LINux on MOBile

Yesterday, I finally did spend some time on mobile-config-firefox again.

A Tiny Merge Request

I have submitted a tiny Merge Request, that was inspired by listening to postmarketOS podcast // #39 INTERVIEW: magdesign (of Cycling the World Fame).

Yesterdays New Branches

Also, I created a bunch of new branches on my Codeberg repo, as I try to figure out what's next for me to do.

• experiment-minimal-changes I've just tried to delete things, and see if things still somewhat work. I may delete even more going forward, not putting the UI on the bottom allows for removing a bunch of CSS. So far, this is nothing serious, but it may help towards Make moving the address bar to the bottom optional (#51) and Figure out path to upstreaming changes (#28). While I am glad to have learned that someone applied for a grant to work on this, please note that this is not me :-)

• experiment-userContent-rebase-fenix _This branch was created to be able to quickly grasp what user0 has changed in her fenix branch compared to what's upstream. This may be helpful when tackling some of the userContent related issues, which are

  • about pages improvements (#17),
  • Cannot change language in portrait mode (#60) (it won't help here, it's present, and IIRC it's style-attributes to the element that enforce a min-width of 600px). I also merged this branch into my next branch.

What's next?

I honestly don't really know. I have spent some time with the private browsing indicators, which have been renewed by Mozilla so that the current implementation for private browsing in mobile-config-firefox is broken. So far, I have failed to find a fix for current. I will try again this week, and if I keep failing, we could always just hide these inidcators for good - but I would first open an issue. So: If you see a new issue about that, and it's been authored by me, I must have kept failing.

What else? Let's have a look at the open issues I have not mentioned yet in this post:

• Consider additional privacy options (#68): This one is new, and I could easily implement it - but I want to see further discussion first.
• Disable Use hardware acceleration when available (#56): I won't be able to contribute anything useful to that one, sorry.
• FF 113 support? (#52): Should be closed, IMHO.
• strict bound more panel object to fix flicker (#49): I have to force myself to check if we have all of these implemented, and if so suggest closing it.
• Add History to trop-down menu (#45): Since the height should be increased for the translation feature anyway, this could be done while doing that - but what's the benefit? I wonder if unhiding Firefox View after making its contents mobile friendly might not be the better way.
• Tabs in firefox portrait mode theme should be a third or less of the minimum width that they are now (#42): I tried to explain my viewpoint. I definitely want to spend time bringing the tabcounter over from fenix, it's useful.
• Menu bar moves to top when rotating to landscape (#37): As a former PinePhone Pro with Keyboard user, I think the more important question is: How can we make the experience better in landscape and waste less space? IMHO, true-mobile-mode is only nice in portrait (there's enough vertical space), but really, really good in landscape.
• Feature request: add close buttons in all the tabs (#34): We could do that. I think I'll make a MR for the fun of it, it's not really useful with how tab-switching works, but for "tab-bar-swipers", why not?
• Bookmarks bar does not show in portrait mode (#33): Um, no idea what to do with that one. Close it, maybe?
• context menu flickering on link long-press (#32): Isn't this more of a compositor issue? I'll need to investigate.
• Pinephone Pro small address bar (#30): Should be closed, IMHO.
• "Save image as" dialog unusable (#16): I so far failed to reproduce this.
• Address bar: do not show "https://www." (#14): I've outlined a potential fix. Awaiting further discussion.
• "Customize Firefox" needs rework (#13): Personal priority: super low. Might be fun to play with though :)
• Download confirmation popup almost unusable (#12): I don't understand how this can be reproduced, if it still can.

That's it for now, thank you for reading! If you have suggestions for what I should do, please get in touch! :-)