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Firefox defaults lately are awful and out of touch...

gestures for reload/back/forward? really?

several decades and still not incorporating uBlockOrigin as a native feature? really?

a convoluted only-4-containers shenanigans that not even the author understand instead of simply isolating private tabs per window like everyone asked over the years?

using on android? too bad now you don't have half the settings available, AND you will not access many extension for no technical reason other than mozilla implemented a blacklist! ...oh and no access to about:config either!

i don't recall many examples because i gave up caring and have a list of settings (most not even available in the settings screen) and extension i must install on Firefox every new install which is larger than my OS customizations.... and on android i did what anybself respecting person would do and never touch Mozilla's default. install F-DROID's instead.

so, no, Firefox defaults are not very good.




For Android, I've been using Firefox Beta as my daily driver for over a year, it works flawlessly, and about:config is available.


yeah, even the very own devs HATE the defaults someone (who?) decided for android.

first there was a non documented setting to remove the blacklist for extensions... when they blocked access to about:config then everyone started using firefox dev... now they removed the block from nightly (i guess using real bleeding edge dev annoyed them)...

anyway, this only proves me point even harder.


> several decades and still not incorporating uBlockOrigin as a native feature? really?

Might be better that way. AdBlockers are fast-moving, with a dedicated, diligent working community. Outside the browser, they probably can work better.


Not just that, but why would Mozilla pick the winner here? Everyone complains about the side effects of default search engines, let's not do it again with ad-blockers!

And anyway, their Google contract certainly prevents them from doing shipping ad-blocking by default.


because that was the original promise with extensions! contribute without the red tape, and if enough people like it, we will incorporate.

heck dev tools started as someone cloning IE dev tool as an extension... there were two... the IE clone and a dalvik debugger... mozilla had no problem picking the winer and incorporating in the official build.

> their google contract

stop normalizing this! they officially denie this arrangement exist! so they cannot use it as an excuse.


the extension already incorporates a interface to select/finetune/update the rules.

for the past decade updates to the extension itself have been UI only.


I'm a firefox-only user, and I read your comment in two ways. It's grumpy, but also on the point! Thanks, I feel similarly. What is your main browser btw?

FF works for me in great ways, and I am highly productive with it, as long as some plugins still work: uBlock, tridactyl, foxyproxy. And for UI: sidebery, stylus.

From time to time I feel I should turn my back towards FF when they come up with new decisions in their UI, which I drastically reduce (no menu, no tabs,...), or new features, which are more disturbing than helping.

On android, I discovered 'kiwi browser' which is FF based but does not blacklist the plugins.


Man you got my hopes up for a bit there since I remembered Kiwi browser was chromium based which after checking, it still is. From there website: "Kiwi is based on Chromium and WebKit." https://kiwibrowser.com/


Note that Firefox for Android no longer explicitly allowlists extensions: anyone can write one that anyone can install.


> several decades and still not incorporating uBlockOrigin as a native feature? really?

How much less will Google pay to be the default search if this is added?


but they will never say that out loud ;) so what is the official position? they don't even have one. nobody touch tickets mentioning these things. so sad how open source is so easily coopted.

i remember when google and Microsoft had to do the w3c misdirection, now they don't even pretend.


They've automatically added spying by default now too. Mozilla is now an ad-tech company. Don't expect defaults to get any better.




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