Firefox For Android To Finally Get A Few More Extensions

Mozilla was unsurprisingly very proud of its new Firefox on Android experience, which it dubbed "Daylight" but the backlash it received may have revealed a disconnect between the browser maker and its community. While the new browser in itself can really be considered an upgrade, the orphaned users of the most popular and most used Firefox add-ons see it as a step backward. Mozilla promised more addons would be coming soon and that day has come with Firefox extension soon growing from 9 to 19.

Although no longer as hot a topic on desktops, the more limited functions of mobile browsers have retained the need for browser extensions. When Mozilla sought to create a new Firefox experience from the ground up, it naturally had to break compatibility with dozens or even hundreds of existing extensions. Firefox would eventually regain support for those but Mozilla chose to release the new stable version with minimal addon support.

That means that many who rely on these addons were suddenly unable to use them once they updated to the new Firefox Daylight version. Mozilla did at least make sure that some of the privacy-related extensions, like uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, and NoScript, did work on launch day. That set, however, represented only 9 out of a multitude of extensions.

Now Mozilla is announcing that 10 more will be arriving soon. That list includes Video Background Play Fix for allowing videos to continue running in background tabs, Image Search Options for reverse image searches, and Web Archives. These extensions, save for a few, seem to be geared more towards convenience rather than added security like the first batch.

These, however, are only available in Firefox on Android Nightly, in other words, the unstable version. They will only arrive on the stable release by November, practically more than a month away. That, unfortunately, might not be enough to raise user satisfaction quickly, especially considering the other problems that surround Mozilla's future as an organization and as a company.