Re:What happened to Firefox Send?
by Fej on Friday September 18, 2020 @03:40PM
(#24521065)
> Apart from extensions requiring whitelisting, how is it worse than the old mobile FF?
This is the most important point by far. First-class add-on support was the one differentiating feature that Firefox for Android had over every other browser on the platform. There are a handful of other browsers with add-ons on Android, like Kiwi, but they aren't nearly as seamless as Firefox was.
I'm using Fennec to write this comment because of Refined HN, I just turned off auto-updates. Not going to switch (at least for now) and I love Firefox but who knows where we'll be in a year? If we're in the same spot then I'll have to switch to Kiwi for these use cases.
I have Nightly installed and it's faster - whitelisted uBlock Origin alone solves a lot of problems in addition to GeckoView's massive speed improvements - but it doesn't fit every use case, so I have to keep Fennec installed.
The devs seem obstinate about ever allowing non-whitelisted add-ons outside of Nightly, which is... odd, it's the one feature they have over the competition. They seem similarly obstinate regarding about:config on stable.
There are other grievances (I actually disagree with the detractors on the default position of the address bar - it's far easier to use on tall devices) but this is the one thing that can't be found elsewhere, and it's gone now.
To reiterate, this feedback comes from a position of love, not hate, and I think most other people here feel the same. The devs are getting a lot of heat on places like reddit though, and the Play Store reviews for another. My limited understanding is that Fennec had to go eventually.
This is the most important point by far. First-class add-on support was the one differentiating feature that Firefox for Android had over every other browser on the platform. There are a handful of other browsers with add-ons on Android, like Kiwi, but they aren't nearly as seamless as Firefox was.
I'm using Fennec to write this comment because of Refined HN, I just turned off auto-updates. Not going to switch (at least for now) and I love Firefox but who knows where we'll be in a year? If we're in the same spot then I'll have to switch to Kiwi for these use cases.
I have Nightly installed and it's faster - whitelisted uBlock Origin alone solves a lot of problems in addition to GeckoView's massive speed improvements - but it doesn't fit every use case, so I have to keep Fennec installed.
The devs seem obstinate about ever allowing non-whitelisted add-ons outside of Nightly, which is... odd, it's the one feature they have over the competition. They seem similarly obstinate regarding about:config on stable.
There are other grievances (I actually disagree with the detractors on the default position of the address bar - it's far easier to use on tall devices) but this is the one thing that can't be found elsewhere, and it's gone now.
To reiterate, this feedback comes from a position of love, not hate, and I think most other people here feel the same. The devs are getting a lot of heat on places like reddit though, and the Play Store reviews for another. My limited understanding is that Fennec had to go eventually.