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Mozilla Launches Firefox For IOS
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox for iOS worldwide. You can download the new browser for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch now directly from Apple's App Store (iOS 8.2 or later required). Until today, Firefox for iOS was available as a public preview, and only in New Zealand. Also at Ars Technica.
iOS 9's content filtering only works on Safari. I use Firefox on the desktop and was hoping this iOS version includes built-in blocking support, which it doesn't appear to have.
Firefox again flirts with dangerous 10% user share level
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...Unless Mozilla can again retard Firefox's 12-month average rate of decline, the browser will fall under the 11% bar in December, and slip below 10% in April, joining Safari (with a 5% user share in October) and Opera (1.3%) in the single-digit club. If the trend continued even longer, Firefox on the desktop could drop under 9% as soon as August 2016.
Mozilla and Firefox face a tough future: The desktop browser continues to shed share -- often quickly, sometimes at a slower pace -- and the company's mobile projects, including Firefox on Android and Firefox OS, the lightweight operating system pitched to low-end smartphone makers, have not been able to make up the difference. ...
Oh geeze, I had to scroll down half the page PAST chrome and opera to find what I had searched for ...
Apple prevents them from using anything other than Webkit on iOS.
It's not using WebKit on iOS because it doesn't want to use Gecko, it's because it can't use Gecko. You can't release a web browser with its own rendering engine on iOS, you have to use the built-in WebKit The Chrome app for iOS also does this. What you're getting with Chrome/Firefox for iOS is the synchronization with your bookmarks and whatever other niceties you get with different interface styles.
The one exception is the Opera browser on iOS, but it also doesn't use its own rendering engine on the phone. It renders the page on a server and then sends your phone an image of it. This is a workaround and it also makes browsing really fast but it has zero privacy or security. You probably wouldn't want to browse anything sensitive like your bank info since Opera would get to see it too. This is assuming that Opera Mini hasn't changed any, that is.
Schnapple
Which is why it's no use trying to find an alternative to the godawful Safari Mobile. Any other browser available in iOS will suck in the same way, just with some extra suckiness (like less interoperability with other apps) layered on top.
Talks to 178.162.219.0/24 over 443
Talks to app.adjust.com over 443
Adjust = "adjust is a business intelligence platform for mobile app marketers, combining attribution for advertising sources with advanced analytics and store statistics."
I personally love the continuous subtraction of useful features that I get with firefox. Losing the ability to go back/forward, the ability to view page source, the ability to quickly and logically get to what I need through a meaningful user interface -- those upgrades were great, but what really made me a fan for life is when they removed the ability to stop a page from loading. Nothing puts a smile on my face more than waiting it out for a rogue webpage, watching my computer slow to a crawl, powerless to do anything about it. Now that's a feature worth bragging about.
In conclusion, I hope to see more subtraction of useful features in the future. Perhaps one day we can reach the Holy Grail of web browsing, where you are no longer allowed to actually view web pages (big deal, right), but instead the browser will spit out a brief verbal summary of what you've "missed". Go Firefox!
What kind of moron thinks becoming a shitty copy-cat of something kicking your ass is a good idea.
I dunno. It seems like Windows has been doing that with OS X for years now.
Nothing.
All iOS web browsers use the WebKit API and don't actually render themselves. Others cheat by rendering on remote servers and showing you the result only, but it's not allowed to contain its own rendering engine.
This is how Chrome on iPad operates - it's not Chrome at all.
The only purpose I could see for wanting FF on iOS that has to use WebKit and doesn't support native content blockers would be syncing bookmarks. You can sync bookmarks from FF or Chrome for Windows by using Apple's iCloud extension for Chrome and FF.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
My bookmarks are synced between FF and Chrome for Windows, Safari for iOS and Chrome for iOS.
In a desperate effort to follow the "trendy" herd they've made the browser much harder to use. eg: Bookmark folders - good luck trying to create them in the latest versions on OS/X.
We don't want trendy - we just want a browser thats simple and easy to use. Its the web page contents I'm interested in , the not browser developers showboating efforts.
Nothing.
All iOS web browsers use the WebKit API and don't actually render themselves. Others cheat by rendering on remote servers and showing you the result only, but it's not allowed to contain its own rendering engine.
This is how Chrome on iPad operates - it's not Chrome at all.
Well, you're sort of right. But there have been exceptions to the Rule. In 2010, not only did Apple allow Opera to offer a NON-WebKit iOS Browser (Opera Mini, which later switched to WebKit), although it used Remote Rendering to circumvent the WebKit requirement, but more importantly, in 2014, Apple Released the WkWebView API for iOS 8, which brought the Apple's Nitro Javascript Engine to third-party Browser Development for iOS.
So, these days, third-party Browsers on iOS actually have a fighting chance to be on-par (or maybe even a little better), performance-wise, to Mobile Safari.
"Does it sync?" A: Well, kind of - if you use iCloud.
Actually I just used the built in Sync for firefox and it did sync my bookmarks. Otherwise I'm not really sure what the point of it is and I use Firefox as my primary browser. (Chrome is buggy, IE is Windows Only and Safari is Mac only) I'm pretty much exactly who would think about using it and I don't see much point.
Opera Mini does not use WebKit. Instead, it uses the equivalent of Remote Desktop to a rendering server. There are three ways that Mozilla could have used a rendering server instead of WebKit, but each has flaws.
Thank GOD Apple gives me the freedom to choose the browser I want to use and doesn't try to shove open source crap like Firefox down my throat like Linux does when you try to install it.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. You can replace Mozilla Firefox with Google's open-source Chromium browser on most GNU/Linux distributions. Chromium is Chrome minus the non-free parts (Adobe Flash Player for Pepper, video DRM, and a couple other minor pieces).
When was Firefox or Mozilla or Netscape ever stable?
I use Firefox daily to this day and haven't experienced a meaningful stability problem on Windows or a Mac in probably 10 years. Not to say it doesn't have any issues but stability does not appear to be one of them. Maybe some versions on linux had problems but I haven't run into any myself. I honestly can't remember the last time I managed to crash Firefox. Certainly hasn't been within the last 5 years.
We commonly get stuff in Australia or New Zealand first when companies try to test new things in western markets to see what the response is like.
Not just talking about apps, restaurants and other companies do it often.
idk why they mentioned it in the summary though *shrug*.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Delete app ... back to Safari
I have an iPhone 6, my wife has a 6s. I hate browsing anything on the junk of a browser found in these supposed pinnacle-of-technology phones. If I have a few tabs open, switching between them reloads the content which wreaks havoc with AJAX websites (or at best I have to scroll and find my location again).
Really? You must have that special version of iOS. The one nobody else has.
I just checked on my iPhone 6 plus, and I was able to tap between several Safari Tabs, and had deliberately scrolled down into the Pages so that it would be easy to see a reload, and in each case, the switching-time was instantaneous, with absolutely NO reloading or re-rendering.
Oh, and iOS' multitasking has nothing to do with this. Stop trying to explain stuff you don't understand.
Which is why it's no use trying to find an alternative to the godawful Safari Mobile. Any other browser available in iOS will suck in the same way, just with some extra suckiness (like less interoperability with other apps) layered on top.
First off: Mods, why is this "Interesting"? It's just complaining.
Second: In what ways SPECIFICALLY is Safari Mobile "Godawful"? Mobile browsers are generally a little-less feature-laden than desktop browsers; but other than that, it seems to do its job fairly well. It took me a little while to get used to the Tab interface; but it certainly isn't "Godawful".
GP's point still stands
A browser for iOS must use Apple's WebKit. The only exception being if you use a remote server like Opera Mini does.
Mozilla cannot create a version of Firefox that uses Gecko
Opera cannot create a version of Opera that uses Presto (granted that engine is deprecated)
Google cannot create a version of Chrome that uses Blink
Microsoft cannot create a version of Edge that uses EdgeHTML (nor of Internet Explorer that uses Trident)
If your browser's performance advantage is through its rendering engine, you're SOL.
Safari on iOS is awful, it does exactly as the op said, reloads tabs every time you change. Complete utter crap browser.
If you didn't have your head up your ass you would notice.
It depends on RAM. iOS will pretty aggressively throw away tabs, and reload them when you switch back, if you're low on RAM. There are other possible implementations of this obviously, and Apple seem to have gone for the simplest. It can be pretty annoying, but Safari on the desktop will often reload pages when you use the back button, which is even worse.
Safari on iOS is awful, it does exactly as the op said, reloads tabs every time you change. Complete utter crap browser. If you didn't have your head up your ass you would notice.
And if you didn't have your head up your ass, you'd notice that I stated that I had just tested it.
I had three tabs open (actually many more, but I just tested with 3):
1. A Slashdot Comment Thread.
2. The Slashdot "Stories" Page.
3. A Walmart "product" page.
All three were scrolled-down to a random point, so it would be REALLY obvious if they reloaded.
I clicked back and forth between the three tabs, in no particular order, and each came to the foreground instantly, with NO (perceptible) Reload, and without "losing my place" on the Page.
There are definitely some things that I would like to change a little in Safari Mobile; but unless I'm holding it wrong, I am not seeing what the OP complained about, sorry.
And, although I haven't actually TESTED other Mobile Browsers on iOS or Android, I would venture to guess that they pretty much ALL suck Donkey Dick compared with their Desktop counterparts. It's more about the UI than anything else, and I don't think anybody has gotten that quite right in the Mobile Browser world, on any platform. I've used Chrome on Android a bit, too, and I was wholly unimpressed with it, so, meh...
It depends on RAM. iOS will pretty aggressively throw away tabs, and reload them when you switch back, if you're low on RAM. There are other possible implementations of this obviously, and Apple seem to have gone for the simplest. It can be pretty annoying, but Safari on the desktop will often reload pages when you use the back button, which is even worse.
Well, the OP stated this was on an iPhone 6 and 6s; so I assume they have as much RAM as I do with my 6 Plus. I guess, if he is one of those idiots who never "Polices" his open Applications to see if he is running 25 things at a time, then sure, Safari probably marks the memory for inactive Tabs as "unload-able" (sorry, not an iOS dev, don't know the actual term). That would explain it. And as everyone here knows, being in "swapfile" (memory-management) Hell will make ANY system make you want to scream.
And if you say that what Apple has done with memory management regarding Safari Tabs is the "simplest", would you rather that iOS would beat Flash to death using it to shuffle memory pages around? Talk about SLOW... Gotta remember, the Flash that is in Mobile devices is NOT like that which is going into SSDs, as far as write-performance (or endurance) goes.
Engineering is ALWAYS about Tradeoffs. Always.
Nope. If the application has been put in hibernation or has been affected by iOS's memory management strategies (which does happen when you use the multi-tasking features) then when you re-open it and switch to tabs they do indeed reload because it doesn't page the state of the tab to disk when it runs low on resources. Personally it doesn't bother me that much and I prefer to deal with that than the battery life issues that would exist otherwise but let's not pretend it doesn't happen just because it's on the smartphone OS you chose. It's just an OS, dont take its failings as a reflection on you personally.
Ok, you are changing the conditions of the test.
The OP said (or at least implied) that merely switching Tabs (not changing the State of the Application) was enough to cause a Reload of Tabs. He said NOTHING about "Hibernating", "Switching States", etc.
I would expect iOS to reclaim resources when needed, especially from a "Hibernating" App.
I'm not "pretending" about anything. I merely stated that I conducted an admittedly unscientific test, and did not observe the behavior. I wasn't TRYING to "beat" the test; I just tried to duplicate what the OP said/implied, and reported my results, which didn't match his.
That doesn't make me an apologist or a fanboi; just a bad scientist. But then, the OP doesn't win any marks for his (lack of) description of the conditions, which as most of us here know, is ESSENTIAL for testing/troubleshooting a field-reported issue.
"A problem occurred with this web page so it was reloaded." Since the initial iOS 8 upgrade we get this very frequently on our household iPads (2 & 4), severely limiting their usefulness of web browsing and causing problems for apps like Facebook that render pages in an embedded browser view. It's obviously related to JS and primarily seems to involve AJAX calls, but I've had even bare-bones pages crash on me. Plus there are other lovely behaviors like portions of longer pages going blank as you scroll through them, and as at least one other poster has noted, the browser's inscrutable approach to state management -- when switching between tabs or apps it's entirely unpredictable whether the previous page will be retained or reloaded. I kept thinking some of these issues would be addressed in subsequent patches since there were so many reports of similar problems on Apple's support forums. But if anything it's just gotten worse with each update. My wife's older iPad 2 seems to be having lots of problems with the newer iOS versions in general so we've been thinking of upgrading, but without a guarantee of significantly fewer browser issues I'd seriously consider going with an Android tablet instead.
My wife's older iPad 2 seems to be having lots of problems with the newer iOS versions in general so we've been thinking of upgrading, but without a guarantee of significantly fewer browser issues I'd seriously consider going with an Android tablet instead.
Have fun!
So I installed this iOS app, logged into sync, and nothing happens. It says "Last sync: just now" (without delay, which raises doubt) but there are no bookmarks, history, or anything else to prove it synced. Well shit.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Important to understand that due to Apple's restrictions, this is not a port of the Gecko engine to iOS. It simply embeds a Safari's UIWebView into Firefox's 'skin'. Same goes for Chrome on iOS. Furthermore, Apple uses unexposed JavaScript optimizations to make Safari faster and doesn't allow those same optimizations in a UIWebView embedded in third party apps. So, unfortunately, Safari will always be the fastest browser on iOS. Yay, Apple. http://www.extremetech.com/mob... http://www.engadget.com/2011/0...
Here is my home page.
But the browser does not correctly page out tab state so entered text and even the scroll position is not saved, it just does a dumb reload. This is something that could and should be improved so I don't see why you're so defensive about it.
Oh, so you've seen the Source code for Mobile Safari? You would have to have done that, since in iOS, each Application is responsible for managing its own memory.
Oh, and two other things: Why does the OP require YOU to fight his battles? And do you not recognize sarcasm when you see it?
And one final thing: I think you will find that I covered the "different use cases" when I suggested that he might be one of those people who just launches Application after Application, until their system grinds to a halt. I've seen it many, many times with both iOS and OSX, because neither OS does a particularly "in your face" job of informing the user about which Apps are actually running.
As for you, I suggest you edumacate yourself on iOS Memory Management. Here's a pretty good discussion regarding same. It explains a lot about why Safari is doing what it's doing under conditions of high RAM pressure, and why iOS doesn't just cache stuff out to a swap file.
For me, using iOS and waiting for Firefox on iOS was a conscious choice, and I will try to explain why I disagree with the majority here that the synching feature is unimportant because FF on iOS is using Gecko:
- On iOS > 8 Apple is encrypting the important files with the user password, so that they can not circumvent the encryption. So I can be shure that when entering a fife eyes state without a resetted device I will only be sent home when asked for my password for my switched of iPhone, not having the content compromised. That is a "best effort" against border bullies, not a solution against the NSA specifically targeting me. IOS throws away the key if the password was entered wrong ten times, leaving the phone unreadable. Workaround is to reboot directly after every attempt, good luck with a complex password. On Android, the encryption key is readable even after factory reset on many devices.
- Safari synch is NOT encrypted end-to-end, making it possible for secret services to mass collect the data of peoples browsing history and bookmarks. Firefox is encrypting the synch end-to-end. That is why I deactivated this feature on Safari and waited for Firefox on iOS. The slow rendering speed is annozing, but every security improvement on standard devices comes with disadvantages. It is a matter of how much convinience could be traded for what gain in security.
- On iOS, I could synch the address book, the calendar and tasks with any standard caldav or carddav service. Like posteo.de, which does not know it's customers and offers me the possibility to encrypt everything with my password. On Android, I will need to install third party software to do that.
Doing the best to protect my privacy including using vpn from time to time does not mean that I am dark to the secret services. But making it harder for them is important. That is why I chose iOS over Android despite the annoying golden cage and that is why I choose Firefox over Safari despite the fact that the rendering time is slower because it needs to use a crippled safari rendering engine. Oh, and I do not trust chrome synch, although it offers password protected synch.
Filtering ads is one thing, I use privacy badger on the desktop and a vpn that only knows my serial number to stop trackers, because this data is collected in large quantities by the secret services.
All of this is best effort to avoid mass collection and Apple has no clean record at all:
- Up until iOS 8, the most interesting data (messages, browsing history, address book) was only encrypted with the cpu-password, so the data was readable once the iPhone was connected to a computer containing the right tools.
- icloud security is a joke. The data is not encrypted with a user specific key, making bulk collection easy. Except for the backup, which can be encrypted, but I won't trust a cloud backup to store the most important passwords.
- icloud is mandatory for notes starting iOS 9, making it risky to use it. I will need to use a third party app and vpn to my personal cloud at home in order to synch. Before that, it could easily be synched with my more trustworthy IMAP-provider.
- Synching photos and safari can only be done with icloud, which is a mess.
Thank you, apple.
Apple over Android, because black phone as an alternative is expensive and the loss in convinience is too big for me. Firefox over Safari because I want to synch on multiple devices without mass collection. I do not think that the world is black and white.
But people have a choice to make it harder for "them". Block trackers so that using services like facebook responsibly is possible without being tracked on multiple sites. Try to synch more secure instead of giving the information freely to the mass collectors or losing any modern convinience. That is not easily possible with safari, but with firefox.
That is why I do not agree with people claiming that the slower rendering of FF on iOS using webkit is a deal breaker. That is why I do not find the choice between Android and iOS so easy, everything comes with a price.
As far as I'm concerned, high quality text reflow is the only essential feature in a mobile web browser. Unfortunately, that means Opera is currently my only choice. I remember a development version of Firefox had a shitty version of text reflow, but the feature was removed, presumably because if you're not gonna do it right, just don't do it.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Agreed. The web browser in Android is much much better than the one in iOS.
Hmm. Funny then. Why does this review say differently?
Oh, I know. He must be an Apple shill.
Riiiiight.
I really wonder how it is then, that I have an iPad Mini 2, and can run two synthesizer apps, a sequencer app, all in the background, listening to their output, while browsing in Safari and switching between two single-html-file webapps, and they work just fine. If you call that "pseudo"-multitasking, I'm OK. Whatever, it works for me.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.