Firefox Stable for Android now supports 520+ Extensions

rootyme

rootyme

Disciple
This is big! Hope Firefox grows from here onwards.
blog.mozilla.org

New extensions you’ll love now available on Firefox for Android | The Mozilla Blog

Today, Mozilla announced more than 450 new extensions (software that adds new features or functionality to the browser) to users on Firefox for Android at
blog.mozilla.org blog.mozilla.org
9to5google.com

Firefox for Android now supports over 450 extensions

Mozilla has opened up access to over 450 extensions on the Android version of the Firefox browser, adding new functionality and more.
9to5google.com 9to5google.com

Its market share has been on a free fall for years now. It accounts for less than 1% of total mobile users worldwide.
gs.statcounter.com

Mobile Browser Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of mobile browsers worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.
gs.statcounter.com gs.statcounter.com

I absolutely love Firefox and find it as good, if not better than Chromium browsers.
 
Firefox now serves .deb packages from its own repo to Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint users.

Install Firefox on Linux | Firefox Help

This article describes how to download and install Firefox on Linux.
support.mozilla.org support.mozilla.org

This is a welcome news. Users no longer need to download the tarballs from Firefox repo if they don't prefer the distro packaging for any reason. Tbh, there is no reason to not pick this over what the distros ship. Changes arrive late that way. Always.

I love this. :)
 
On mobile, so far I've been using Brave but I've heard a lot about Firefox, at least on android. Other than extensions, what other benefits does Firefox potentially give me over Brave? Or is it not worth the switch?
 
SonicShotGaming said:
On mobile, so far I've been using Brave but I've heard a lot about Firefox, at least on android. Other than extensions, what other benefits does Firefox potentially give me over Brave? Or is it not worth the switch?
Click to expand...
Firefox is very nearly the only browser that uses a different engine than what Chrome uses. For the platform independence of the web, it is essential that websites don't start to depend on a single engine. The more people use Firefox, the more signal it will send to website developers that standard compliant websites need to be developed, rather than depend on specific Chrome behaviour.
 
kiran6680 said:
Firefox is very nearly the only browser that uses a different engine than what Chrome uses. For the platform independence of the web, it is essential that websites don't start to depend on a single engine. The more people use Firefox, the more signal it will send to website developers that standard compliant websites need to be developed, rather than depend on specific Chrome behaviour.
Click to expand...
And what exactly would be the benefit that I would get as a user of Firefox? As far as I know, the browsing experience is similar to Brave and other than the extensions that you can get on FF, I don't think there is that much of a difference.
 
SonicShotGaming said:
On mobile, so far I've been using Brave but I've heard a lot about Firefox, at least on android. Other than extensions, what other benefits does Firefox potentially give me over Brave? Or is it not worth the switch?
Click to expand...
Totally worth it.

1. Better sync compared to Brave. Brave needs you to continue the chain on at least one device otherwise you lose access to all your stuff saved with your account. Firefox Account doesn't have any such limitations.

2. Firefox is the only non chromium web browser for users that are not on Apple platforms. WebKit browsers like KDE's Falkon exist but they aren't as big as Firefox or Chromium and lack many features. So by using Firefox, you play your part in countering the Chromium monopoly.

3. Over 650 extensions. Firefox on Android has a ton of extensions that you'll love using.

4. Built in PDF viewer. Unexpected but Firefox for Android can do what all browsers do on desktop. Starting from Firefox 122, you can now set Firefox as the default PDF viewer on your Android. I personally prefer this to cluttering my phone with heavyweight PDF apps that have 100s of features that I never use.

5. Tab collections. Useful once you learn to use it.

6. New addition to the Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection: Tell sites to not sell or share your data.

Finally, ofc, the nice feeling of using FOSS product without the software trying to make you a product. With sth like Firefox, you have Fennec F-Droid that rids Firefox from... Anything other than the browser itself.
f-droid.org

Fennec F-Droid | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Browse the web
f-droid.org f-droid.org
 
Firefox is quite slow compared to chromium counterparts and also, they sometimes "warn" of the site they deem harmful based on their ideology. Their "open internet" is a farce as far as I've observed.
It's sad because when it launched, it obliterated all the other browsers but now, page load so slow for some sites that its annoying as hell.
 
shivam1321 said:
Firefox is quite slow compared to chromium counterparts and also, they sometimes "warn" of the site they deem harmful based on their ideology. Their "open internet" is a farce as far as I've observed.
Click to expand...
IDK. I don't perceive any slowness. But you're technically correct since most sites are chromium optimised.

Ideology based warning? What? I've never encountered that, ever. Would like to see an example for what you're pointing to. I've only ever seen warnings for HTTP only sites.

As far as Open Internet is concerned, something is better than nothing.
 
shivam1321 said:
Firefox is quite slow compared to chromium counterparts and also, they sometimes "warn" of the site they deem harmful based on their ideology. Their "open internet" is a farce as far as I've observed.
It's sad because when it launched, it obliterated all the other browsers but now, page load so slow for some sites that its annoying as hell.
Click to expand...
Firefox has different protection levels you can set. It will flag sites with improper certificates and all HTTP sites if you have redirect to HTTPS enabled. Nothing to do with ideology.

It is a chicken and egg situation in terms of speed. Properly coded websites work as well on both. Unfortunately, most developer tools and developers are just focused on creating and optimising for Blink because it covers 95% of the market, which is on account of users not making any effort to switch from defaults.
 
Just wanted to post an update for edge browser, now you can install extensions on edge android. right now its available on edge canary, you need to enable it in edge://flags. It will slowly roll out for the stable version.

Screenshot_20240205-021352_Edge Canary.jpg


Screenshot_20240205-021406_Edge Canary.jpg
 
SonicShotGaming said:
And what exactly would be the benefit that I would get as a user of Firefox? As far as I know, the browsing experience is similar to Brave and other than the extensions that you can get on FF, I don't think there is that much of a difference.
Click to expand...
Apart from what rootyme mentioned, the primary reason I moved away from using Brave on Android and Windows was the shitty monetization scheme they started. I pretty much abandoned it completely, and out of sight out of mind, so I don't even recall the details of what it was. You can read the details on the web somewhere i guess.

Edit: just realized I answered a banned account :facepalm:
 
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