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What's better about bottom navigator bar than top?

I honestly have no idea which one is better, but after having it at the top (and all other applications seem to have their menu/nav on the top as well) for YEARS, it's a very hard sell to my muscle memory.

Faster is good, disabling my extensions simply sucks. Extensions were the main reason I use firefox on mobile at all.

Now I'm looking at obscure browsers like Kiwi just to get working extensions on a mobile browser.



Bottom navigation bar works great for me because it's easier to use with my thumb.

I think Mozilla had to choose to either wait a long time to get full extension support and miss the train, or release early. I am also unhappy with not having the extensions I use, but I think this was the right choice. They plan to support the whole extension API eventually. Also aren't they the only ones who support extensions on Mobile?


No, Mozilla did not have to choose. They could have offered both as options! They could have allowed the end consumer to control when to upgrade (some would go quickly, some would wait until their key extensions work available). I'll admit, the majority of people will upgrade only when it's the default.


Offer both as options takes costs for development. Allow users to keep old version is insecure.


The toolbar on the bottom is easier to reach on big phones. But also you can decide whether you want it on the top or bottom in settings so it really isn't a big deal.

Losing extensions really does suck, but you can at least install a lot of the big ones like uBlock, Dark Reader etc.


You can move the URL bar to the top, but you can't move the "new tab" button to the top.


Recommendation: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid

This is a fork that seems to be popular (enough to show up first in my search). It looks and feels like the Firefox I lost with 79. Firefox Sync brought most of my data back in minutes.


Hello, I have found one android browser based on Chrome that have extension (addon) support : "Kiwi Browser". https://kiwibrowser.com/ note: Its extension store is the Google Chrome Store.


Caution : the last update is from a long time ago. See also the Roadmap text at this page : https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src


I don‘t have any issue with the bottom nav bar. But where the heck is the „back“ button? It can‘t be that hard to put a back button there...


Does your phone not come with a back button? How do you navigate "back" in Android? The lack of back button seems to be a common complaint, and I just can't understand it. EDIT: "I just can't understand it" means I'm evidently lacking information about how other people use their phones, so I'm hoping someone who does understand can explain it to me.


I get that feeling but android does not have the full functionalities either. If you do a longpress on the backbutton in either browser on either platform, you will get your history. I don't think android has that longpress for the backbutton.


Previous mobile FF on android had this functionality. They removed it with the update.


Long-pressing the back button to get the history actually works in the Nightly version. I didn't realize that the Stable version doesn't have this feature.


The issue is probably me, by using non-Android stuff most of the time but having an Android tablet. So I have a „back“ button on my iPhone, on my Desktop Firefox (and Chrome and so on), but I can‘t have one on my Androit tablet.

So I‘m the one that usually swipes (that somehow doesn‘t work either...) or click the back button (because that‘s what I‘m used to do). Even feeling dumb not realizing there‘s this „back for everything“ physical button on Android, it feels unnatural to me to use that one.


> How do you navigate "back" in Android?

That's the "leave this Activity" button, personally I strictly don't use it navigating within an app because it's never clear if it's been overridden or not.

For mobile browsers, I always use "open in new tab" so I don't need to go back and can avoid guessing.


No, you are completely right. Android has a back button in the main UI. Even better if the gesture navigation is activated. The browser does not need to copy that.

But Firefox Preview had a bug where often enough the back functionality did not work. I hope that is fixed, if not that might explain some of the complaints.




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