Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android (opens in new tab)

I managed the team that did a lot of the integration of web extension support in Fenix, the new Firefox for Android. We were all on the brink of burnout. There was too much work. Unrealistic deadlines. And high expectations. So we decided to only support a limited set of APIs tuned for the most popular web extension. Which were basically all ad blockers if I remember correctly.

Proud of the team to have finally gotten to this point. Miss you all.

> The baffling thing is why this took so damn long.

I'm surprised it's baffling in a community of developers and other IT professionals.

It's not baffling to me that two significantly (wholly?) different applications on different platforms and form factors would require quite a bit of work to both be generally compatible with the same third-party software via the same API - and all while maintaining the same compatibility with another application, made by another company, completely outside Mozilla's control.

And it needs to work reliably enough to release to a world of developers - of every skill level, motivation, writing every kind of software (within the domain of browser add-ons) - with confidence that it will work for them and users.

And you need a way to maintain all that over the long term.

I'm impressed Mozilla!

For those who are wondering, I _think_ AMO is supposed to mean "addons.mozilla.org" although neither the author of the article nor this comment define the acronym.

AFAIK it was because firefox for android was on a slightly different codebase than desktop firefox, and thus had supported a different set of webextension apis. The user contexts api (container tabs) was missing entirely, for instance.

Use kiwi, is Chrome based and has full extension support

Mozilla isn’t an independent entity and hasn’t been for some time now. Sorry, but if one company is responsible for 87% of your revenue and your CEO receives a $7 million salary, then they are a puppet and therefore so is the entity as a whole.

I won’t be surprised if at some point in the future we learn that Google had a discreet veto over any aspect of Mozilla’s software roadmap, as a condition of the money faucet continuing to flow.

Google is known to make underhanded deals (just Google “Epic v Google” for details); they provide the funding that allows Mozilla to exist; and a Firefox with a capable extension model is indeed a serious threat to Chrome’s marketability and Google’s strategic interests.

Given all that, it’s difficult to believe that a key differentiating feature was legitimately starved of resources for a decade.

My crank unevidenced theory is that

1. they wanted an Apple-level of verified review process for AMO, because the Chrome store and even Android app store have problems with malicious content.

2. This costs money.

3. They didn't want to open a free for all because they didn't know exactly how to go about solving 2. yet, and if they introduced some payment system then it would be easier to do from a clean slate, without an AMO full of existing extensions to somehow grandfather through.

As said before, this is fully unfounded and probably unfair speculation. I like it more than the 'google conspiracy against adblockers' though because Mozilla's motivations in this case are quite reasonable and can be taken in good faith. Keeping credit card skimmers out of AMO at the cost of restricting access to 'Firefox Pro'/'AMO Pro'/author-pays would honestly be quite a good thing for Mozilla to consider imo.

In any case it's great to see them allowing things now!

For those needing chromium, there's also Kiwi Browser, which is mostly a chromium fork with extensions re-enabled on mobile.

I wish I could switch to FF, but I still need PWA support + rich media notifications for a web based music player I wrote.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowse...

There are other mobile browsers which incorporate adblocking directly (though not extensions generally).

The Einkbro browser, optimised for e-ink devices (as the name suggests) is one. I believe Brave does as well.

As much as I'm a fan of Firefox (using it now on desktop), on my mobile e-ink device, Einkbro's optimisations make for a vastly superior browsing experience.

Have you never heard of NextDNS?

Heads up re: IDCAC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36233068

Give it a shot! It can import your bookmarks, passwords, etc. from Chrome, and it's great to be able to quickly send a tab from desktop to mobile, or vice versa.

Can you please link the extension you use for that purpose?

Amusingly I returned to this comments section and was scrolling down looking at the time stamps for new comments and this was the first new comment I hit. Thanks. It's clearly going to come in handy.

In fairness, uBo has been supported even when most extensions were being artificially left out.

I think it's still against Apple's TOS, stating that every web browser must be based on WebKit.

They can't push for that. Even chrome didn't get the engine deal.

But EU is pushing for sideloading

I advise stopping the use of iOS

They do? Or do you mean on mobile, where AFAIK almost no browser supports extensions?

As an alternative, you can get a stable release with about:config by installing Firefox (or Mull) from F-Droid.

curious, what do you want to do with about:config on FF for Android?

According to their github repo, it was last rebased with chromium version 105.0.5195.24, which was from August 2022. Using a 15 month old browser seems hilariously insecure.

https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next

While I respect Kiwi for implementing extension support, they've often fell far behind the upstream Chromium codebase and they're significantly smaller than even Firefox for Android. So I don't think they'd really be a "major" Android browser.

Then again, Firefox could easily be said to not be a major Android browser either!

I was about to be like, "Yah well is Kiwi a 'major' browser?" Then I looked at android browser share[1] and realized that Firefox certainly isn't either.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...

I was a longtime Firefox on Android user until the extension situation got increasingly fragile and complicated. I've been very happy since switching to Kiwi. It's faster, more frequently updated, and supports all the extensions I want. Highly recommended.

Why didn't Mozilla challenge the DMCA request themselves? Seems to be more within their mission than other crap that they fund.

AFAIK, it was available in nightly. You could curate your own add on list which you could then install on Firefox for Android Nightly, and I'm fairly certain you can still do that if you want something that isn't in this new, expanded list.

Tampermonkey has been supported even before they opened it up today

Care to expand a bit?

I've been daily driving FF Android for a few years now and I've had the opposite experience: the vast majority of pages work and render fine (including HN) and it's an extremely rare occasion that I switch to Chrome to use a website. Even then, I often find that Chrome isn't any better and the underlying issue was the website's mobile handling in general (e.g. touch events working differently than mouse events, or just a completely broken mobile-only component swaps)

Firefox paradox strikes again. User brings up an unrelated thing, even if valid, to lessen something positive.

You seen this pattern again and again in Firefox news threads.

Ironically, the few times that I see Firefox (for Android) render something wrong, it's because of an addon that is messing with the wrong stuff.

I've never seen HN rendered incorrectly in any desktop or android FF version, what do you mean?

I'm using HN on Firefox for Android right now and it looks totally normal. What are you talking about?

I've been using Firefox and only Firefox on Android for HN for... at least 5 years.

What are you going on about?

HN is a basic site, Lynx on MS DOS could render it.

The Firefox paradox:

People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format)

Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs

FFS, something good happened. No other browser has this. Yet people will find a way to lessen it. For what? What benefit?

Well, you might be right that it is power users, but I know that extensions and greater extension freedom are one of the things that is the draw that keeps the remaining Mozilla Firefox users (like me) loyal. Basically I'm arguing power users are a disproportionate percentage of the remaining Mozilla Firefox user base, which is why things like supporting tracking protection and privacy measures also makes sense for them to focus on, even if the majority of people online might not care about this.

So, I'm glad they are expanding the extensions available. I just hope that this isn't tied to creating an account still. [EDIT] I was overjoyed to see that I was able to add an extension without creating an account. Yay!

Techies and power users often create network effects, in how they contribute to and promote what they use.

This is one of the reasons it's so troubling when some techies latch onto some very closed platform (sometimes by a known-underhanded company) and start making it more attractive to others, by making open source software specific to it, making tutorials on hot employability topics that implicitly use the platform, etc. When open platforms exist, and could also benefit from this contribution and promotion.

At first it was "Jeebus, I wonder what's going on with that one person, who normally uses open source, stabbing themself in the back like that." Then it became "Jeebus, are we losing open platform ground with the majority of an entire generation of techies, after we'd finally won." (I have good guesses about why, and I also know at least a couple early maneuvers that I can't talk about, but it's still dismaying how vapid the collective behavior can be.)

Power users matter a lot for web browsers, because web developers are power users of web browsers.

Firefox's loss of market share in general is a direct consequence of its loss in market share among web developers, because web developers stopped testing their websites in Firefox.

Any time Firefox does something good for power users, it's a good thing for the whole web ecosystem.

Those who care about competition among browser engines. Share is more likely to stay low if potential new users can't find the extensions they need.

May I remind you that Firefox has over 300M users. If that's not worthy of admiration, scarcely anything is.

This is Hacker News - if you don't want things that are interesting, even primarily, to power users, this is a terrible forum to frequent.

you don't need to be a power user to do any of this. its just like using any other browser.

Sensitive power users.

I didn't say it was sh*t. I'm saying it's not newsworthy.

Clap for the devs. And install all the extensions. But we don't need a hundred posts about it. This isn't the big story Firefox marketing might think it is.