some questions/suggestions/bug reports
hi first of all i want to say that i love mozilla and i'm a big fan of the free software movement. i have some questions, suggestions and bug reports about some mozilla projects and here they are:
1.) since mozilla is a part of the free software community i think it should promote free software more. i suggest instead of ”firefox. get it free on google play" it should read "firefox. get it free on f-droid" i don't say you shouldn't include the link to google play at all, but f-droid and the direct download should come first.
2.) mozilla stumbler. i love it, there is just one thing that annoys me. after about half an hour of taking a walk the maps i loaded online before i left home dissappear. i have osmAnd installed and the offline maps of my whole country.downloaded, why can't stumbler just use those offline maps?
3.) firefox for android has the option to 'request desktop site'. i think it's a bit inconsequent that this doesn't even work on all parts of the mozilla homepage.
thanks and kind regards, paul
All Replies (5)
The Android Firefox and Beta versions manually installed currently do not get updates hence why Google Play is used primarily.
Mozilla tried to get Android Firefox in Amazon appstore (Firefox 9.0) but Amazon resigned and modified the apk which caused problems that has yet to be worked out with Amazon.
Modified by James
Hi james, Thanks for the quick answer, although it's not really an answer to any of my questions. I get that manual download shouldn't be the primary link, since you need an app-repository to update firefox. That's why I suggested F-Droid. Mozilla should make sure that F-Droid always has the newest Firefox Version instead of trying to get it onto anothe repository that promotes proprietary software
1) most users don't have F-droid and enabling unknown sources is a tricky procedure at best
2) Create an issue on MozStumbler to increase the map tile cache size? https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/issues
3) request desktop site is a rather basic tool that just re-requests the current page with a desktop Firefox user agent. If the site does not have any code to detect this change or is using responsive design techniques it will not work. We would rather spend time working with content creators to deliver well designed and functional mobile websites than get desktop content primarily. Which is done at https://webcompat.com/
thanks for your answers.
kbrosnan said
1) most users don't have F-droid...
Thats what I'm saying and what I think Mozilla (wich has lots of Users) should try to change.
and enabling unknown sources is a tricky procedure at best
I don't know for other Android devices but on my Fairphone it's a single click in the Settings App. And I'm redirected there when I try to install an App from an unknown source.
We need to overcome a lot of inertia just to get someone to install Firefox on an Android device.Any road blocks or complications that are added to a page greatly reduce the install rate. On a nexus device running 5.0 it is a minimum of 7 taps/swipes to enable unknown sources plus a big scary dialog.
Mozilla has never been absolutest about OSS/FLOSS. Firefox would have never existed for Windows if that were the case. We will assist projects where we are able and glad to educate users about the web, something something mission :). We can't force the general public to sign on to the FLOSS way of life. Much of the world just is happy that software works (most of the time).