Firefox 79 for Android devices is being rolled out across the planet, arriving in the US on August 27th and much to the dismay of users that have been upgraded already, the new version is working as Mozilla intended. The problem is that GeckoView, the new mobile browsing engine implemented in this version doesn’t play nicely with many existing add-ons and they will work not until they are redesigned by their creators.
That is only the beginning of the litany of complaints that The Register heard when they looked into it. In at least some cases the back button no longer exists to let you return to a previous page, which will be something of a problem for most users. Other users are running into crashes when searching on Google, or even when trying to report a crash which they just experienced.
It is good to have an alternative to Chrome’s Blink mobile browsing engine, however it would be better if it was a viable alternative which worked at least as well if not more effectively. The update is also one way, once you have updated to the new version you cannot roll back, and removing the application and trying to install an older version is a non-trivial challenge.
As of now, the remaining three quarters of people at Firefox that survived the recent layoffs consider the new version to be working as it should; the third party extensions which no longer work are the in the individual creator’s purview and not theirs. The Register posted the official statement from Mozilla here, if you are curious what the exact wording of their reply was.
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