Honest question: is it simply the fact you can't use a Gecko engine on iOS that makes it useless to you?
My impression is that the Firefox shell offered is still able to provide the various anti-tracking privacy features that many would point to Firefox for, and the variety of browser shells available should mean that you'd be able to find a UI to your liking if Safari's isn't.
At that point, the only thing I can see missing is a non-webkit engine. I get that that's an annoyance and definitely on the same anti-competitive level as 00s era IE, but by and large web developers account for it and it works acceptably. As much as I'd need it to for mobile browsing.
Would just be interested to know if there's something more I'm missing.
Gecko (Firefox's native browser engine) is also a mobile browser engine, and Apple's anti-competitive WebKit requirement prevents browsers such as Gecko-based Firefox from being released on iOS. By forcing the use of WebKit, which is much more similar to Chrome's Blink than Gecko is, Apple is indeed limiting browser engine competition.
True.
Unfortunately, Gecko doesn't have the weight behind it that Webkit has and the most contributions to Gecko stem from Mozilla itself.
Slightly off-topic: since a customer doesn't care what rendering engine they are using, I believe Firefox is making a mistake by not releasing a WebView based Firefox browser for iOS (like Chrome did). If only to provide tabs/booksmarks syncing.
Without getting into the weeds around all the Apple debates lately what are some practical advantages I would get from running a proper version of Firefox with Gecko on iOS vs the WebKit wrapper? or is it more about encouraging competition and pushing mobile browsers forward?
I use Firefox just fine on iOS. Sure, it's just user chrome and Firefox Sync, but those are the things I care a lot more about than the rendering engine.
I'd love to support Gecko on mobile too, as I've moved the vast majority of my desktop usage to it, but Webkit is still fighting the Blink/Chromium hegemony, too, and that's still fighting the good fight.
Firefox on iOS is built with WebKit, not Gecko [1]. IIRC, it's because Apple doesn't like engines that are not WebKit. Chromium uses Blink, which is a fork of WebKit, so Firefox for iOS and Chromium are relatives in a sense.
If WebKit was maintained better than Gecko on Windows, Android and Linux you might have a point. But it's not. The build system is on life-support for non-Darwin targets and Apple barely even acknowledges it exists outside the context of Safari. Mozilla would end up building a browser from scratch either way, they might as well keep what they have already and not do Apple's dirty work for them.
Again, as a Firefox user I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. Switching Firefox to WebKit would actually ruin the experience, and force me onto Chrome if I wanted my browser functionality back. Unless you're explicitly trying to harm browser competition, there is ostensibly no benefit to this strategy.
Also, Apple is a prudish partner anyways, and the last company you'd want to trust with ensuring user freedom. Mozilla would sooner leave iOS altogether.
Firefox is not my primary browser on macOS for similar reasons. Given how similar iOS is to macOS I wouldn’t expect the situation to be much different with a hypothetical Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS — the performance and efficiency isn’t quite there compared to WebKit-based stuff.
There’s platform-agnostic issues too, however. Firefox is my primary browser on Windows and Linux, but it has a pile of UI papercuts which I’ve kinda-fixed with userchrome.css hacks, and the result is underwhelming (as is the possibility of these hacks periodically breaking with updates). It’s enough of a frustration that forking Firefox to properly fix them would be tempting if keeping up with the firehose of security patches from mainline weren’t so daunting.
My biggest wish is for Gecko to re-gain embedding support on desktop platforms so I can build my own browser around it, making keeping it secure as simple as updating dependencies.
Mozilla develops the Gecko browser engine, but Firefox on iOS uses the WebKit browser engine provided by the system. If Mozilla were allowed to use Gecko on iOS, they would, trust me.
I was mainly referring to how every browser app on iOS is forced have Safari underneath. The wiki page on Firefox for iOS [1] mentions this in some detail - it cannot use Gecko like it does on desktop and Android, it must use WebKit instead.
It would be like selling a Jaguar with a Ferrari engine; still a weirdo, but at least fully functional. You can't seriously claim Mobile Webkit to be to a (theoretical) Gecko-on-iOS like a Fiat to a Jaguar.
And people are not "too dumb to realize". The whole point of the HTML standard is to make sure that all browser render the same. The whole point of the standard, and all the efforts of all the browsers, go towards a single goal: making all pages render equal on all browsers, that is making people NOT realize there is a difference; the technical problem of different codebases exhibiting different behaviors in rendering is just that, a technical problem to be solved.
I maintain that the developer-centric position of focusing on Gecko and thus refusing a iOS port as "useless", is actually doing Firefox lots of harm in its adoption. Firefox is the product, not Gecko.
Moreover, even if Apple eventually lifted the restriction, you want to be ready that day; you would still have to port the whole browser in addition to Gecko, including non-trivial issues like the extensions, and coordinating a solution for using extensions on all mobile platforms require years; the ecosystem of extensions need to adapt and evolve over the time. Releasing, maintaining, optimizing and evolving a Webkit-based Firefox on iOS would be still a gigantic effort and would still bring benefit; you're then free not to use it, if you only need Firefox as a way to use Gecko.
The Firefox I've been running on my Mac for 15 years at this point must be a figment of my imagination.
Of course I would love to see Gecko running on iOS. I just don't like the possibility of Google's browser dominance become even stronger either. It's a hard one.
Firefox on iOS is Webkit wrapped in a Firefox UI shell. It does not use Gecko, and so is very different from desktop and Android Firefox, much more like Safari actually.
Er, I thought someone had already (like, years ago) written a version of Firefox for iOS that used Gecko, and the only problem was that they couldn't publish it in the app store?
My impression is that the Firefox shell offered is still able to provide the various anti-tracking privacy features that many would point to Firefox for, and the variety of browser shells available should mean that you'd be able to find a UI to your liking if Safari's isn't.
At that point, the only thing I can see missing is a non-webkit engine. I get that that's an annoyance and definitely on the same anti-competitive level as 00s era IE, but by and large web developers account for it and it works acceptably. As much as I'd need it to for mobile browsing.
Would just be interested to know if there's something more I'm missing.
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