Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.
It’s an early sign that Europe’s competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely.
Yeah this is the one thing I’ve considered myself. I just can’t get over how much better Safari’s UI is on iPhones. It’s a bit whatever on iPad, but on the iPhone it’s just so intuitive. I think the two things I like the most are
The bottom of the screen UI Chrome, because that just makes so much sense. Sure iOS has that accessibility feature (which I really hope Android adopts soon) where you swipe down on the bar at the bottom to bring the top of the screen down, but that’s one extra gesture I have to use to access the URL bar. Other than preference there’s no real reason to keep it on the top - which there’s a setting for in Safari, so you could have either way.As I wrote this I was like “but what if there’s a setting for it in Firefox as well?” and there is, so consider that point moot!
It also lets you navigate tabs without having to open the tab switcher. Swiping left takes you to the previous tab, and right to the next, if there is no next tab it opens a new tab. It’s also really snappy so it’s easy to navigate between like 2-8 tabs or so.
So as a bonus thing; I really like the transparency effect. It’s super superficial, I know, but it makes the view feel bigger somehow, and it fits with the overall native UX which is something I as a developer generally consider a good thing. Though honestly it’s not a dealbreaker for me.
If the tab switching was implemented, and they swapped over to Gecko I’d probably consider switching to Firefox altogether on my mobile devices.
Firefox has tab switching exactly like you describe. The only exception is that i don’t think it will automatically open a new tab.
Oh, nice! Where do you enable that?
⋮ --> Settings --> Customize --> Scroll down to gestures --> Swipe toolbar sideways to switch tabs
At least this is for android. It may be identical for iOS?
There’s no Gesture section at all on iOS, checked both in the in-app settings as well as the app settings in the Settings app. Honestly the settings page is a bit of a travesty in terms of UX design. There’s a “Theme” section that when clicked, takes you to an on/off switch for “Use system theme” and nothing else. Why not just have the switch directly on the main settings page? Maybe under its own subsection, but not a completely different page?
I installed Firefox on my Pixel 6 (work phone, pretty much only use it for Teams and two authenticator apps), and it’s a completely different experience.
The iOS version wastes a lot of space, and there’s a lot less room for customisation.
On Android the setting was under
Settings > Customisewhich by itself has a decent amount of settings.And the iOS settings page, slightly scrolled down to hide my email address, looks like this (imgur link).
This is every interaction I have with Apple fans. Except often there’s also a “and it’s had this option for years”. And it’s not just Firefox, it’s every other option for every other software and hardware.
Not an Apple fan. I enjoy the general hassle-free and polished experience that is their products, but Apple themselves can go die in a fire. I don’t “like” any companies.