Firefox Android now supports Tampermonkey
support.mozilla.org
support.mozilla.org
The same repeated with Tampermonkey. It now has telemetry built into it, at one time w/ no privacy policy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6hs59w/tampermonke...
The good one now is Violentmonkey. Has been for some time.
Does Mozilla have an allowlist for these? If so I don't like it.
?????
How is this ever cool, Mozilla?
https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#iss...
?
and enough to get that company into rather expensive trouble
Do you use the FFupdater app?
It includes privacy-related improvements. See more: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix
One of the bigger reasons to use Fennec instead (the old Firefox Android browser, still maintained as a community fork) for me has been the fact that you can also load in the XPI files yourself, which is needed for a few FOSS extensions that aren't submitted to the Firefox Add-On Store due to one reason or another.
The new codebase is known as Fenix and is instead based on GeckoView which isn't an actual browser but rather an library version of Gecko that is intended to replace Androids own System WebView (it was first used in Firefox Focus which was this tiny trackerblocking microbrowser that they offered).
The difference sounds tiny but it feels just... way clunkier to use and there's a bunch of features missing since a WebView browser isn't made with those in mind the same way a regular browser is.
There's just... loads of features missing or not available and the team working on Fenix is blatantly either mismanaged or underfunded. It's so feature-poor that you still can't actually set your homepage to a URL[0] among many other bugs and missing features. It appears to have gotten so bad that they moved the entire issue tracker over to Bugzilla and moved the repo to a new GitHub repo to hide just how feature poor this browser is.
Firefox Fenix is terrible, has been terrible for the past 2 years and I don't understand why they're still developing it instead of shoring up Fennec properly.
Note: So is the F-Droid build of the new codebase[1].
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
> but rather an library version of Gecko that is intended to replace Androids own System WebView
Not literally, though. Yes, the idea of packaging up the rendering engine inside of an Android library with a proper Java API was likely modelled on the implementation of the system web view, but I don't think that offering a literal drop-in replacement was ever the goal. Literally replacing the system web view is impossible anyway unless you're building a custom version of Android, and even just offering an API-compatible replacement (which would mean probably having to emulate quite a bit of Chromium/Blink-specific behaviour with Gecko) seems of dubious value [1] compared to the additional effort required for building such a thing.
> there's a bunch of features missing since a WebView browser isn't made with those in mind the same way a regular browser is.
I think that's not so much the Webview-inspired technical design, but simply the fact that Firefox on Android always seemed chronically under-staffed. Even with the old Fennec codebase there were some comparatively and surprisingly major bugs and missing features (didn't remember your scroll position if the memory pressure evicted either background tabs or the whole Firefox process, under memory pressure session history would stop recording entirely for tabs that had been unloaded once [2], you couldn't re-order tabs in the tab list, and quite a few more) that remained open for sometimes years and were in quite a few cases only fixed because of outside contributions.
So then they went and did the Thing You Should Never Do [3], i.e. throw away the existing codebase, which of course meant that all and every little feature and UI nicety that finally got added throughout the years (and sometimes only because of outside contributions) got thrown out, too, and had to be re-implemented from scratch. And what with the Android browser still not being all that generously staffed and having to re-write the whole browser from scratch, it means that any progress beyond the MVP state will necessarily be slow and very intermittent.
> Firefox Fenix is terrible, has been terrible for the past 2 years and I don't understand why they're still developing it instead of shoring up Fennec properly.
The problem was that due to being chronically under-staffed (and also because of Fennec's design with a native Java Android UI [4] meant that you got at least the UI responsiveness benefits of multi-process even without actual Gecko-side multi-process capability), they never got around to doing the whole work of making Gecko on Android multi-process ready and only finally did it as part of the GeckoView/Fenix total rewrite. Given the time that has passed since development on Fennec stopped (and as far as Gecko was concerned, it stopped even earlier because they eventually shunted off Fennec to the ESR branch, which coincidentally meant putting a relatively fixed termination date on Fennec, regardless of how good or bad Fenix would be coming along one year hence +/- a few weeks [5]).
Much as I'm unhappy about Fenix and nostalgic for Fennec myself – if you somehow were able to drum up sufficient manpower for making a real dent in the bug backlog, I suppose that at this point it'd be more efficient finally re-implementing all those missing features back into the Fenix codebase, rather than attempting to get the old Fennec codebase working with a current Gecko build again.
[1] Shipping a custom browser engine (i.e. Gecko) along with your app immediately bumps your APK size by dozens of MB, so unless your app is actually a browser itself, you probably need to have a really special use case and be quite desperate to start considering that option instead of using the system web view which comes at no size penalty.
[2] Either the Firefox developers themselves didn't actually use their browser that intensively, or maybe they all had phones with much beefier specs and therefore never experienced the behaviour on a memory-constrained device. That particular bug got introduced in Firefox 16, got its first bug report for Firefox 24 and amassed seven duplicates before it was finally fixed in Firefox 46, but even that only because I got so fed up with it that I finally investigated and then fixed the issue myself.
Personally I'm not complaining that much about that turn of events, because it got me starting to contributing to Firefox for a while which was nice as a hobby, plus I got an invitation to the San Francisco all-hands out of it, which was nice, too (both meeting the Mozilla developers, as well as the trip itself), but for the management of the whole Firefox on Android project itself it doesn't speak quite that well…
[3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
[4] The very first Firefox on Android actually did use a HTML/XUL-based interface just like Desktop Firefox does, but they found that on a phone the performance of that approach was terrible enough that they decided to rewrite the UI as a native Android app (codename "Native Fennec"), which then became Firefox on Android until version 68 and the replacement by the Fenix codebase.
[5] I suppose in a real pinch they could have extended the life of the 68.x ESR branch a bit more, but only if Fenix would have been in a really catastrophic shape at that point.
> It appears to have gotten so bad that they moved the entire issue tracker over to Bugzilla and moved the repo to a new GitHub repo to hide just how feature poor this browser is.
The move to Github with Fenix probably happened because all the cool kids are hanging out on Github these days and they were hoping to gain some additional outside contributors that way. On the other hand, while Github's UI is in some ways possibly a bit slicker and more polished than Bugzilla's, Github's issue tracking is still lacking some notable features that are present in Bugzilla, like proper dependencies between individual bugs. Plus development of Gecko and GeckoView still happens in Bugzilla, so while using Github for Fenix might make things easier for outside contributors, it also introduces some additional friction for Mozilla's own developers.
As for the repo move – from what I remember around the time that the whole GeckoView thing started, they (or at least certain product managers) were dreaming of being able to develop figuratively (or maybe even literally) dozens of little special-purpose browsers along the lines of Focus. Like one special privacy browser (i.e. Focus), one special browser for watching videos, one for… I can't remember actually, but maybe for online shopping, one for doing "research" or something like that, and so on, and so on, and so on.
That's why the old Firefox actually got split up not just two-way, but actually three ways: GeckoView (Gecko packaged up with a proper Android API instead of the sprawling ad-hoc API in browser.js), Android Components (common UI components for web browsers as another separate library) and then the actual browser itself (because like I said the original idea was to have dozens of separate little browser apps, so they wanted to have as much re-usable code as possible – not just the browser engine itself, but also any other components that would be part of the native Android app – things like the URL bar, tab management, downloads, menus, sync, etc. etc.).
It's an admirable goal, but it also introduces quite a bit of additional friction – instead of building the browser in one go, you now need to build three separate projects. I suppose for pure Android developers it's nice not having to directly deal with Gecko [1], but if you're doing things that straddle those component boundaries, it's rather annoying. You have three separate repositories that you need to keep in sync, you need to wrangle three separate builds, when landing new cross-component features you need to land them across those separate repositories in the right order and with the right timing, Gecko development is still tracked on Bugzilla while the two Android repositories used to use Github… [2] And what with the additional split of even the Android app into Android Components and the actual app, even pure Android developers who didn't work on Gecko/GeckoView couldn't entirely escape this additional friction.
And of course (YAGNI was true this time), Mozilla never really got further than building the two browsers that are existing even now (Focus, which still seems to be hanging on, as well as the main Firefox itself [3]), so I guess that ultimately they themselves decided that having two separate repositories (or three, if you're counting Focus, too) wasn't actually worth the hassle, so they decided to merge them back together again in order to make the developer experience more seamless.
[1] Though Firefox has been able to build in "artefact mode" for quite a while now (definitively pre-dating the Fenix rewrite), where it'll simply download a Gecko build from Mozilla so you don't have to compile the C++/Rust code yourself if you don't have any intentions on making any changes in that area. So from an Android developer point of view there's not much of a difference between building the old Firefox for Android with an artefact build, or building the new Firefox with a ready-made GeckoView package, though I suppose the new systems allows you to skip some "Mozillaisms" that are still required for building the full Firefox repository even in artefact mode, plus of course you no longer have to download the whole large mozilla-central repository.
[2] Apart from the general annoyance of feeling that Spolsky was definitively right and throwing out the whole old codebase was a mistake, this was another reason why I stopped contributing to the frontend bits of Firefox on Android – I used to contribute both frontend and backend bits, and in conjunction with the general annoyance about the direction being taken, suddenly having to deal with three separate repositories didn't feel like fun any more.
[3] Okay, so there was Firefox Rocket, too [4], which was supposed to be some sort of lite browser for developing countries, but with the release of the full new Firefox it was discontinued again. (And shipping it with Gecko(View) instead of using the system web view would have definitively taken it out of the "lite" category, too.)
[4] And the "Reference Browser" I guess, but that was only ever intended as a demo project for Android Components and possibly to also aid in debugging without having to spin up a full Firefox for Android build, or before the new Fenix-Firefox was even in a really useable state.
I'm not sure anyone else actually uses GeckoView. I only know about it because their argument for disabling about:config is that users could mess up the bindings between GeckoView and the browser, forcing you to clear the browser's data to get it working again if you mess up the internals.
The old browser definitely could've used some refactoring but after the rewrite almost every feature that made Firefox interesting disappeared. They also changed how user-installed certificate authorities are handled (if you, as a user install your own CA, you need to tap the Firefox logo in the settings seven times to open up special secret settings and enable loading the CA in there).
Firefox currently has two things going for it: their tracking prevention being built in, and a few useful addons. If you don't use those or don't care too much about them, you should switch to Chromium (I recommend Bromite as an alternative, which has ad blocking built in and even rudimentary user script support without addons) because Firefox is a lot slower in comparison.
And yes, Firefox on Android has an allowlist of "known working good" extensions, the reason given being that Firefox for Android doesn't implement everything the Desktop version implements and IIUC, want to a avoid users blaming the browser when something breaks because of it.
How does that even work? I assumed that Firefox extensions were implemented in frontend web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, etc.)? Do they use WebAssembly or something, or is it just obfuscated to the point that trying to read it isn't worthwhile?
Excerpt from point 4
> 4. NON-ALLOWABLE USES OF TAMPERMONKEY
> You are strictly prohibited from, and agree that you will not, adapt, edit, change, modify, transform, publish, republish, distribute, or redistribute Tampermonkey or any elements, portions, or parts thereof, including without limitation, to any elements, portions, or parts of Tampermonkey software (in any form or media) without the Company’s prior written consent. [...]
this says GPL so unless they update their license file here, this stays
You can of course do whatever GPL allows you to the code in the repository (so up to version 2.9).
If you have a public repository with your code on GitHub, everyone can see the code. But they do not have the right to use the same code in a commercial manner, without you specifying a license for your code, that says they can.
And they wonder why their market share plummets the way it does, making such extremely user hostile decisions like that.
A surprising amount of them comes with unlisted and uncontrollable connections to snooping services like Google Analytics or Sentry, I've seen unexpected redirects / tab hijacks - mostly to advertise the developer's new other extension, even fetching and executing external scripts and other resources from various CDNs is not uncommon... essentially everything their extension policies disallow.
All these violations are hardcoded into the extensions' source and rather easily scanned for automatically mind you, it almost takes more effort to not notice them.
I've stopped reporting the ones I encountered, they were never taken down, never lost their recommended badge, and all the violations remained in every next version that I checked.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/giphy-for-fir...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabliss/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-subsc...
To get the source as its distributed to the browser you click "See all versions" in the "More information" panel on the left hand side of the extension page, then right click the "Add to Firefox" button and save to disk (don't left click the button if you're using FF or the extension will auto-install!), and then just unpack the XPI archive.
Don't forget to send in those abuse reports, maybe that'll finally get Mozilla to look at them.
Bonus link: https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/add-on-p...
But really, no, they don't. Put up enough disclaimers (this is the secret to compromising with security teams on usability) and let me do what I want at my own risk.
Walled gardens have value for the user, Apple made tons of money and happy customers doing this.
But Mozilla is neither Apple nor Google, and Firefox is supposed to be an alternative to Chrome, in fact that's what annoys me the most with Firefox since last years: they copy Chrome for many things, but they don't have the means of Google, so it almost guarantees their position as a second choice. They did great things with Quantum, but they also lost most of their identity.
It is great that they support some extensions on their mobile version (uBlock Origin alone makes it worth it), but the wall garden approach is, I think, too much like what they are competing against. They could give the user an option.
I think Mozilla just has to bite the bullet and accept that they'll never be a mainstream browser (the majority of internet users don't even use ad blockers). The public is staying with Google and Apple.
Check for the appropriate modifiers on your key event + R, and call components.useCases.sessionUseCases.reloadUrl().
Why is it so bad ? Because noone uses a keyboard on mobile. Because if they had spent time implementing any other features that are used by 0.0001% of users, you'd have been complaining that Mozilla is wasting their money on not making a better browser.
I know my addon works fine on mobile, but they provide no means of specifying that*. I tried to email them for it to become "recommended" but never heard back.
The fact that they allow tampermonkey which allows any kind of script just adds insult to the injury.
* when uploading a new version, it does ask to specify which Firefox desktop/android versions are supported, but this existed before the new Firefox and doesn't do anything.
PS: Meanwhile I do not understand why is Ghostery included in that tinny allowed addons list (and now Tampermonkey).
(What _really_ showed me Mozilla is going crazy is when they fired sunfishcode (IIRC) and the Servo team! Both were essential to their success. It makes little sense.)
Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out.
> First, though, there's a matter that we should all be clear about: Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce...
I guess we could point out that the Mozilla Board should have seen this coming and not encouraged him to be the CEO, but they could also have been criticized for this.
> then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox
I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately.
The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
Sure, but for those that don't know the story, Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw). Brendan's resignation was his way of saying "f*ck this crap, I have better stuff to do", and he showed.
>they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place.
LOL, are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla? HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.
I agree that morality is subjective -- what he did was immoral to some and moral to others. Similarly there are people who considered it immoral when CEOs were publicly voicing support for pro-choice policies.
For a leader it probably hinges on the perspectives of the people they lead. You won't have a healthy organization if a significantly large number of people believe you are behaving immorally, especially at a nonprofit paying below-market rates.
... to you. Like you say in this very comment, morality / ethics is personal / specific to each person.
If you did something legal I despise (I might even think what you did was moral, but still strongly disagree), I understand that you did something legal but still might reject the idea to have you near me or representing something I like and might employ legal means to try to get rid of you, too. By protesting for instance. I have the right to do so as long as I respect the law.
The fact that what he did is legal is settled but he still decided to step out, as a consequence of people protesting against him being the CEO because of his past actions. Since legality is settled and everyone agrees about this, it's not a discussion worth having, actually. Only the rest remains. This is absolutely non-legal concerns that people don't agree on.
Law does not settle everything. Legality is not sufficient for something to be moral. It might not even be necessary.
Now, the rest has also been discussed at length, so it's not clear it's worth keeping discussing this neither.
It's not. Almost all of humanity, every culture now or historical, has agreed on many of these things. Others have very wide support, including universal human rights (which include your rights). You can find many arguments supporting these things, throughout human history. Societies and much of the world agree on them (including universal human rights). Research shows evolutionary advantages and connections to these things, and that animals share them with us.
Ethics and morality are not some arbitrary things we each make up.
> It's not. Almost all of humanity, every culture now or historical, has agreed on many of these things.
What's the need for agreement if individuals are not involved? And why would agreement invalidate morality and ethics being personal?
> Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.
That's a philosophical point, a student's thought experiment taking the (positivist?) requirement for objectivity to a logical extreme - and it's a very incomplete experiment that takes only the first step.
Reality doesn't work that way: Most information and decisions in life are subjective and we have many tools for doing it that way. Subjectivity doesn't make something arbitrary or meaningless or infinitely relative. Almost everything important is subjective, including morality.
Im not sure why you posted this as it has never been suggested that his donation was illegal.
The campaign against his appointment as CTO was on the basis that his financial support for proposition 8 showed him to be hostile to the protection of civil rights for some members of society, including Mozilla personnel, and that this was incompatible with his leadership role.
And this really is the crux, isn't it:
1. a political campaign inside Mozilla
2. by some employees that interpreted risk that
3. his donations were an attack on what they perceived as their rights
4. and this made him unable to fulfill the role of CTO
That's a whole lot of one-side conclusions to get to "he's unfit to be the CTO". No wonder he left.
This was all discussed at the time: the campaign against his appointment was far from just being "inside Mozilla". And "what they perceived as their rights" are now actual civil and legal rights because US society decided that was the right thing to do.
But Democrats who run in elections and appoint judges seem to generally like being able to point to the courts as a risk, and show little interest in legally bolstering civil rights when they have the power to, so it'll probably stay as it is... until it doesn't, just like with Roe and Casey.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-expected-pass-b...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404
And outside too. I read that OKCupid invited Firefox users to switch browsers, and CREDO mobile gathered 50K signatures for a petition. So nothing specific to Mozilla in the end.
> No wonder he left.
He indeed wrote on his blog "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader" and he was probably right about this.
People still didn't like it. His right to have these views, their right too.
It would only have been worse if he hadn't.
The world is not neutral, organizations neither.
Edit: Well actually, I can think of some orgs. that should be polarized by nature, like those meant to promote change. But a foundation that "works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all" should be quite neutral on all others topics beyond that.
On any subject that's not the main mission of the org, people will have any sort of opinions, on one side or another. Sometimes biased towards one of the sides depending on the mission or the actual people it attracts.
(sometimes on the main mission too actually, but in this case the org is in trouble / needs to adapt the mission - it can be an existential crisis)
And if for some idea, the mainstream / status quo outside the org is biased toward one side, this bias might also affect the org because the org lives in this world.
Let's take an (imperfect?) example: about veganism/vegetarianism/non-vegetarianism, what is the neutral stance? If the org needs to organize a dinner, some side will need to be taken. Allowing everything to accommodate the preferences of every person is not neutral. That's the status quo however, usually. You can only have "presence of animal-based food" or "absence of animal-based food". Nothing in between. You need to pick a side, take a non neutral-decision.
In the case of Brendan being rejected, people were going to be pissed either way. If he stayed, it would have pissed people who thought Brendan was not desirable as a CEO of an organization like Mozilla which is supposed to be inclusive because of his anti same-sex wedding actions. Because he left, it pissed people who thought his personal opinions should not matter. And both sides have a point, which is the hardest part.
What do you mean that is not neutral?
Not being neural would be either forcing everyone to get meat with their meals or not allowing people to get meat with their meals.
By allowing choice you are taking a neutral path.
By deciding to serve meat to people who want it, you already decided that the necessary meat production is okay enough that your org will endorse it, which is not consensual. Many vegetarian people stopped eating meat not for their own comfort and pleasure, but because they actually think meat is not okay (for environmental reasons, for the animal suffering, or whatever). Usually they won't complain because they don't want to be seen as jerks and to force their views onto people, and because serving meat is very normal, but that's still not neutral. Maybe in 10 or 20 years not serving meat will be seen as an obvious environmental measure to apply and will become the status quo, and serving meat the weird thing to do, but that won't be neutral neither.
By the way, if my preference is zucchini, will you make sure I can have it? Why not, and why the special treatment for the meat, of all food a human can eat, then? That's not neutral.
I'm sure this example won't convince everyone though and that's why I called it imperfect, so let me find something else.
As a bus company in Alabama in the 1950s, what was the neutral thing to do? Letting people sit in their bus anywhere no matter their skin color, or to force "colored" passengers to sit at the back?
In South America in the 1800s, was it neutral to let people have slaves? That was probably considered normal / acceptable. Neutral? I guess not for the slaves.
Today at a bar, do you serve your drink with a straw by default? If you do, in the eyes of some people, you are producing waste for no good reason. If you don't, for others, you might be breaking their expectation to have a straw and that's unacceptable for them, and it is your duty to serve them well, just letting them pick one on their own is not enough.
Today, when speaking about someone and you don't know the gender of the concerned person, do you refer to this person using "they"? Is it neutral, or is it pushing fancy new pronouns that break English and don't sound natural? Is "neutral he" neutral then? Is "he or she" good enough when there are non-binary people out there? By the way, do you acknowledge that some people are non-binary? If so, aren't you too much into this LGBT stuff? If you don't, aren't you too close-minded?
You are creating a new company. Full remote? Okay, now, you are pissing off people who feel better in a office. Everybody at the office, then? No, that can't be neutral in 2023. Hybrid then? Ok, but now you are forcing people into some uncomfortable mix where remote workers are missing out on the office talks and office workers need to bother with setting up video calls with remote workers all the time, and to put up with video calls from the colleagues next to them all day. Here I don't see which would be the neutral choice, I think there isn't actually.
There might be consensual topics, but you have to pick sides for most decisions, even if the side you take is the status quo.
> Is [singular they] neutral, or is it pushing fancy new pronouns that break English and don't sound natural?
Singular “they” is actually the traditional English approach. "Neutral he" is a neo-Latinate prescriptivism: it was relatively obscure until Victorian-era schooling¹ drummed these Rules of English Grammar into everybody's heads.² Even people who swear by singular “they” being ungrammatical usually use it idiomatically, because it's so baked in to the language: it wasn't proscribed for long enough to actually fall out of use.
Neopronouns are a better example: for some people, the class of English pronouns is closed, but for other people it's not. (Or, you could just set the clock back a couple hundred years, and use "neutral he" as your example.)
There's currently a Stack Exchange Hot Network Question on this topic: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/46123/how-di...
¹: Contemporaneous with the romantic movement, which gave us the Cult of the Bard. A man who, like his contemporaries, used singular 'they' in his writing.
²: See also: “to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before” (Douglas Adams). Totally kosher in the 14th century, but the same kinds of people who gave us “scissors” (an atrocious spelling, rivalling "cysowres" in its arbitrarity! What was wrong with "sisours"?) decided that splitting infinitives was ungrammatical. This has a much longer history of rejection (comparable with the duration of the transatlantic slave trade, encompassing the transition betwixt Englis and EMnE, and long enough for the construction to actually disappear outside poetry), so it would probably work as an example, too.
> Singular “they” is actually the traditional English approach.
It's traditional for those of unknown gender. I believe (we could always ask) that the statement you're replying to implies "Is [singular they] for those of known gender neutral, or is it pushing fancy new pronouns that break English and don't sound natural?" because that's the new use.
But that only makes the argument more interesting: something that was normal was lost, and is now somehow coming back in some form… with push backs like "it breaks the English grammar" , where English actually already worked like this before (for the exact same use or not). Push backs I saw here on HN, or on RMS's website [1]. Regardless the new use, the grammar construct was actually there all along.
I love both your and the parent answers by the way, thanks!
They used to refer to someone (as a singular pronoun) whose gender is unknown has been valid English for hundreds of years.
He to refer to someone whose gender is unknown is, as the link you provided points out, a more recent addition to English grammar and could be starting to fall away again.
They to refer to someone whose gender is known can be and is used occasionally but can sound strange at times too, he or she would and should usually be preferred.
To only use they to refer to someone whose gender is known is novel, forced, and contradicts the previous rule so it does break grammar (as the other link from Stallman shows).
Nothing has been lost.
• The third-person plural 'they' is uncontroversial.
• The third-person singular 'they' for an unknown (but not general) individual, while valid English in nearly all dialects, went through a period of being proscribed for no apparent reason.¹
• The third-person singular 'they' for a specific individual, of unknown gender, was proscribed and uncommon. Evidence of its historical use is a lot rarer than the unknown-individual usage.
• For a known individual of known binary gender, you normally use the pronoun corresponding to their gender. (As you observed, neutral 'they' is becoming popular as an alternative.)
• For a known individual of known non-binary gender, it gets trickier. It's hard to separate language from culture, and English culture has more-or-less² only had two genders throughout the EMod–Modern English period: denoted by 'he' and 'she', respectively.³ To describe a non-binary individual who's sufficiently far from either of those categories is impossible, unless you fall back on the closest available construction: once 'it', currently 'they'.
To use 'they' to refer to somebody whose gender is known is a relatively recent construction – but English has been steadily losing its gender for the past few centuries. A few decades ago, to people in rural areas of England, a hedge was 'she', not 'it'. Now, we have sewists, and a woman's hair can be 'blond'. It breaks grammar no more than any other option would – and certainly less than the loss of 'thou' did:
> Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, you to one, instead of thou, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, thou to one, and you to more than one, which had always been used by God to men, and men to God, as well as one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speaking you to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;—this evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and this I was now called out of and required to cease from.
The History of Thomas Elwood, via https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_varieties_of_religio...
Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call this sense ungrammatical, especially not when the others are accepted.
---
¹: For a specific instance of the general person, 'one' and 'you' are used, with 'one' currently out of fashion: I personally prescribe 'one', but often find myself using 'you' anyway.
²: Upper-class English culture, anyway. Great Britain's got a dozen ethnic groups on it, more ways of speaking than you can shake a stick at, can't even make up its mind what a 'country' is, and don't get me started on the trade/invade/cold-war dynamic with what seems like the entirety of Western Europe. And then you've got religion on top of that: are we with the Pope? Are we against the Pope? Do we even care? Which prayer books are we using? Are we running out into the woods when the moon is full and yelling 'Diana' into the night? Is the priesthood male, or some 'third sex' – and if so, what (if anything) does that have to do with 'eunuchs'? And then there's historiography on top of that, because culture is affected by people's beliefs about what is and isn't traditional… No, it's much easier to stick with what the wealthy and powerful's letters and diaries and books say, than to try to work that whole mess out with basically no sources available.
³: This isn't strictly true: I've seen writing that used þorn ſimultaneously with 'it' for Hermaphroditus. Currently, 'it' seems to be exclusively for objects, dehumanising when used for people… except infants, where it's an acceptable gender-neutral personal, for some reason.
2. We know what a country is, we've created several.
3. We're not with the Pope and haven't been for nigh on 500 years now and won't be back.
4. Non-binary is a luxury belief[1]. It came directly out of universities and has been supported via people of a similar background in media and education sectors, so if we're wondering how the wealthy and powerful want us to speak, we need look no further than this. As the link states:
> Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.
5. There are no true human hermaphrodites as even those born with something akin to the other sex's genitalia have only been able to produce from one type, usually female. As with singular they, it is a misnomer and the medical profession prefers more accurate designation of disorder of sex development. Calling them it would seem dehumanising.
> Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call this sense ungrammatical, especially not when the others are accepted.
Putting the verb at the end of the sentence is grammatical in Japanese, that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English, any more than giving my television a female gender would be (French), or using capitals for every noun (German). I'm all for helpful innovations but as stated in point 1, this ain't that, or should that be they ain't they.
[1] https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-...
Exactly the same criticism applies to singular you, down the the example sentences. I would take Richard Stallman's criticism more seriously if he was a thou proponent. (Use whatever words you like for the generic person / unknown gender cases, but don't start othering people by using non-standard pronouns exclusively for them.)
> country […] Pope
That paragraph was about historical developments; sorry it wasn't clear. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debatable_lands
> Non-binary is a luxury belief.
It's a basic fact of life in many pre- / non-British Empire cultures – and even in modern-day cultures formerly of the Empire. If you mean the modern, 'western' ideas of non-binary gender, that's derived from the experiences of transgender people, and existed for decades before the academics picked up on it.
Virtue-signalling existing about something doesn't mean the thing is made up (see: carbon credits, corporate inclusivity). Your linked essay somewhat misses the point: belief in virtue-signalling is also a status symbol, as is name-dropping social psychology and evolutionary psychology in an argument, and I could easily rebut that essay in exactly the same way it rebuts the 'defund the police' movement (except, that wouldn't be intellectually honest: for all its central thesis is flawed, and its examples are misrepresented, it does describe a real phenomenon).
> that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English
If I may be pedantic for a moment: it's the same grammatical construction as things that are grammatical, so it is grammatical. That's not up for debate! Even "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is, per Noam Chomsky, a grammatically-correct sentence. What's in question is whether it's acceptable, to which I say the notion of acceptability is not how language works, and especially not how English works. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription for further discussion.
> or should that be they ain't they
They ain't them. ;-)
> > Non-binary is a luxury belief.
> It's a basic fact of life in many pre- / non-British Empire cultures – and even in modern-day cultures formerly of the Empire.
But not part of a Britain that has a literate population that's been through basic science at school, which still appears not to have been enough for teenagers, and curiously, university educated journalists and educators. What could tie those groups together?
Regardless, what's happening elsewhere in other languages is for the speakers of those places and languages to deal with.
> If you mean the modern, 'western' ideas of non-binary gender
Yes, I do. I don't live in 1550 nor in pre-modern Britain, hence, those time periods have no relevance to this discussion other than "things change".
> If I may be pedantic for a moment: it's the same grammatical construction as things that are grammatical, so it is grammatical. That's not up for debate!
You're arguing on the side of an innovation, of course it breaks grammar rules (and who claimed that Chomsky's sentence was not grammatical? Again irrelevant). The only thing worth writing in that whole text was “What's in question is whether it's acceptable”, and it isn't. Wouldn't it have been better to focus on that instead of chatting nonsense about borders that only Scots with a chip on their shoulders care about?
No, because it would expose the paucity of any good reason to accept this innovation. The idea that those who are against this are being prescriptive is funny, I'm not demanding that anyone use an innovation in language to refer to anyone else upon threat of punishment if they don't comply. Now that's not how English nor English culture should work.
> They ain't them. ;-)
Glad you're paying attention but I meant what I wrote, the joke doesn't work if I make it more grammatical ;-)
This is so far off-topic we might end up in our own debatable lands…
Yes, the question here is who mixed their personal right to their views with their professional responsibilities. If Eich didn't, then it seems clear that everyone at Mozilla who objected to his appointment did. That wasn't the conversation that took place though.
The "professional responsibilities" in this case was being a good steward for Mozilla's products and the vision of products that preserved digital rights for its users. Not clear what this had to do with civil rights like gay marriage.
That's not all a CTO does. They also have "people" responsibilities.
As the then CTO, one of Eich's professional responsibilities was to lead the tech teams and individuals at Mozilla. The belief, among a significant proportion of Mozilla's employees, that he could not be trusted to put aside his opinions on civil rights when managing people, was what led to the opposition to his appointment.
A belief he couldn't be trusted based on what evidence, aside from them not liking his views on gay marriage?
FYI, I'd already run all of engineering from 2013 January on until CEO appointment, as SVP Eng + CTO.
Yep.
> HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
Yeah, no. Being co-founder is not everything. He was CTO back then. He pretty much didn't give them their jobs, alone anyway. And of course, to go from CTO to CEO, the board gave him the job. I don't know how that can be wrong.
And in any case it does not give him any specific kind of immunity against criticism.
Note that I didn't write this sentence, I'm quoting the linked article.
> which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw
Of course. But legal ≠ good. Not speaking about Brendan because my opinion on this is irrelevant, but I'm sure you can find something legal that you don't like. For Brendan homosexual wedding is one example of something legal that's bad, if his opinion on this matter hasn't changed.
> I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately.
> The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1]
And LibreWolf is pretty much Firefox with uBlock origin. But Brave is popular and Vivaldi is popular (among some). A successful mega project is supposed to have (gently) knockoffs.
Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the shady things I know about.
I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this pretty publicly.
Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.
That we don't have a world where this is possible is in my opinion both a cultural and political failure. What if every person on HN gave 1% of their income to various open source projects they use? What if we made this a cultural norm, and you'd be shamed if you didn't?
For example: there are several apps on F-Droid that give you full functionality (even if there is a paywall for those features on the Play Store version), and all they do is say "hey, this took my time to develop, and I'd appreciate if you could throw some bucks my way." I enjoy contributing more than what they'd charge with a paywall in those cases.
Why spout off on browsers as a business without doing your own research? I know, it's HN, but it's also 2023.
Mozilla seems to be getting more money from Google now (https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202..., see also Chair compensation at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...), even though Firefox share per statcounter.com is flat or down (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2022...).
It's possible to make money as an independent browser if you put the user first and deal them in on >= what you make from the gross. That's what Brave does, and we're building out search ads now to do the same. These revshare and payment rails use crypto, no "dabbling".
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/10/20/firefox-beta-for-android-n...
Firefox not allowing people to control their own browser and install add-ons, enable features, etc without their permission was the end of Firefox for me (back in version 37). This move to trade freedom for "security" for the technologically ignorant ended up providing neither. Especially considering the security theater that is the automated signing portal. The only benefit to all this is the ability to revoke after the damage is done widescale enough to be known.
There are the un-branded builds of Firefox that are not buggy and do not restrict your software freedoms for no purpose. Unfortunately Mozilla has disabled auto-updates in the unbranded builds so you have to manually install the a new full browser for every little update. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
With an already low (and diminishing) market share, it's just a matter of time before Google cuts their search engine deal with them, then poof they're gone!
I also don't think its in Google's best interest to let Mozilla fall out, if anything, it gives them some lever against anti trust.
It never did though? In my recollection the old version had an Android-only extensions API, and only a few extensions ever supported it. At least now, in theory, any extension can run on Android, which is great.
Compared to desktop certainly, but in absolute numbers it still weren't actually that few, and certainly much more than the mere 22 (!) add-ons (as of today) that can currently be installed.
> At least now, in theory, any extension can run on Android, which is great.
What good is that theory if in practice I actually can't make use of it?
Besides, the transition to webextensions happened with Firefox 57, and support for webextensions was added to the old Fennec-based Android Firefox, too. True, not the full API available on Desktop was ported, but that's no different from the situation today, and yet at that time there were no artificial restrictions on what add-ons were able to be installed on Android.
And even with the webextension API, to some extent extensions still need to be specifically designed to properly work on Android, too (especially if they need to display any sort of UI)…
Even do I would like there were more addons to choose from as default I can understand Mozillas choice here. And that is that most addons are not design for android and they would not work or give a very bad UX. So for many non tech savvy standard users, that just would be frustrated and blame Firefox, this decision can make sense to select god and popular addons they know works well.
But it would be great if more addons could be added ofcourse, and that Mozilla could have some design guidelines for new addons that they should work for both desktop and mobile (where it make sense). And mark in the addon store which addons that are design for both. Or maybe have a simple setting in Firefox for android that is for advanced users, there they could add any addon, but first they have to check a box that they understand that the addon may not work correctly on a smartphone.
I'm also very interested in bypassing the mobile limitation. Does creating a custom collection require an account? Ive never seen the option and have tried everything to back to 2019-2020 Firefox plugin capabilities.
Update: For anyone in the same position, I just saw this solution in another comment. Its unfortunate that such basic functionality requires a whole user account.
>For reference, to work around mozilla's artificial restrictions, you have to use nightly. Once you activate the debug menu (about firefox > tap logo 5 times) there's the option to set a "custom add-on collection". You can make a custom collection on addons.mozilla.org using a firefox account. The two fields are the last two parts of the URL on your custom collection.
It was a bit (nice) surprised for me to see many sites is really usable in noscript-mode.
The reason is I like the simple toggle approach of noscript, but I like umatrix's granularity. So I set umatrix to block virtually all 3rd party things, but give it a full whitelist on the things noscript handles well (media/script/xhr/other). Then I whitelist selectively in noscript and expand slightly in umatrix if necessary (say, for temporarily whitelisting google's captcha images).
And it's more "cleaner" as that you can clearly see each scripts you loaded in devtool and debug them, but and I think TM is catching up in this regard.
Outside that, VM is totally open source, development seems to be much quicker (with the drawback of slightly less stability, I'd admit), devs are more responsive.
Tampermonkey supports @connect [1] which lets you take an action whenever a script connects to a domain that isn't listed in its meta fields. Tampermonkey also warns you whenever a script modifies its @include/@match/@connect fiels with an update.
[1]: https://www.tampermonkey.net/documentation.php?locale=en#met...
(Iceraven is a fork of Firefox for Android with way more extensions enabled and several other annoyances fixed.)
I just installed it and then added https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars - it works perfectly!
Similar to Kiwi Browser with Chromium.
I've been using Tampermonkey on android for years, and it worked fine, just like other addons that don't happen to have yet been blessed so that users are granted the privilege of being able to choose to install them.
For reference, to work around mozilla's artificial restrictions, you have to use nightly. Once you activate the debug menu (about firefox > tap logo 5 times) there's the option to set a "custom add-on collection". You can make a custom collection on addons.mozilla.org using a firefox account. The two fields are the last two parts of the URL on your custom collection.
Not only is this very cumbersome (especially if you want to add another addon to your collection and have that propagate to your phone), but it's only available on nightly. And nightly has a nasty habit of breaking. It's not much fun when an update causes it to crash immediately on visiting certain websites; even worse when restarting causes it to try to load the tab that just caused it to crash.
So, it ends up in a dilemma: you can either have a browser that doesn't catastrophically break every few updates; or you can have the freedom to install whatever addons you like. But not both.
And that dilemma is entirely artificial and unnecessary. Mozilla could have a process of verifying that addons work correctly on android and warn if you try to install one that isn't so verified (like how Valve has "Deck Verified" but doesn't stop you installing anything you like). But that's not what they've done, and they don't show any sign of changing their minds.
> […] you can either have a browser that doesn't catastrophically break every few updates; or you can have the freedom to install whatever addons you like […]
I think they don't want malicious and abandoned extensions to taint the Firefox experience. Users will only see "Firefox is broken" and not realize that it's caused by the extensions they installed.
In the days of XUL extensions, it was for users who installed a lot of extensions, but that hasn't been a problem for s long time.
Recommended extensions, those that are currently available are vetted by Mozilla staff, not only for safety, but for utility and alignment with Mozilla's goals. These require no warnings or disclaimers.
Community approved extensions would be on AMO and approved by staff-selected community members for safety and policy compliance. No warnings, but a link/checkbox/toggle at the bottom of the extensions page.
All of AMO - this should need a toggle to turn on, and a warning that extensions have not been tested and could be unstable or malicious with a second checkbox to acknowledge.
Local install - this should be buried in the settings and called something like "I am an extension developer". Turning it on should pop up an additional warning about other peoples' code being dangerous. Actually installing an extension should require separate use of a file manager or command line, and then enabling it inside the Firefox UI.
The current approach reminds me of Apple's app store, except it's much harder to get on the recommended list than to get an iOS app approved.
All of which is why I use Kiwi Browser.
So I think this excuse is BS to be honest.
Let extensions claim whether they work on mobile or not, and open the flood gates.
https://github.com/frida/frida
With Frida, you write JavaScript programs and then inject them into arbitrary processes, to hook and modify and call whatever you please.
It gets a lot of use in the reverse engineering and vulnerability research communities, but has broader scope too.
For instance, I used it recently to automate the UI of a video production program on Windows, by sending window messages to the main message loop from an injected thread, and hooking into various system dialog functions to override them.
There’s a few extra steps in allowing Frida to work on macOS so leaving that here in case others might be interested in how to do it: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clams...
My favorite at the moment is one that can strip out long signatures from posts on mgexp.com, as well as let me selectively block/hide some threads.
Also, not *Monkey script, but still running the custom HN avatar per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668137
They work the same on Desktop, Android and iOS. So I can write my bookmarklet once and use it everywhere. Without installing anything. I also like that bookmarklets only kick in when you click on them. Although some might find that too much work, it feels natural to me. It is already in my muscle memory, to click an "Increase Fontsize" bookmarklet when I start to read through a thread on Hacker News on a mobile device, for example.
https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=%s
javascript:void(location.href='http://web.archive.org/save/'+document.location.href)
But neither of them work on mobile because it opens a new tab first before evaluating the bookmarklet.
I use javascript:(function(){...code...})() and urlencode the whole thing.
I maintain this bookmarklet editor to easily convert code to bookmarklets:
By the way, in Chrome on Android, you can't execute bookmarklets from the bookmark menu. You need to give the bookmarklet a name. Say "Upsize". Then when you are on the page where you want to increase the font size, type "up" in the url bar and click on "Upsize" in the suggestions. Might be the same in Firefox?
Firefox used so be super useful on Android, but since its redesign almost all its customizability has been gone. So sad.
In fact, it works both ways:
I can click on "bookmarks" and then on the bookmarklet, and it gets executed on the current page.
I can also start typing the bookmarklets name and then click on it in the suggestions. It then also gets executed on the current page.
oh well... Wish I had found your bookmarklet editor when I was trying to use them on Android before!
Then, when you want to execute a bookmarklet on the current page, pull down to get to the URL bar (if it is hidden) and start typing the "keyword" string into the url bar. After a few characters the "suggestions" list should show the bookmarklet entry, when it does, tap on the entry and the bookmarklet will execute on the current page.
I've not been able to find a way to "open" a list of bookmarklets to pick from, other than using keyword search via the URL bar, so this does also require remembering the "keywords" for each to be able to access them.
But mg also says that it works, so I wonder what's wrong with mine.
> Apple no longer allows running JavaScript in either the Mobile Safari address bar or as a mobile Safari bookmark.
Most browsers don't allow JavaScript in the address bar anymore.
But in bookmarks, all browsers allow it.
Edit: And without giving excessive permissions to an extension.
But they have also been losing users, and without users they have no leverage.
Many addons plain don't work. The mobile browser doesn't have the UI these addons rely on and maybe there's some API coverage missing.
I considered this a fair reason when the rewrite was released, you could still use the old Firefox for a while. But then time passed and nothing changed.
It's clear the Fenix devs don't have the capacity or the interest to maintain addon support.
There are many silly things about the browser rewrite. For instance, you can't enter an IPv6 address and navigate to it (i.e. http://[::1]/). Firefox will always Google it. You can click a link from another app and the page will load just fine, but the address bar just doesn't understand those addresses. Then there's the fact about:config is disabled in stable versions of Firefox. Or the fact that enabling user-installed certificate authorities requires you to go into debug settings.
I don't think Mozilla has a clear idea what it wants with their browser, it feels so unfinished in so many ways.
Even the old Fennec code base never fully supported all bits of the Webextension API, and yet there were no restrictions on add-on installation. Besides in any case it would have been up to add-on developers to decide whether they could sensibly get their add-on to work on Android (and therefore mark it as officially compatible with Android on AMO), or whether some crucial API was missing (or they simply didn't feel like re-designing the UI with small screens in mind) and therefore leave it as officially desktop-only.
Simple page scripts don't require any APIs (and especially no UI!) beyond basic Webextension support at all, and yet e.g. the video-background-play-fix add-on was only whitelisted after comparatively ages and much user complaining.
And even before Webextensions, when writing an Android add-on required quite a bit more separate code that couldn't directly be re-used from a desktop add-on (due to the UI and e.g. tab management being handled differently between Desktop Firefox and Fennec), AMO still had much more Android add-ons available than the current measly 22 add-ons that can officially be installed.
If you want to use Firefox on android and don't want to deal with these artificial restrictions and excuses for bad behavior just get iceraven and call it a day.
"Note that Iceraven Browser includes some unstable code written by Mozilla, with our own added modifications on top, all shipped with the stable version of GeckoView engine."
I wouldn't use iceraven if security was a priority.
Fennec on the other hand is much closer to FF , quoting their page :
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
"Fennec F-Droid is based on the latest Firefox release (codenamed Fenix).
It has proprietary bits and telemetry removed, but still connects to
various Mozilla and Google services that can track users."
Stability and security is not a priority though. Updates are slow.
I use it primarily for compatibility with my favorite add-ons not available on FF Android: I don't care about cookies, Cookie AutoDelete, Translate Web Pages, etc.
Mull is another FF Android fork may be worth taking a look at.
And an additional shout out for FF Updater, which can keep Iceraven up to date - https://github.com/Tobi823/ffupdater
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/1620123...
so if you wrote yourself, too bad
Since Android Firefox 68, you cannot install custom extensions, unless you register on AMO. Even if you wrote the extension yourself.
The "Add to Firefox" button on this page is disabled for me: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/
I am on 110.0.1 from Google Play.
Everyone in the world is an unknown internet rando.
I use the "AdGuard annoyances" and "easylist cookie" lists and that blocks many cookie banners.
Also, "I don't care about cookies" was recently bought by a company, which could mean bad things for the extension in the future.
https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/whats-new/acquisiti...
It's unfortunate that both being able to install any addon and access about:config on mobile isn't just some checkbox away or at least more accessible without having to install Nightly. A few years ago both were available in the regular version.
One alternative is the F-Droid Fennec fork, which is said to enable both out of the box[2].
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
[2] https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/wu4g0s/mozilla_firefox...
About:config is there, but the absurd whitelist on extensions is still there. I cannot confirm what the reddit thread says.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/on-firefox-mobile-make-...
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/1693474...
(It also supports custom lists like Fennec and FF Nightly.)
where is that list?
(It's linked to from Iceravens readme: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser )
AFAIK fennec is the code name for mobile firefox when mozilla had the very good android app that supported extensions, about:config and sane tab/bookmark management, and fenix is when mozilla ended fennec and replaced it with the much worse and clunky android app around 2020 that's still the only official one today, right?
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ih9vmb/firefox_for_android_fenix_79_release_fennec_is/
[2]: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
[3]: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/commit/0861f91fd39e56a13a7664e588fcf53860e0d7baIn the description on the F-Droid page it says "Fennec F-Droid is based on the latest Firefox release (codenamed Fenix).".
There's also a note from someone on Reddit [1]:
> Fennec is also F-Droid's firefox version. It differs from official ones by having proprietary bits and all telemetry removed as well as unlocked about:config at the moment.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nff8sv/comment/gyl...
Never used Tampermonkey before.
I don't understand. Is there a video showing how to do this?
Mobile devices are so limited in their capabilities it sucks
Die Datenschutzrichtlinien finden Sie hier [0].
I would have expected a bit more effort in giving proper access to the privacy policies, after all, it being closed source and having the ability to view/modify any page.
Without faffing around with a Mozilla login or "collections" or anything like that? Just browse AMO[1] and hit "Add to Firefox"?
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/ClearURLs%20for%20uBo/clear_urls_uboified.txtMozilla to-date refuses to build a one button switch to disable all telemetry [0] and there's calls to telemetry domains such as location.services.mozilla.com you cannot stop on some of their products like Firefox Focus (ironic for a privacy product).
[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/domains-allow-firefox
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...
I like uBO but you can replace it with a dns filtering service for 95% of its use case (ad blocking).
It could just be me but I do not see browser extensions on mobile as a killer feature. Moreso, when the same extensions are primarily developed for desktop.
This entire thread has omitted discussion of either.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/on-firefox-mobile-make-...