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Oliver Smith 41e3f583ea
userChrome/appMenu: rework for FF 94 (MR 19)
Adjust the menu for Firefox 94, and for having the tab bar and search
bar at the bottom.

Getting the appMenu to look decent took me forever to figure out, here's
a notable alternative version that always uses the full screen height:

  #appMenu-popup {
        margin-top: calc(-1 * 100vh) !important;
        height: calc(100vh - 100px) !important;
        max-height: calc(100vh - 100px) !important;
  }

However with this alternative version, there's a bug when having the
keyboard open, then opening the menu (-> it will get spawned with about
half the screen size), and then closing the keyboard and opening the
menu again. The menu is cached (as one can see in the element inspector)
and still has the wrong height. The content inside the menu is
flickering between the full height and the half height.

By having a fixed size that looks good with both the keyboard open and
closed, we can work around this problem. The height of the keyboard was
adjusted for the PinePhone. If it doesn't look good on your device, add
a media query to make it have a different height based on the overall
height of the window (and possibly also width).
2021-12-05 11:45:41 +01:00
.ci .ci/lint_css.sh: add dead simple linter (MR 19) 2021-12-05 11:45:40 +01:00
src userChrome/appMenu: rework for FF 94 (MR 19) 2021-12-05 11:45:41 +01:00
.editorconfig editorconfig: new file (MR 19) 2021-12-05 11:45:40 +01:00
.gitignore Makefile: new file 2020-08-06 17:01:14 +02:00
.gitlab-ci.yml CI: archive complete package (MR 15) 2021-07-11 15:36:11 +02:00
LICENSE License under GPL-3.0-or-higher 2020-08-06 17:01:14 +02:00
Makefile Makefile: add variable for config directory (MR 16) 2021-07-16 09:35:51 +02:00
org.postmarketos.mobile_config_firefox.metainfo.xml Add appstream data file (MR 14) 2021-06-15 01:04:29 +02:00
README.md README: add link to FirefoxCSS subreddit as additional resource (MR 7) 2021-05-19 23:25:36 +02:00

mobile-config-firefox

An attempt at creating a distro-independent mobile and privacy friendly configuration for Firefox ESR 78 (supported by Mozilla until ~2021-04) and newer versions. As of writing, these configs work with Phosh and Firefox 78 (ESR) and 82.0.3.

This does not replace a proper implementation in Firefox upstream (interesting stuff happens in issues linked in "References"). Some dialogs are still hard to use or look a bit awkward. But overall, it makes the browser usable on mobile.

What this config does

Visual

Starting with version 2.0.0, the visual tweaks only get activated if you have a small window width. It works nicely with convergence.

mobile-config-firefox installs a userChrome.css file to reduce the minimum width of the main window, so it fits the screen without scaling it down. The content of popup windows (settings menu, install add-on confirmation, ...) would be cut off with the default configuration, so as workaround the content is reduced to make it fit the windows again. (It was not possible to increase the size of these windows merely with CSS). The find bar (appears with ^F on your PC, can be toggled from the menu too) is tweaked to fit the mobile screen as well.

The visible width of the URL is increased by hiding buttons around the urlbar (most features behind those buttons can be accessed through other menus), and by decreasing the font size. Furthermore, the urlbar will float above buttons on the left and right when focused, to leave even more space for typing the URL or search query.

Before and after screenshots

  • Enable zooming with fingers (Change in about:config; apz.allow_zooming, apz.allow_double_tap_zooming, dom.w3c.touch_events.enabled)
  • Mobile user agent (from Tor browser for Android) (Change in about:config; general.useragent.override)

Privacy

  • Disable search suggestions, so URLs do not get sent to search engines as they are getting typed (Change in Preferences)
  • Disable Firefox studies (Change in Preferences)
  • Disable Telemetry (Change in Preferences)
  • Set DuckDuckGo as default search engine (Change in Preferences)

Uncluttering

To save screen space, remove broken features, and have less distractions in the browser in general:

  • Custom start page (loads faster, explains mobile config and how to use settings, links to addons)
  • Empty "new tab" page (loads faster, no annoying "top sites" etc.) (Change in Preferences)
  • Disable "Firefox Screenshots": the feature did not work with the mobile resolution in Phosh. (Change in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json)
  • No default bookmarks from Firefox (Change in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json)
  • Disable First Run Page (Change in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json)
  • Disable Post Update Page (Change in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json)
  • Disable "User Messaging" (What's new, Extension/Feature Recommendations, Urlbar Interventions) (Change in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json)

How to build and package

  • Replace src/homepage/distro_links.html
  • Build with make DISTRO=yourdistroname
  • In your packaging recipie, run something like make DESTDIR=$pkgdir install

Contributing changes to userChrome

Firefox' developer tools include a remote debugger, which even has the "pick an element" feature. You will be able to click that button on your PC, then tap on an element of the Firefox UI on your phone, and then you will see the HTML code and CSS properties on your PC just as if it was a website. So this is highly recommended when contributing changes to userChrome.css.

  • Connect your phone and your PC to the same network (Wi-Fi or USB network)
  • On your phone, open Firefox and about:config:
    • Change devtools.chrome.enabled to true
    • Change devtools.debugger.remote-enabled to true
    • The debugger will only listen on localhost by default. If you know what you are doing, you may set devtools.debugger.force-local to false, so it listens on all interfaces. Otherwise you'll need something like an SSH tunnel.
    • Close firefox
  • Connect to your phone via SSH
    • Set up environment variables properly, so you can start programs (one lazy way to do it, is tmux on your phone in the terminal, then tmux a in SSH)
    • Run firefox --start-debugger-server 6000 (or another port if you desire)
  • Run Firefox on your PC
    • Go to about:debugging
    • Add your phone as "network location"
    • Press the connect button on the left
  • On your phone
    • Confirm the connection on your phone's screen
      • If the button is not visible on the screen, try switching to a terminal virtual keyboard, hit "tab" three times and then return
  • On your PC
    • Scroll down to Processes, Main Process, and click "Inspect"
    • Now use the "Pick an element" button as described in the introduction. Find the userChrome.css file in the "Style editor" tab and edit it as you like.
    • Consider copy pasting the contents to a text editor every now and then, so you don't lose it when closing Firefox by accident.

Additional resources