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Firefox for Android UI update? Material You? (lemmy.tf)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The UI for Fenix is dated. Some things need a little bit of love and others just don't make sense at all, like when you paste a URL, you can't see the URL or the Paste and Paste & Go options because the system pop up gets in the way.

Material Design and by extension Android moved away from pop ups and toasts and adopted elements like bottom sheets.

The custom share sheet is a nuisance and there's not even a way to get to the native share sheet.

Firefox for Android works, but it doesn't look or feel like a modern browser that was designed for modern Android.

So being that Android design has evolved so much since Fenix last got a lick of paint, I'm wondering, has anyone heard of anything in the works? Seen any commits or mockups? Screenshots? A mention on Matrix or the mailing lists?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Those custom/unusual UI elements are probably there for backwards compatibility. Firefox's latest android release supports Android 5.0, whereas Chrome's latest release supports Android 7.0

A lot of new Android UI elements are simply missing from the older versions, especially 5.0, so Firefox re-implements them itself AFAICT. Because of this I can't see Firefox updating the look/feel of their app, more custom components will just have worse performance on older devices as time goes on

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is not right, the material libraries are a part of AndroidX, which has the current minimum SDK version 14 (Android 4.0.1), and will soon move to minimum SDK version 19 (Android 4.4). Compose, which is completely feasible to build the UI for Firefox for Android, has the minimum SDK version 21 (Android 5.0) iirc.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the Firefox for Android simply has not prioritized adopting Material You.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Good information. Thank you for the clarification!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's super interesting. One of my friends on mastodon is still using Android 7, so the necessity for backwards compatibility is definitely a thing. An unfortunate thing but a thing nonetheless. That said, doesn't Android itself provide the backwards compatibility enabling designers and developers to focus on modern apps? Otherwise wouldn't everything just look like a throwback?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Google does this via Play Services, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same devices they're worried about compatibility with don't have Google Play either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Look at the other response, all the recent UI components are available even for Android 4. Android 6 user here with no intention to ever upgrade past 7 (because of enshittification of the OS), a bunch of apps are available and working (in F-droid) that use recent UI design

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Slightly off topic, but are you not concerned about OS level security threats?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm careful with what apps I install and what websites I visit, other than that a newer android version won't protect me against attacks that come from the cellular network operator.