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About damn time, they should never have disabled it in the first place.
Let’s just appreciate the fact that basically no other browser has this.
With chrome/ium you can’t even block ads.
That’s a lie sir. Brave blocks ads out of the box. Vivaldi also has ad block filters. You can add custom filters to both browsers. Also edge has shitty ad blocker. Kiwi browser supports almost all chrome extensions. Basically almost all except chrome and still you can block most of the ads using correct dns server.
We’re talking about actual web browsers here, not spyware that uses your device to run a botnet
Firefox is as much botnet as others. Full of telemetry, diagnostics, pocket and other shit. That’s why there are secure forks. Firefox in stock form is as much botnet as others. Also firefox is selling out to the same google so don’t pretent it’s better because it’s not.
Accepting a ton of money from Google to make it the default search engine isn’t selling out to them. Any concerned user will know how to change the default.
Now, if only iOS would allow true Safari alternatives. 🥲
They’ll soon be forced to allow sideloading, in the EU at least. Should open the doors for proper alternative browsers.
I loathe the very fact they made people call it “sideloading”. It’s just installing on your own terms, like it used to be the norm.
Well, it’s a carry over from its early days in how it used to work. You needed to install things via USB debugger. Generally that’s all sideloading ever meant, transferring information from one device to another using a generally “local” method (SD card, USB, etc). Now sideloading, on Android at least (as it retains its original meaning elsewhere), just means not from the official repository.
I just activated Windows 10 on a laptop I bought from ebay, and I was reminded that Microsoft too wants people to view its official store as the default way to obtain software.
One of my goals for this weekend is to set up a dual boot for Linux Mint, which I’ve never done before. I’m fully aware of its limitations, but I’m getting so tired of all this crap.
Yeah, I’m not sure what Microsoft is attempting with S mode. Its just such a half baked concept to me. I’d rather a simplified group policy interface or something if they wanted simplified restrictions.
But yeah, dual booting is a great way to transition. You can also do Windows in a VM, but not sure how licensing works or if you can use an OEM license in there.
It just seems much better for me to set up a dual boot. I know it’s more work, but it’s not like it’s irreversible, and I think it would give me a better experience overall.
There are a few Linux distros I can recommend as someone who started doing this as a little tinker project when I was younger.
Pop_OS! Is a really great basic setup to help usher you into Linux. I installed the KDE desktop environment onto my install because I really like and enjoy the KDE experience. You have plenty of other Ubuntu “flavors” to choose from. I’d recommend giving them all a whirl or look and decide which one you think is the best fit for you.
ElementaryOS is great if you want a semi-MacOS experience but I feel it is perfect for someone who doesn’t want to tinker around too much or for family members to use on their 10 year old laptops/desktops.
I also recommend not fully setting your Linux side up (email, saving documents, etc.) until you get done with your testing different distros out. You’ll be thankful you didn’t go through the full setup process if you decide to try a new distro out. Have fun, and remember it’s all a learning experience. Don’t be afraid to ask for question or look anything up. If you finally find a distro you want to make permanent and remember me, I’d love to hear what you settled on. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And enjoy your newfound freedom! 😌
I use FF on android for a couple months now. Solid browser and sync to desktop and add blocker are nice.
BUT: their page reloading is far too aggressive. You can’t buy anything online, since once 2FA is required and you need to open your bank app, confirm, and switch back, the page reloads and the 2FA didn’t get through. Tickets and such are the only reason I have still chrome installed.
Hmm, I’m not experiencing that. Could Android (well, the flavour used by your phone) be killing background apps too aggressively or something like that?
Edit: could also be a RAM thing. I have 12GB.
Wow, I’m pretty sure my laptop has less RAM than that. ~Cherri
You can get 32GB of laptop RAM for like $60 to $80 if you find sales, and even one 16GB stick would be an upgrade for you. Modern bloat is so bad that having 8 gigs of RAM is the equivalent of having 4 a few years ago.
My laptop only supports expanding the RAM up to 12 GB IIRC. ~Red
Installed firefox yesterday. Nothing really changed or improved. Uninstalled firefox.
It’s funny how some people are willing to use weird android mods that can’t run half of the apps to protect their privacy while others can’t even wait 0.01s longer for a page to load.
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why it was restricted in the first place?
Because there were enough incompatibilities to make it a hassle. But when they were sorting out the Web Manifest v3, they designed it with desktop and mobile in mind, so new extensions won’t have problems.
Maybe they couldn’t guarantee that the mobile version could run well with all of them? That’s what I’ve always assumed.
The mobile version did actually run all addons up to Firefox 68. Quite well, actually! There were some issues with addons that assumed a certain part of the UI existed that wasn’t present on mobile, but those have become irrelevant since Firefox dropped the old XUL addons.
Then they rewrote the entire browser, with only a few functioning addons on a whitelist, and did basically nothing for addon support for four years. I think they added two or three addons to the standard whitelist over the years, but that’s it. The rewrite also introduced some silly bugs (still can’t paste an IPv6 URL into the address bar to visit it, no https://[2000:1234:4566::]/ for you unless you click on a link to it) but development seems to have mostly been focused on themes and design from what I can tell.
I know there was the whole XUL-to-webextension thing going on around that time, but I never found out why the rewrite restricted users so much. The rewrite also included the change to make about:config available only on unstable (beta/nightly) versions. You can install other addons on Firefox (you create a collection on addons.mozilla.org, open the secret settings in the beta, and point the browser at your own whitelist) and most of them work quite well, actually.
Because the addons themselves mostly worked, I always assumed they stopped caring about addons. People would riot if they removed uBlock Origin so there are a few addons in there, but I thought they killed the concept on mobile.
Can we have tabs when using a tablet please?
You don’t have tabs using a tablet?
I think he means tabs along the top like on a PC browser.
I haven’t been using Firefox for Android because I heard they don’t have a WebView Implementation so the firefox browser has to be used beside the Chromium WebView meaning there’s an attack surface of two browser engines. I also heard that the Firefox sandboxing and site isolation isn’t very good between websites.
I’ve been using Vanadium WebView and browser because of that.
I don’t know what this means
Android System Webview allows apps to display browser windows in the app rather than taking you to your web browser app. On Android, chromium is used for webview. If you use Firefox as a default browser, the remote attack surface increases because they’re two different browsers with different security issues.
Site isolation enforces security boundaries around each site using the sandbox by placing each site into an isolated sandbox. Firefox doesn’t have that feature so they’re vulnerable to attacks like Spectre.
