• happyhippo@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      Let’s just appreciate the fact that basically no other browser has this.

      With chrome/ium you can’t even block ads.

      • 9up999@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • 9up999@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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.

        • pedro@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Sorry but even with all that said, you’ll never lure me to the evil side. I’m sticking with Firefox until it dies an atrocious death

        • Forkk@forkk.me
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          1 year ago

          Firefox already supported ublock origin on mobile and a handful of other extensions. This is just them opening it up to more extensions.

    • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      They’ll soon be forced to allow sideloading, in the EU at least. Should open the doors for proper alternative browsers.

      • TheEntity@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            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.

              • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                I have an old laptop that I’m planning to use to test different versions of Linux so I can get a feel for it. I will let you know if I have questions. I appreciate the kind offer!

            • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  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! 😌

        • Aasikki@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          If you can sideload anything you want, why would that be the case? I don’t think there’s a technical limitation, they just don’t allow it on the app store if it doesn’t use safari.

          • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            Oh that’s true, I always thought iOS just didn’t have that capability at all but that makes sense that it would just be blocked at the App Store level.

        • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          If you can sideload an app there’s nothing Apple can do to stop you from shipping a new rendering engine.

          • realharo@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They can still prevent the JIT from working because the resulting native code would not be signed. That would result in worse JavaScript performance in such browsers.

            • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Yes, but the point of the law is that apps that you install that are not from the official store actually have to work. It even has clauses so that installing stuff from different sources than Apple can’t intentionally be a worse experience than the official app IIRC. That might be just for messaging though.

    • Jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Very sad that Firefox does not provide an .ipa file of firefox without webkit. Jailbroken, trollstore and altstore users could benefit of extensions before apple allows sideloading.

  • GenEcon@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I use FF on android for a couple months now. Solid browser and sync to desktol 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.

    • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • bankimu@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It makes less sense since extensions actually ran on Android, e.g. via Nightly and creating your own list of exceptions. Also if you downgrade and install in an old Fennec version, extension will continue to function if you then update to the latest.

        I think the move was an attempt to create a walled garden and paid store. But for whatever reason, they have now decided against it. Thank goodness.

    • ItsTom87@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Which I think is kinda weird decision since they could’ve just hidden a setting that unlocks all addons in the options. But maybe they were so incompatible at the time that it wasn’t worth the headache.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    For those who don’t know yet: Firefox Nightly for Android let you install any extension you desire.

    You just need to create a custom collection on the web site and link your ID in nightly.

    • berg@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Have you tried sidebery? When I found tree layout for tabs to be a thing I haven’t looked back.

  • suny@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    great, now waiting for them to finally fix the supremely janky tab behavior.

  • bankimu@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My goodness that’s awesome. I never understood why they locked it down in the first place about a year ago. What changed?

    • lostmypasswordanew@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      They wanted to have compatibility with Chrome extensions. But that was all just a n EEE move by Google. More perfidious since they created the open standard in the first place

  • 9up999@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Installed firefox yesterday. Nothing really changed or improved. Uninstalled firefox.

    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s 3 clicks to install AdBlock on Firefox mobile and that alone instantly makes it superior to Chrome.

        • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Ublock origin is actually #1 on top of the list and the one I have installed, I was using “adblock” as a generic term.

          As far as I can tell, chrome mobile does not support ublock origin like firefox mobile does.

    • randint@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      What is the main reason you (presumably) use Chrome over Firefox? People here might be able to help you solve the problem.

      • 9up999@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        In general what chromium browsers have out of the box in firefox you have to install addons to have that functionality and still it’s worse experience. For example pwa support. Worst thing is that websites and now software only supports chromium.

        • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          Firefox mobile has pwa support, which works well for me and I never had a website that doesnt work on firefox (except for google earth maybe).

          • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            pwa support is extremely limited on android firefox, but I don’t really care. web apps are slow and I’d much rather use native apps…

          • spiderman@ani.social
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            1 year ago

            but people don’t care about tests, they care only about what’s fast and comfortable for their device. maybe firefox might be a better option for users in the latter once the browser plug-ins come to play.

            • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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              1 year ago

              On my 3 year old budget model android phone, things run fast 99% of the time. I have considered myself a power user for years. Having said all of that, I’ve recently switched from chrome to Firefox on android and it definitely feels not noticeably slower. I don’t doubt you, it’s just that phone hardware has gotten so good that decent software rarely (feels like at least) pushes it to the limit for more than fractions of a second at a time.

              • spiderman@ani.social
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                1 year ago

                it’s just that phone hardware has gotten so good that decent software rarely (feels like at least) pushes it to the limit for more than fractions of a second at a time.

                I second this, processing time and network speeds have been getting better over the years. The difference in speed in Chrome and Firefox is a “little” noticeable but that’s why I don’t care and use Fennec as my go to browser everyday. I mean, it’s better than the days where it will take more than 20 seconds to load a page.

                Technology has gotten better, all kinds of people have access to the internet these days and use it to learn something, or watch something they like. But it’s kinda sad that big tech companies have started to be greedy and try to either milk them for money or become a monopoly themselves.

          • R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            Feels exactly the same to me (if not slightly faster due to adblocking). You might just be mistaking familiarity with Chrome for it being tangibly better.

            • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              Ive been exclusively using firefox mobile for more than a year but just installed bromite because I had some issues with firefox. Its mostly that scrolling feels smoother, which might just be animation trickery

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      Literally was just telling my partner how much better browsing is since switching to Firefox on android. The ability to install extensions period is a huge upgrade, but also there are several available that are fantastic and not features available on chrome. Not sure what you mean about needing extensions to match chrome features. In fact, none of the extensions I’ve installed are features present in chrome. Plus I can block ads and trackers, activate dark mode everywhere, and use YouTube for audio with my screen off. I am kicking myself for being lazy. On top of giving Google personal data for no reason, I’ve had a worse browsing experience for years.

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • nave@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        I think the biggest problem for privacy is the former group thinks they’re the majority when the latter group are.

        • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Good point. Privacy usually means sacrificing some level of convenience.

          Meanwhile, I find most of these convenience tools such as the “Modes and Routines” app and Google Maps timeline to be creepy and dystopian as fuck.

        • ExLisper@linux.community
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          1 year ago

          Personnaly I do realize that 99.99% of people run stock android/iOS but sometimes forget and am surprised that the same people don’t have any ad blocker.

    • idle@158436977.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I still use it but I have to say the fact that the page auto-refreshes when you leave the app and come back drives me bonkers.

        • EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          If it’s not that feature, it’s likely either memory tuning or battery optimization stuff. Some phone manufacturers set those values to levels that are more aggressive than they really need to be, leading to processes being terminated in the background when they ideally shouldn’t.

    • noodle@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      You can also use the Nightly app and load addon collections. It’s an absolute pain in the arse, and a lot of extensions don’t work, but it’s one way to get them.

      • iloverocks@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know that this feature is already dort of waring in the nightly build but it makes sence that they will test it out in nightly

        • noodle@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          Honestly, it’s as if they don’t really want you using it. It’s a legitimate feature but hidden away and quite difficult to use. Here’s a guide on getting it set up. I’ve been using it since it came out and haven’t had too many issues, but a lot of addons just don’t work as intended.