this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024

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Why does not firefox care more about the android version? (lemy.lol)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by King@lemy.lol to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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Firefox for Android does not support Material UI, has a low minimum API level, and generally seems lacking in features. Why is that?

Edit 1: also the downloading function is super unstable, I lost several files due to firefox starting the download then stopping and removing the download for no reason.

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 39 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Every app has a minimum API level. The older the Android version, the more expensive it becomes to maintain it. What features do you miss?

[+] King@lemy.lol -32 points 8 months ago (2 children)

My question is why they don't bump their min api.

For example brave support android 8 and up while firefox supports android 5 and up.

[–] PM_ME_YOUR_CODE@sh.itjust.works 76 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Supporting old api versions means the app is supported by more phones. International android versions can be quite old. While supporting old api versions may seem bad, it doesn't mean that Firefox cannot take advantage of new api features too. The code can simply check if the new features are available and use them.

Why do you care what the supported api version is?

[–] sab@kbin.social 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think people can be running pretty old versions of Android everywhere, assuming they don't change their phones every two years when support for their current device ends. They might still want to use an up-to-date web browser.

There's just no reason we shouldn't expect 99% of new apps to run on older phones, and to hell with the entire industry for normalizing it.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

Well, there is a reason and that reason is lack of security support but that is not inherent to the old hardware.

[+] King@lemy.lol -25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This link would explain to you why supporting old versions of android is bad

[–] kbal@fedia.io 48 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The topmost answers there are basically explaining why it's sometimes convenient for developers to drop support for old versions. I don't see any of them making a case for the zany idea that "supporting old versions is bad."

[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 5 points 8 months ago

Also when you start on an old version of Android it's much easier to incrementally add support for the newer features with API version checks. But if you start a brand new app with a target of Android 14, it's gonna be feel like you're just throwing compatibility hacks all over the place to support older versions. Similar end result, but the perspective of the second one makes it look much dirtier than it really is.

Firefox was around when Android 5 came out, so it makes sense that they'd keep up with new features without rewriting the old stuff, so no need for them to raise the minimum SDK, only the target SDK.

A lot of apps also rely on frameworks like React Native, Cordova, Ionic, Xamarin and whatnot that also only target some ranges, so a good chunk of apps could run fine on older versions if the framework hadn't dropped support for it.

But from a code perspective, you could build for minSdk=1 and targetSdk=34 and run well on both without sacrificing anything for the modern versions.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 24 points 8 months ago

Bruh because then the app will not work on older phones and it can even be slower

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Chromium browsers are much worse in my experience. They don't even support extensions

[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Internet without full on uBlock Origin is crazy full of ads.

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

fyi cromite and bromite allow to disable cookies, javascript, popups, ads, and autoplay. (per site and global)
similar to noscript maybe.
i would rather have more or full control like ublock or umatrix.

[–] drawerair@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

I've been using Firefox and Ublock origin on my Samsung a70 for a long time. I'm :).

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Ad block alone is a big performance boost, which is especially noticeable on mobile. I can't stand using my wife's phone (iPhone) because of the ads on the browser.

[–] Quintus@lemmy.ml 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure the reason why it doesn't use Material Design is to protect it's own branding. Material Design is Google's after all.

[–] Fake4000@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Firefox for Android might not be that great in terms of performance, but is a viable option out of the Chrome eco system. Firefox Sync works. The only thing its lacking at the moment is universal support for all existing Firefox plugins.

[–] maiskanzler@feddit.de 27 points 8 months ago

That kind of changed recently, hasn't it? There's been an explosion of available plugins as if late.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How is performance not great? About 2-3 years ago, they made a huge amount of improvements to Firefox performance, to the point where it's plenty fast. I have it set as my default browser and have actually disabled Chrome so Firefox is used for everything.

Performance is more than sufficient for me, and I've done a mix of playing browser games and regular browsing and haven't had any issues. And this isn't on a flagship phone or anything, it's just a Moto G Power. I don't really notice any performance issues, and it's probably actually faster than Chrome on average because my ad blocker means i have to render far less stuff.

[–] drawerair@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

No performance issue on my Firefox too. I have Ublock origin.

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

if performance isnt great, then there are 1000 settings to help you fix it.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 months ago

Forks like Mull and Fennec technically have access to all avaliable plugins, but it a bit annoying to set up. I don't know why they don't add an option to enable adding all plugins, with a disclaimer that some of them might not function as intended on Android.

All of the plugins I've tried in Fennec have worked just fine.

[–] MrPhibb@reddthat.com 1 points 8 months ago

It particularly sucks for desktop use on phones that support it, no right click, no keyboard short cuts, and it clips a bit off the bottom of pages, and they've apparently said they have no plans to support desktop on Android.

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Isn't a low minimum API level a good thing? Doesn't that mean more people can use the app?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Exactly. I think that has more value than being a little prettier or having the latest features.

It does get a lot of updates too, for example better PDF support and more extensions working. So it's not like it's stagnated, it's just being refined. A few years ago, Firefox for Android was really slow and almost unusable, and now it's solid.

So I really don't see what OP doesn't like.

[–] Swarfega@lemm.ee 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I actually prefer Chrome over Firefox. But fuck Google and fuck Chrome.

I'm happier since leaving Chrome and Google for Firefox and DuckDuckGo. I no longer have to use Incognito to do regular searches to prevent seeing that search as a recommendation in feeds and videos.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago

That's really creepy, I forgot Google did that. Been with Kagi for a while.

[–] ZWQbpkzl@hexbear.net 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Is "generally lacking in features" relative to desktop Firefox or other mobile browsers?

Also idk why you'd want Material UI. Not even chrome uses it AFAIK.

[–] King@lemy.lol 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Mobile browsers.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What features do you want?

[–] zarenki@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Not OP, but the one thing that bugs me most is that Firefox Android does not have a tablet UI. Other browsers like Chrome have a tab bar and other desktop-like UI features when run on Android tablets.

But on phone I've never run into a case of wanting a feature that it lacks.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm in the same boat as you, but it seems that Mozilla is finally going to try to improve the tablet UI this year: https://www.androidpolice.com/firefox-tablet-ui-being-developed/

Edit: I went down the rabbit hole and enabled the tab strip in Firefox nightly and I can confirm that they already implemented a huge chunk of what's needed for a proper tablet UI and IMO do it much better than Chrome.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

I've never noticed any issues probably because I almost never use a web browser on my tablet, I use it almost exclusively for video streaming. That's too bad the tablet experience is subpar, maybe file a feature request or vote for an existing one?

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

Not OP, but Firefox Android is lacking in features compared to both. For example, when it comes to bookmarking, it is painfully behind its desktop counterpart. Not only is there no desktop style bookmark manager to be found, but bigger folder structures are hard to visualize because subfolders are barely indented when you need to look for them.

I could probably write a short essay about bookmark and tab treatment, and the pseudo-tab that shows up when you tap Home, New Tab, or the URL bar itself. Browsers shouldn't have a learning curve that requires you to acknowledge the pseudo-tab isn't really a tab.

[–] frankpsy@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

I'm just glad that it exists at all. Google has Chrome tied down on Android because they feel they can.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No horizontal tabs makes it useless for tablets and larger screens.

[–] rorschah@lemdro.id 5 points 8 months ago

The following PR actually implements a desktop like UI for firefox android.Hope it will be in atleast beta soon.

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/5218#issuecomment-1966233109