1346210 - Make it easier to install popular add-ons like uBlock Origin or AdBlock on Firefox for Android

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Add-on Manager, defect, P5)

Description

[Jens]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0
Build ID: 20170310004008

Steps to reproduce:

A USP of Firefox vs. Chrome on Android is that Firefox allows popular add-ons like UBlock Origin or AdBlock. Popular in the sense that 30% of all internet user take the step of proactively installing them.

I told my son about it and he went ahead to install uBlock Origin, me looking over his shoulder.




Actual results:

1. Go to Menu > Extras > Add-ons
2. Go to "View all Firefox Add-on" (translated just now from German)
3. Loads the page at AMO
4. The page shows us "Url Fixer", "Quit Now", etc -- seriously, who cares about these apps?
5. Next view: There's a "Featured", "Categories", "Themes" tabs
6. Clicking though all of them: Nowhere is uBlock Origin or AdBlock?!? There is "Highest Rated" and "Newest" with some more add-ons for some niche but not something like the above with millions of installs. My son looking at me: "Your recommeded apps do not seem very popular?" ;) 
7. Anyway, now we have to enter "uBlock Origin" into the text input search box (typing is not very handy on Mobile; make sure you have no typos)
8. Page reloads again
9. Finally we can install

So this is about 10 steps and very bad discoverability and UX for a something that is the most USP of Firefox on Android vs. the Chrome counterpart.


Expected results:

At least:
1. Go to Menu > Extras > Add-ons
2. AMO shows the most popular Addons (by *Downloads* or *Active Users* not something like Featured)
3. Users touches to install

Or even Better:
1. Menu > Extras > Add-ons
2. Immediately show the 3-5 most popular Add-ons (by *Active Users* or *Downloads*) and let me install

Actually, it would be even a very smart step by Firefox for Android if it come bundled with uBlock Origin (less ads, less network traffic, more secure, much faster).

Comment 1

[Andy McKay]

This isn't a bug in the add-ons manager as such as the mobile interface of AMO (unless we change to your last point).

We are currently launching a new version of the mobile pages of AMO and it should be going out on Monday actually. That get's us down the path of getting to a better Android story.

Comment 2

[Jens]

Attachment: Current about:addons on Android

Thanks, the new AMO mobile pages looks more polished. Still the ordering seems not very functional, e.g. AdBlock Plus (most popular add-on by installed numbers) does not even turn up under Category "Ad-Blocker". Without typing/searching manually it is not to be found (at least I was not able)


I guess "Let me install an Ad-Blocker" is the user story #1 with regards to Add-ons. At least my gut tells me so, but also numbers at http://arewee10syet.com/ where AdBlock Plus leads with 20 Mio installations and the second only having 4 Mio and so on). I do not think that this user story is very well implemented currently.

But let's face the addon-manager here:   :)

The "Your addons" on Android, see attachment, is pretty empty. Compare to about:addons on Desktop where I can directly enable the most-wanted add-ons (e.g. uBlock Origin).

I'd propose to do it the same as on Desktop and add the most popular add-ons there (which would naturally include an Ad-Blocker). 

There's enough space (and scrolling would also be possible). 

And as a side note the first (by default) listed addon is "OpenH264 Video whatever codec". Technically this might be an Addon, but afaicr I never installed this. To me as a user this is like some kind of library like gecko, xul etc. It should not be listed under *Your* Add-ons. Which would give away even more space for listing real user add-ons here.

Comment 3

[:shell escalante]

andy will comment

Comment 4

[Andy McKay]

Thanks for the feedback. There aren't any plans to work about:addons on Android for a while, but if there is by a contributor, they should take this bug into account.

Comment 5

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Re-triaging per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473195

Needinfo :susheel if you think this bug should be re-triaged.

Comment 6

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.