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Comment by ckcheng | Hacker News Reader

> actually choose a different browser, or are you choosing a different WebKit wrapper

I understand the "WebKit wrapper" for iOS criticism and do want different rendering engines available (e.g. Firefox's) and yet...

The worse thing about Firefox for iOS is the wrapper part, not the lack of rendering engine choice part. The UI of Firefox on iOS is inconsistent and buggy, and syncing doesn't sync well, etc. I doubt using FF's own rendering engine instead of WebKit would help the situation, as it'd drain engineering resources away from making the "wrapper" more usable.

I've always used Firefox, on Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, everywhere I can, but I find myself using it less and less on iOS... and it's not because of the rendering engine!

But since this change for the DMA will allow FF to use its own rendering engine (in the EU), hopefully maybe it'll reenergize the development of FF and improve the "wrapper" part more - even for non EU users!

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Writing this on FF for iOS, the biggest reason I want to use the Firefox engine is for Firefox extensions. WebKit doesn't support extensions except the App Store ones in Safari, I want to use traditional extensions from AMO. Just let me use uBlock on my phone!

I do agree, the Firefox iOS UI is clunky, but I find it useful for stuff where I want to sync passwords or tabs. I use Safari for browsing the web casually because it's nicer, and the feature of swiping between tabs is so convenient.

Firefox with uBlock Origin and NoScript on iOS!! Ahhh!! Yes!!

Don't forget Sponsorblock for YouTube. It makes the experience so much nicer

Orion supports WebExtensions on iOS.

WebKit does support the same extension API as Firefox - it’s an open standard. How you install them, bundled in a native app from the App Store, is the annoying clunky part.

WebKit does not support blocking Web Request, which is what uBlock Origin uses (See compatibility matrix at the bottom of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...) In fact, it is all about blocking Web Request, not say, Manifest V2 vs Manifest V3 (Firefox supports MV3 but adds blocking Web Request support.)

> WebKit doesn't support extensions

Just to correct the common misconception. It is browser vendors that need to build web extension API support on top of WebKit. Orion browser [1] did this both for macOS and iOS . The support is still in beta and improving with each new release. iOS support remains limited to what is possible to achieve with a JS wrapper. Nothing prevents Firefox from doing the same and offer at least partial web extension support on iOS.

[1] https://kagi.com/orion

Oh, that's awesome! I'm very glad to be corrected, thank you! I've heard of Orion but didn't realize it could do that, I will check that out. Thanks!

Does uBlock Origin work?

Nitpick but a browser engine is much more than the rendering engine.

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