Congratulations

[Ben Bucksch]

Situation: I'm a long-time Mozilla developer. My devices are an Android 2.2 tablet with 256 MB RAM and a Defy mobile with 2.3 and 512 MB RAM.


Hey Firefox Android team,

I had purchased several Android devices, in small part because I knew I could install Firefox on them. This is also one of the first things I did, 1 year ago. It was quite a disappointment. I tried a few builds thereafter. However, I found it to be unusable. It took ages to load, and once it did, it look over most of the RAM, pushing out all other apps, so that task switching (e.g. to music player) was unusable. Also, the zooming and rewrapping of the main text section of the webpage didn't work well, and after a manual zoom, often the font was so bad that I couldn't read much, and I still had to scroll horizontally. Unusable.

I soon gave up and wrote off Firefox Android as hopeless. Esp. the RAM problem I thought you could never overcome. This is why I didn't try it again since a long time. (I am not sure whether I tried an Android UI Fennec before, but I thought I did.) Then, 2 days ago, I downloaded the 16.0 nightly.

Wow, I was surprised. Impressed.

1. It loads fast.
2. The RAM usage doesn't seem to be a problem anymore, the device acted the same as if I had used the Android browser, no pushing other apps out of RAM anymore.
3. It feels snappy, the UI reacts quickly.
4. The UI is great.
1. I can quickly switch tabs, or close tabs. This had annoyed me to no end about the Android browser, particularly on 2.x tablets, but also on mobile phones.
2. Accessing bookmarks (and setting them) is fast. Again, better than Android browser.
   
5. Zooming and rewrapping of main text works. Even on normal, non-mobile webpages, it seems to find the main text section, zoom on it, and wrap it for my screen width. Font size is comfortable (maybe a tad too big) and easy to read. Manually zooming out didn't work as nicely as on Android browser, though.

You bagged the Android 2.x browser (I don't have an Android 4.x device), I now feel like they have no chance against Fennec anymore, modulo preinstalls of course. You really turned the ship around.

You're on the winning course, full sail ahead! This is fantastic work. Thanks, guys.

---

A few suggestions, if I may:

1. As said, manual zoom could work better
2. Pay attention for privacy. It's highly sensible particularly on mobile. For example, when I try to enter a URL in the URLbar, you're calling Google Search suggestions. Don't do that. By making contact to Google servers, you have revealed information to Google that I had carefully tried to hide before, namely the link between my DSL IP address (fixed) and my mobile IP address. The latter is a national pool, and I try to use that only on mobile. I live in a small village, and my DSL IP hostname shows my village, and use an alternative operator, so I am trivial to single out. To download Fennec, I had to switch to WiFi, and I wanted to test Fennec specifically on a website that I know doesn't use Google tracking, by merely by entering the URL, you had contacted Google. Damage done. I then found the pref to disable these Search suggestions, but that was too late.
   
   Privacy is the one thing that Google cannot compete on, that's our strength. Do *not* imitate Google in these respects, be very and clearly different, upholding highest, impeccable standards, then you have a good selling point for Firefox against Google, also on Android.

That's it, really, just these 2 points. The rest was about perfect. Thanks, guys! Fantastic work, congratulations.

Have fun partying!

Ben

[Ben Bucksch]

I forgot one thing: It's loading webpages a *lot* faster, too. The
Android 2.x browser often takes 30 seconds showing nothing, then shows
the first part of the webpage, then takes another 30-60 seconds to show
the whole page. Firefox shows the page within seconds, incremental
reflow, really good. It feels 10 times faster.

[Mark Finkle]

On 06/26/2012 08:45 AM, Ben Bucksch wrote:

> I soon gave up and wrote off Firefox Android as hopeless. Esp. the RAM
> problem I thought you could never overcome. This is why I didn't try it
> again since a long time. (I am not sure whether I tried an Android UI
> Fennec before, but I thought I did.) Then, 2 days ago, I downloaded the
> 16.0 nightly.
>
> Wow, I was surprised. Impressed.

We're glad you tried the latest Nightly. It's been many months of work,
but it is clearly paying off.

> You bagged the Android 2.x browser (I don't have an Android 4.x device),
> I now feel like they have no chance against Fennec anymore, modulo
> preinstalls of course. You really turned the ship around.
>
> You're on the winning course, full sail ahead! This is fantastic work.
> Thanks, guys.

Thanks for the kind words Ben.

> A few suggestions, if I may:
>

> 1. As said, manual zoom could work better

We are continually working to improve speed and behavior of panning and
zooming. With a solid foundation now in place, we should be able to make
some small improvements over the next releases.

> 2. Pay attention for privacy. It's highly sensible particularly on

> mobile. For example, when I try to enter a URL in the URLbar, you're
> calling Google Search suggestions. Don't do that.

We agree that the search suggestion feature is a double-edge sword. Many
people like it, since stock browsers do it, but it is a privacy concern.
We are working with the Mozilla Privacy group to figure out a solid way
forward regarding this feature.

Thanks for the feedback

[Mark Finkle]

On 06/26/2012 08:45 AM, Ben Bucksch wrote:

> 2. Pay attention for privacy. It's highly sensible particularly on

> mobile. For example, when I try to enter a URL in the URLbar, you're
> calling Google Search suggestions. Don't do that.

I filed a bug for looking into solutions:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769145