So I’m thinking of switching from safari (which came loaded on my device, iPad mini retina screen) to Firefox. But when I go to the App Store there seems to be a confusing array of Firefox ish apps, some sync, and other things too. None of which seem to use the logo which confuses me.
(In case you’re not painfully aware, I am especially NOT computer savvy!)
Can anybody point me to the one I ought to use? Offer some advice maybe? I am not doing anything tricky on my device. Pretty much just surfing and some emailing, texting, pictures, etc.
Also, do I need to uninstall safari? Or just ignore it?
You can’t uninstall Safari from the iPad as it’s part of the OS. You can run multiple browsers, though, so you can ignore Safari in favor of your preferred browser.
I’ve been running Mercury but it seems slower than safari. Also you cannot designate it as your default browser - links in an email, for example, will always open in safari.
Apple won’t allow any browser that doesn’t use the WebKit engine on the iPad. Firefox uses the Gecko engine.
If Firefox builds a WebKit browser, it couldn’t use any of Firefox’s extensive extensions because none of them could run under WebKit. They’d have to be rewritten by the extension authors. Good luck with that.
iCab Mobile is very Firefox-ish; it uses Adblock if you want to import the filters and has tons of other controls and settings that put Safari to shame.
I bought it initially because of a user setting that blows up the type automatically for each page, much like Firefox’s NoSquint extension.
Among the rest of its browser settings is one that can have it identify itself as one of 26 choices of browser names. I have mine set to Firefox 37. This prevents Tapatalk ad popups like those on the Dope that appear with the iPad’s Safari because it identifies itself as a mobile browser. Thanks to the browser-name spoof, the Dope’s servers think iCab Mobile is a desktop browser, so no Tapatalk popups.
Plus, unless it’s changed, Chrome actually uses the Safari engine under the hood, but their own JavaScript engine. There are weird restrictions on iOS about what a browser is allowed to do.
This is much easier for Chrome to do, since their engines are based on the same system. (Safari uses Webkit, Chrome uses Blink, which was based on Webkit). Firefox uses its own engine: Gecko.
Though, honestly, I’m not sure there’s a huge difference between Chrome and Firefox in the mobile space. Both can use addons, I believe. And, unlike those for Desktop Firefox, the mobile Firefox addons are just as weak as those for Chrome.
For one thing, it still has that horrible bug where the browser crashes when trying to use the create link tool. Of course it happens to Chrome on IOS, too.
FWIW, the temporary workaround to that problem is to tap the insert link button while in landscape view; tapping it crashes Safari when in portrait view, but not when in landscape view, go figure. That’s as of 8.4, anyway, I don’t know if it’s changed in 8.4.1.