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Mozilla Launches Focus By Firefox, a Content Blocker For iOS 9 (mozilla.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-kids-on-the-adblock dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched an iOS content blocker called Focus by Firefox. It's a "content blocker" because although Focus is capable of blocking some ads, this latest project from the non-profit is aimed at stopping trackers. The free app is made possible thanks to iOS 9's content-blocking feature, which requires some setting up. Like with any content blocker, after you download Focus, you'll have to activate Focus' content-blocking features within your system-wide iOS settings (launching the app will provide a guide to finish configuration). It's worth noting that Focus only works with Safari. Mozilla says, "This was not our choice—Apple has chosen to make content blocking unavailable to third party browsers on iOS." Here is the Focus GitHub repo and its feedback tool.

30 comments

  1. Oh Apple, you so crazy by phishybongwaters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And there's Apple creating that wonderful eco system again, by limiting useful features to their dying dinosaur of a browser, because that's the only reason safari even shows up in any browser lists, because apple forces you to use it. And I thought it was bad when they enabled "other browsers" that infact are merely a skin ontop of safari, this right here takes the cake. "We've listened to your concerns about privacy and tracking, and we care. But only enough to position our browser to be the only one on our platform that can use these new features" Get bent with your IOS bullshit.

    1. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

      I don't think adding a "do not track" setting is going to do much of anything, anyway.

    2. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So do you just check off your Android fan-boy card yourself after a post like this or is there a more official mechanism?

    3. Re: Oh Apple, you so crazy by corychristison · · Score: 1

      The thing about Safari that really irks me is they discontinued Safari for Windows a few years ago. Trying to debug a website in Safari is a nightmare if you don't own a Mac.

      Yes, I am well aware of the W3C standards that all browsers follow (*rolls eyes*). Yes I am aware of Webkit and how it is open source... they dont seem to use Vanilla webkit in Safari.

      Unfortunately Safari is much like IE in the sense that it only works on what Apple wants it to work on. That also means it is tied to specific hardware, too. Personally i find their products overpriced and anti-consumer, so I do not purchase them.

    4. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What makes you assume OP likes Android any better? He/She/It didn't even mention Android. Project much?

    5. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by BotanistPrime · · Score: 1

      Yes, surely someone on earth actually likes a windows phone

    6. Re: Oh Apple, you so crazy by Dog-Cow · · Score: 0

      Personally, I find you to be a bigoted piece of shit, so I just wrinkle my nose and flush the toilet.

    7. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by KGIII · · Score: 1

      *hangs head in shame and slowly raises his hand*

      Err... Umm... I kinda do like my Windows phone. I plan on buying a better one shortly because it turns out that my carrier is allowing SIM card activations on non-branded phones. I didn't know that 'cause, err... Well. I didn't know that for REASONS...

      I don't actually really pick out my phone or pay the bill. I have that taken care of on my behalf. I just said, "Get me a Windows phone please?" They ordered it and shipped it to my last stop. I guess I pay the bill but I don't actually physically pay the bill or anything like that. I don't even really know exactly what it costs but I did look not too long ago and they charge a bunch for a 25 GB plan. No, I don't actually know why I picked such a large plan except, "I might need it some day."

      But, to the point, I kind of like my Windows phone. I've not had it for very long but I've enjoyed it so far. I don't think I actually have an app installed that didn't come default, however. I have browsed on it, that was nice. Oh, it sends texts and emails. It does GPS. Some Samsung, something or other, from US Cellular. I'll probably find a better/more powerful one and use that now that I know I can.

      I haven't found it, or the tablet, to be useful form factors for anything that interests me. I've tried but I just can't get into it. It's sad. The idea that I have that much compute power in my pocket and I can't actually think of a damned thing that I want to do with it other than waste some time reading the internet while I'm bored.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re: Oh Apple, you so crazy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing about Safari that really irks me is they discontinued Safari for Windows a few years ago. Trying to debug a website in Safari is a nightmare if you don't own a Mac.

      Yes, I am well aware of the W3C standards that all browsers follow (*rolls eyes*). Yes I am aware of Webkit and how it is open source... they dont seem to use Vanilla webkit in Safari.

      Unfortunately Safari is much like IE in the sense that it only works on what Apple wants it to work on. That also means it is tied to specific hardware, too. Personally i find their products overpriced and anti-consumer, so I do not purchase them.

      I'm writing this on Chromium because Firefox is a pain, Safari 5 for windows is a pain (the fonts rock though), IE is a pain, and Google Chrome spies. They are all on this machine more or less for historical purposes.
      If you really must deal with Safari, your office may pay for a quasi-emulation product called Browserstack which relies on Flash so you can screencast from the tons of target environments to your browser canvas. Nothing beats having the real device, though. However, on principle I've avoided Macs after my beige G3 from the nineties, even when work gave me an option when the laptop refresh date came up

    9. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      And there's Apple creating that wonderful eco system again, by limiting useful features to their dying dinosaur of a browser, because that's the only reason safari even shows up in any browser lists, because apple forces you to use it.

      Let's ignore the "dying dinosaur" bit (because while it is utter bullshit, is also just off-topic fluff)

      Yes, Apple created a new content block feature for iOS 9 that is so much faster than what the others are doing, people actually find it a useful feature. Yes, it is (currently) limited just to Safari, because Apple wants to iron out the majority of bugs without having the bugs of other programs influence how those bugs actually show up - just like they did with the vastly improved Nitro JavaScript Engine in iOS 4.3. So just like with Nitro, they didn't take anything away from users of other browsers (or WebView apps). And like with Nitro, they will make the feature available to other browsers in later iOS versions.

      But unlike Nitro, nobody needs Apple to include content blocking into their browser - iCab Mobile has been filtering stuff since it came to iOS in 2009 (IOW 2 years before Firefox for mobile even came out). So Mozilla's whining only wants to sidestep the issue why their browser still isn't able to do what a browser from a single guy can.

      BTW, can anybody tell me what's so fucking special about Mozilla's blocker compared to the many hundreds already available?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    10. Re:Oh Apple, you so crazy by allo · · Score: 1

      Maybe some people hate all (mobile) OS? Why do you need to like one to dislike another?

  2. Oh good I was starting to worry. by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

    With the news over the past week I was beginning to worry that Mozilla was going to actually focus on making Firefox a nice browser. Good to see my faith was not misplaced.

    1. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

      With the news over the past week I was beginning to worry that Mozilla was going to actually focus on making Firefox a nice browser. Good to see my faith was not misplaced.

      Mozilla hasn't tried to add any real improvements for a while now just killing customizability (removing thaeming option removing add-on api's.) and adding bloat.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    2. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course they are. That's why they just announced that they're dropping the FirefoxOS thing, the ads, etc. But of course, it's en vogue to immediately jump down their throats for doing something that deviates from "just making a browser" instead of well, being what Mozilla has always been about.

    3. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

      Ah, Slashdot. If only you guys truly knew what you were talking about, and could harness your baseless negativity for some good. It's like you guys are bots hard-wired to spout this drivel and upvote yourselves.

    4. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla has always been about making a browser. It got bloated, because like Netscape it tried to include an HTML editor, mail client, and newsreader. So, Firefox was born -- to focus on just making a browser.

      Then, Firefox wanted more money for its nonprofit browser-developing swimming pools of social justice cash. So, they sold out and wired in Pocket and some chat software nobody uses or ever heard of (now Firefox Hello, which still nobody uses): more bloat. But that wasn't enough, so they decided to build a whole fucking operating system based on Firefox, FirefoxOS. And we thought Mozilla was bloated when it just had an editor, mail, and newsgroups... now Firefox is all about the User Experience and Discovering Content (i.e. advertising) and Social Justice (i.e. purging employees whose private views do not conform to the groupthink). Soon they'll move from FirefoxOS to the Philosophy of Firefox or Republic of Firefox or something far worse and more bloated.

      It's time for Firefox to die and for a new, simple browser to take its place: something without a foundation, a mission statement, an ecosystem, or any of that bureaucratic nonsense that gives non-coders a seat at the table.

    5. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by narcc · · Score: 1

      That's why they just announced that they're dropping the FirefoxOS thing,

      That's not happening:

      We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.

      Development continues. All they've actually done is stop signing contracts with OEMs for smartphones. Imagine if Google stopped developing their own smartphones or stopped partnering with third-parties to develop smartphones but continued to develop Android. This is the same thing. They're in no way dropping the OS..

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    6. Re:Oh good I was starting to worry. by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Two things, both a bit disparate...

      Do you use Firefox? (This may lead to a follow-up question.)

      Have you tried Opera? (Opera is based on Chromium and has the spyware stripped out and is actually a very nice browser with a great ecosystem.)

      Also, if you want to help curate a browser then maybe Vivaldi is something for you? They're still reasonably new and one might have more ability to influence the direction with a new project than they will with an entrenched project.

      For the past few weeks, I've been mulling over Thomas Jefferson's turn of phrase about the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. I'm thinking that the tree of software must be refreshed from time to time with the tears of users. When the tipping point is reached there will be a fork and, like a phoenix, a new browser will rise from the ashes. In order for that to happen, the old must die. So, I'm suggesting we avoid bloodshed over a simple software refresh but that we may want to consider writing something new?

      It's not like we're a bunch of unskilled people. I mean hell, it's not like we don't have time. By default, I'm off in a browser somewhere and have at least one Slashdot tab open even if I'm not reading it. That could, just as easily, be reading and working on documentation or something. (We'll need trolls and mod points to get us motivated.)

      Maybe we should build SlashFoxPaleExporaChromePeraNX? (Oddly, I picture this monstrosity containing every language known to man, some unknown, and having more "features" and bloat than anything else but, hey, it'd keep us busy for a little while.)

      Okay, so more than two things. But I started off with just two things!

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  3. privacy.trackingprotection.enabled by PineHall · · Score: 2

    I wonder in regular firefox is the same Disconnect list used when you set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled? It is a nice feature that is unknown to most people. I like it because pages do load faster.

    1. Re:privacy.trackingprotection.enabled by chefmonkey · · Score: 1

      I wonder in regular firefox is the same Disconnect list used when you set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled?

      It is.

    2. Re:privacy.trackingprotection.enabled by antdude · · Score: 1

      There are issues with it though. See my https://groups.google.com/foru...|sort:date/mozilla.support.firefox/N3wPDW8YEJk/GcCVilBOBQAJ (or http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kc... ) newsgroup thread that I recently discovered with http://ocregister.com/ and http://rottentomatoes.com/ 's e-mail address login. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  4. Not the right focus by Kinwolf · · Score: 2

    I've been asking them for years to get back their focus. Obviously they didn't understand my request.

  5. Restrictions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's only for the iphone 5s & iphone 6. Which blows because the latest IOS runs on 4 as well. Not sure what the deal is.

    1. Re: Restrictions by cfalcon · · Score: 1

      Content blockers are only supported on newer hardware. This is an Apple decision, ostensibly based on performance.

  6. Not really useful, at least on my hardware by movdqa · · Score: 1

    I tried it on an iPhone 6 and the problem was that the ad-blocker slowed down Safari more than the ads do. So I disabled it and am back to using Reader Mode. I use AdBlock Plus on my Mac but it's a very fast system where the overhead from the AdBlock software isn't noticeable.

    1. Re:Not really useful, at least on my hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are doing something very wrong (like using a dozen content blockers simultaneously maybe?). Benchmarks for all the top content blockers show page rendering time typically cut in half or a third ( example).

    2. Re:Not really useful, at least on my hardware by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1
      https://brooksreview.net/2015/09/content-blocker-test/:

      Which content blocker for iOS 9 is the best? I have no clue, but I did test a bunch to find out which one is the fastest. ... When I tried with all blockers on, I did not get the performance of the fastest blocker, and instead got performance on the slower side of the blockers tested. It is my recommendation that you only use one blocker at a time.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  7. If you don't like being tracked,... by matbury · · Score: 1

    ...don't use a tracking device as your computer. Smartphones are designed primarily as tracking devices; why do you think Google et al. like them so much? Don't wanna be tracked? Use computers that you own and have control over. A simple hosts file with an appropriate list of known tracking URIs is enough to significantly inhibit the worst offenders and block out some annoying ads while you're at it. Tracking is pretty much impossible to block without resorting to extreme measures like using Linux + Tor.

    1. Re:If you don't like being tracked,... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      With a little work, you can be tracked if you use Tor to browse "clearnet." So long as you remain on domains that end in .onion it's still assumed that you're safe - provided you have things like scripting enabled and no extensions loaded.

      Oddly, the sites on the Tor network remind me of the internet in the mid-1990s. I wonder if they're follow a similar path.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  8. Step 1 to blocking trackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Step 1: do not use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge. Do use a browser that supports extensions such as umatrix, ublock origin, https everywhere and other privacy protection software.
    Step 2: if you are using an Apple product, stab yourself repeatedly in the neck with a sharp knife.