![]() The most recent development occurred on March 23rd, 2022, when Mozilla published a manifesto claiming that add-ons and extensibility are among their core values for the web. Mozilla's only response was to close the issue with no comment other than "This is as designed." On August 3rd, 2021, nearly a year after Fenix's disastrous launch, a user opened an issue to criticize the inability to sideload even signed add-ons even on Beta and Nightly you must instead follow an arcane, obtuse process involving user collections on AMO. Months later, on January 20th, they "wrapped up their initial plans to enable extension support for Firefox for Android" with a laughably useless update that allowed users to install the whitelisted add-ons from AMO in addition to the built-in add-ons menu. In a news article on August 25th, Mozilla pledged to offer at least 30 add-ons for Fenix by the end of 2020 as of today, they offer only 18. Nonetheless, these same excuses were made in form-letter replies to negative Play Store reviews when Fenix finally launched circa August 23rd. To this day, they haven't detailed what these issues actually are, nor how compatibility is supposed to improve when they intentionally make all add-ons incompatible by default. It seems to be around early August 2020 that they first started making vague excuses about "security and compatibility" issues in Fennec. However, the only links available for following their progress are an old GitHub project page mostly full of 2019 stuff, and an add-ons blog that hasn't received any mobile-related updates since late January 2020 (and if we ignore useless updates, then it's even more dead). I feel like at some point, I should write a full timeline of Fenix's (the browser redesign's) issues and publish it somewhere, but for now, here's some of my notes regarding their total disinterest in communicating with anyone about add-on support, and seemingly in the support itself.īack in 2019, they expressed enthusiasm for adding add-on support. I'll need a moment for that, because Firefox for Android's terrible memory management means if I don't post first, I risk losing my text if I hunt down the links while drafting it. When they initially ditched add-on support, they offered multiple places where we could "track their progress" on restoring support, but each quickly became a ghost town. ![]() On mobile, they haven't even deigned to add anything new to the paltry little whitelist for months on end. Even on desktop, the experience of developing add-ons is miserable due to bugs that have been left to rot for years. If we weigh Mozilla's actual actions against the few words they've offered on the subject, there's no reason to believe that Mozilla values add-ons anymore. Outside of work, Manuel enjoys a good film or TV show, loves to travel, and you will find him roaming one of Berlin's many museums, cafés, cinemas, and restaurants occasionally.When the possibility to use all the Firefox extensions on Android on the stable version? This helps him gain perspective on the mobile industry at large and gives him multiple points of reference in his coverage. Since then, he has mostly been faithful to the Google phone lineup, though these days, he is also carrying an iPhone in addition to his Pixel phone. After his HTC One S refused to connect to mobile internet despite three warranty repairs, he quickly switched to a Nexus 4, which he considers his true first Android phone. Manuel's first steps into the Android world were plagued by issues. He isn't shy to dig into technical backgrounds and the nitty-gritty developer details, either. Manuel studied Media and Culture studies in Düsseldorf, finishing his university career with a master's thesis titled "The Aesthetics of Tech YouTube Channels: Production of Proximity and Authenticity." His background gives him a unique perspective on the ever-evolving world of technology and its implications on society. He has been covering tech news and reviewing devices since joining Android Police as a news writer in 2019. Manuel Vonau is Android Police's Google Editor, with expertise in Android, Chrome, and other Google products - the very core of Android Police’s content.
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