Hacker News Reader

Comment by RileyKyeden | Hacker News Reader

I finally switched to Firefox when it dawned on me why Chrome for Android has no plugins, and why they went silent about the reading mode. With Firefox, I can install uBlock Origin, and it's had a reading mode for a while. Google wants to force me to look at ads that make the page slow to load, bouncy, and hard to scroll through.

Google is where Microsoft was not long ago: engaging in self-destructive user-hostile behavior to protect their profit center. It can't work forever.

View on HN

I also switched to Firefox Mobile on Android over a year ago. Couldn't be happier with the extension support. I've got uBlock Origin and my password manager installed.

Chrome is definitely smoother on mobile but using extensions is worth it for me. Does Firefox Mobile's codebase closely match that of the desktop browser? Are their release schedules similar? Wondering if we should see it speed up with Firefox's latest improvements.

Firefox for Android is the exact same codebase as desktop Firefox. Many Gecko features are turned on for Firefox for Android at the same time as desktop. In other cases either Firefox for Android or desktop will have features before the other. For example Firefox for Android had HTML date/time picker support years before desktop because the OS provided widgets. In the other direction EME has been on desktop for a while and is in the works for Firefox for Android.

Yes. Firefox for Android uses the same Gecko engine and release schedule as Firefox for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktop. They all share most of the same code in the same source code repository [1]. Most of Mozilla's "Quantum" project to start importing Servo code into Gecko will also run on Android. Firefox for iOS has its own release schedule and shares only a little code (e.g. Firefox Accounts sync for browser history/bookmarks) with the other Firefoxes.

[1] https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/widget

Same here, I just can't live without uBlock.

But it's not my experience that Chrome is smoother on mobile; it doesn't work very well and crashes often.

On desktop however (Windows) I still use Chrome, and I don't know why. Every time I launch FF I then come back to Chrome. I'm kind of ashamed of myself for it but can't quite pinpoint the real reason. Maybe FF looks a litle more "fragile", I don't know.

why not use AdAway or NetGuard if you are not rooted? only reason i don't use chrome on Android is bad performance (Firefox has even worse), other chromium browsers like Yu or Tuga run much faster, you can see difference with naked eye when loading pages, no need any benchmark

chrome or Firefox are both extremely slow on Android compared to Tuga or Yubrowser, not talking about some synthetic benchmarks but noticeable difference when loading (nonAMP) pages

While I'm sure this may be true, the browser sees everything privacy related. I trust Mozilla and even though Google harvests data, I trust them to keep it safe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com