter a URL containing a %s. No way to search with POST forms.
- They removed the option to hide the microphone icon in the URL bar
Out of curiosity, how come you have ‘+’ in the middle of the screen? Standard behavior for ‘material design’, which FF seems to follow for me, is to have such floating buttons at the bottom right.
> They removed the option to hide the microphone icon in the URL bar
That appears to be back, at least in ‘Nightly’. There's a toggle called ‘show voice search’ in the search settings.
Apparently search interferes only with some URLs: 0) Copy this url: "https://forums.spacebattles.com/forums/worm.115/" 1) Search anything (I use ddg, load the page completely) 2) Tap the url-bar. Notice no url, just the search. 3) Remove the search, "Fill link from clipboard" appearch, tap it. 4) Tap the URL-bar. The original search appears again. Unable to edit copied url.
The search stays present as long as the URLs with the same behaviour are entered manually, from history, or pasted. Most urls reset the behaviour. I have three from different domains. One is a top-level URL, the others are not. The top-level of the example does not have this behaviour.
Since the original comment there has been an update. A random bug is possible as well: I had edited URL's successfully before.
There's a sort of a workaround: if you long-press on the URL bar when the page is displayed (not when typing in it), you can copy the address.
Though of course the behavior you describe is weird if you're already away from the search page.
Probably I can't, but I am not interested. Nothing that you cite bothers me so why should I work to disprove you? Like yourself said, this is what matters to you, not me. For me, the performance and interface changes brings much more value than what you put in your post, and I did use old Firefox but really was forcing myself to use it since I don't like Google hegemony. The new Firefox is for me a mobile browser that is finally a joy to use.
However, this is not my point. The Register does makes clickbait titles and clickbait articles. Of course this update broke some workflows (https://xkcd.com/1172/), but instead of getting data and saying that "new Firefox update broke this and that workflow, Mozilla is working to fix it" (this is assuming a good editorial asking for Mozilla input before publishing the article, not a tabloid like The Register), what we actually got is "Mozilla pushed a broken Firefox Android build".
You can use this to rationalize-away every regression in every piece of software. Enough "well, they're just edge case loud power users" papercuts may eventually prove fatal.
A to-hell-with-your-workflow sneak update, no-downgrade path approach like this speaks volumes about Mozilla.
EDIT: Sneak insofar as no clear communication about how much functionality users would be (potentially permanently) losing, and no directions on how to avoid that outcome. The play store rollout has certainly been inconsistent but that's probably more on Google's end.
You can downgrade, just forgo Play Store -- and you will have to setup all over again, first uninstalling the darned 79.
Also there is no way to clear the list of downloaded files, there is only a 'delete' button, which if clicked deletes all your downloads. This is particularly annoying if you start downloading something only to find out you already downloaded it (i.e a podcast), the download history tab is the only place to cancel the download, but if you've used firefox for a while the tab is so slow to load that your download has often completed before the tab has loaded.
The lack of addon support is annoying though. One addon I often use (Hide Fixed Elements, to get those annoying popovers to disappear) isn't supported and I still notice it missing every day. It seems to me that a browser built for customisability just isn't finished without the complete addon pack. They could've kept Fenix in beta but decided to launch with missing features regardless.
Wnat I'm also missing is about:config support. It exists but has been disabled in stable branches on purpose "in case people break their browser". This mindset is exactly why I'm starting to lose interest in Mozilla.
The UI looks great and the performance improvements are very welcome, but to say the bad news is all "just a vocal group" goes too far for me. Firefox users, especially on mobile, are mostly just "the vocal group". Everyone else is on Chrome already.
But it seems to be a bit more complicated. See https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i51k0q/mozilla_cou.... about:config is not blocked just because of configurability and the usual danger of breaking something, but because it is essentially broken. Still, it's the wrong decision. Users can just reinstall if the app breaks, and there is no blame on Mozilla in that if they showed a warning before, as they do on the desktop.
Yes, theoretically you can break the connection between Firefox and GeckoView but that's got nothing to do with enabling eSNI or setting the behaviour of user installed certificates.
Sort of, but it's clearly not designed for that. The tab switcher slides out from the bottom of the screen and has the "new tab" button at the very bottom.
To navigate to a new page, I now have to tap the top of the screen, then the bottom of the screen and then the top again.
Ah, the eternal Windows 8 loop of failure... Don't give users options because they are stupid. I just hope the layoffs didn't paint the future for Mozilla.
I honestly have no idea which one is better, but after having it at the top (and all other applications seem to have their menu/nav on the top as well) for YEARS, it's a very hard sell to my muscle memory.
Faster is good, disabling my extensions simply sucks. Extensions were the main reason I use firefox on mobile at all.
Now I'm looking at obscure browsers like Kiwi just to get working extensions on a mobile browser.
I think Mozilla had to choose to either wait a long time to get full extension support and miss the train, or release early. I am also unhappy with not having the extensions I use, but I think this was the right choice. They plan to support the whole extension API eventually. Also aren't they the only ones who support extensions on Mobile?
Losing extensions really does suck, but you can at least install a lot of the big ones like uBlock, Dark Reader etc.
This is a fork that seems to be popular (enough to show up first in my search). It looks and feels like the Firefox I lost with 79. Firefox Sync brought most of my data back in minutes.
So I‘m the one that usually swipes (that somehow doesn‘t work either...) or click the back button (because that‘s what I‘m used to do). Even feeling dumb not realizing there‘s this „back for everything“ physical button on Android, it feels unnatural to me to use that one.
That's the "leave this Activity" button, personally I strictly don't use it navigating within an app because it's never clear if it's been overridden or not.
For mobile browsers, I always use "open in new tab" so I don't need to go back and can avoid guessing.
But Firefox Preview had a bug where often enough the back functionality did not work. I hope that is fixed, if not that might explain some of the complaints.
Citation needed
> but most users are probably pretty satisfied with the update
Citation needed
There's no way for you to know those statements are true, besides wishful thinking (in the same way that I dunno if the opposite it true).
You can read the reviews of the latest version in play store...
Yeah, I am going by the complaints from users in the Play Store ratings. It is pretty clear that the number is not big (the score on Firefox is still pretty high), but the complaints are very focal saying "this is the worst update ever".
> but most users are probably pretty satisfied with the update
And yeah, this one I don't have any backup, this is why I said "probably".
Even if the number there is small (which I'm not sure, "small" compared to what?), you can't look at one place and make such a global strong statement. There are many other places for people to voice their opinion, Mozilla forums, chat, social media or, well, here.
> this one I don't have any backup, this is why I said "probably".
Probably is not a synonym of "maybe" or of "I don't know"...
It's a life changer!
I recall updating on the July 31st, it crashed 4 times in less than 70mins on random pages. It lost all its bookmarks, virtually all add-ons, 'home' page, tab thumbnails, removed/reset search engines, etc. Instead, it added totally useless collections. Ah yeah - added Facebook there too, since I just have it disabled on all levels, incl. DNS.
>A small but vocal number of users
Downplaying it like that, insulting long-time users just to score points on HN is weird and unneeded. Look at the latest version reviews on Play Store.
I've downgraded to 68 and I'll keep using until it becomes totally unusable (likely in couple of years or so). The process of finding proper downgrade/compatible version, setup and all took couple of hours as it's necessary to uninstall and wipe it all, else 68 installation would fail.
Microsoft Edge also has collections and you can access them from the mobile and desktop browsers.
For me the interface is a regression in every way, except for the ability to select bar location (I have it at the top, but the choice is nice).
A lot of it can probably be polished out, but I struggle to see what improvements it brings after a potential post-polish.
That said the performance improvements are nice, and it'll stay my primary browser on Android.
Maybe if you have a large phone or short fingers but beside this bottom bar there are only disadvantages in the new UI, like no bookmarks in the new-tab-page. Or the additional movements/tapping you have to make to open a new tab. It's like the designers never even used the previous FF.
> and the browser is much faster
Maybe if you mainly visit shitty javascript-bloat-sites like twitter or reddit but for me there isn't much difference in loading times. The small initial pageload-speedup is lost by the time I need to scroll over all the new advertisements I previously never had to deal with thanks to uMatrix.
> but it lost some features
not just "some features". It lost _everything_ that made it better than chrome. Now there is just no reason for mobile FF to exist anymore.
> A small but vocal number of users complained
How did you measure that? I see mostly complaints and a few people who are happy because of the bottom URL bar.
Bookmarks on the other hand are used often and the new updates requires 3 clicks to get to them (previously 1).
So this is a classic case of UX designer not knowing how people use his software and just doing changes he thinks are cool.
Am I only one to see Firefox reset the search engine to Google with this Android release?
I was also disappointed that Pinboard and Cookie Auto-Delete add-ons aren't supported.
That small number of users is basically everyone who installed Firefox on Android
There is (was) no other reason to use it over competitors
> and I was using Nightly
I still am
And used original Firefox because extensions
Now it's just a slower (even if less slow than before) clone of Chrome
My personal extension used by hundreds of people (but mainly me) doesn't work anymore, so I have no reason to use Firefox anymore.
Simple as that.
Iḿ not complaining, I'm just switching back to Chrome
I can block ads and trackers with blokada and it works for any app on my phone
The real ones is that Firefox Quantum is finally out for Android (Firefox for Android jumped from version 68.0 to 79.0), and this bought a completely new interface too.
Now, the new interface is very nice (bottom navigator bar FTW) and the browser is much faster, but it lost some features and there is a limited number of extensions available for now (Mozilla seems to be manually approving them).
So what happened? A small but vocal number of users complained and we get this news from The Register like this was the worse mistake ever. It is not.
Sure Mozilla could have managed this update better (losing settings seems pretty bad for example), but most users are probably pretty satisfied with the update. I couldn't use Firefox Android before (too slow compared to Chrome) and I was using Nightly (and afterwards Beta) just so I could get the performance improvements since the browser is so much faster. And also the new interface looks fantastic.