Hello there, I hope you’re doing well.
I’m a long time user of Firefox in all its shades available, also on my multiple Android devices.
Since I’ve run into some troubles with some websites, I’ve tried other browsers, namely Brave & Samsung Browser.
Comparing those, I began to see quite some potential for improvements looking at the UI side of things for tablet(s) and foldables.
“Function Menu“ (?):
When tapping on the three dots (top right) one would assume that, especially on big screens, there will be a small menu opening up where you just tapped. It will not. Instead, a menu at the complete other side of the screen will open, hiding a lot of functionality behind more tap(s) / scrolls. Especially in landscape.
If you mistap to “more” or “Extensions”, the UI will shift up the goal a lot from its original location. A tap to the same spot will not undo the mistap, but at least you can minimize “extensions". For whatever reason, you can’t do that with the “more” menu. This is confusing, “extensions” is handled like a sub menu, but “more” isn’t.
Search on site:
When searching for something on the page, I get that with small(er) screens you want to display as much of the website as possible and start to hide the address bar. On tablets, this isn’t really necessary, as there is enough space to display content. (Bug →) Sometimes the address bar is just gone, but the background bar behind that is still there and blocks content partially. When this happens, this bar will not hide itself unless restarting the app or switching tabs. (← Bug)
Extension settings (the extension ones) (in general):
When having extensions installed, you will see the extension itself in side the “Funtion menu” inside the “Extensions” dropdown(?) and a “Manage extensions” button. My GF got an iPhone and uses Safari. I asked her to deactivate some extensions, she will then open “Manage extensions” and do so. When asked to get into the extensions settings (uBlock, or 1Password as an example), she taps on the “settings” button right beside of the extension, where she can enable / disable the extension. It’s not without a doubt clear that the “name” of the extension is also tapable and links to the extensions settings, as there is a button with a gear right beside it. On tablets there even is enough space to allow for a "toggle” & clearly visible button for the extensions settings.
Tabs:
This is how Firefox looks after a fresh install without anything on Android 16 (OneUI 8), which looks broken but isn’t, as it’s intended to look like this, right? When using the tab bar on tablets sometimes also leads to a “bar” shown below the address bar.
Opening the tab overview on a big screen device you will see a grid of 3 by 2.5 tabs open. The size of a tab in the grid is so large, that you could (and if you really want) read the contents of a “heise.de” article inside of the picture in mentioned grid. Why not 5 by 3 and not “wasting” so much space?
Address bar:
Especially on landscape, there is plenty of room for activities (buttons) instead of having a monstrous sized bar. Why not having the option to pin buttons / functions / extensions there?
Android & Samsung desktop mode:
Clicking (with a mouse) on a field to enter text with a keyboard attached, Firefox will still and always zoom the website. It doesn’t matter if the screens resolution is 2560x1440 and the app is full screen (lke it would be without a display attached), or in a window. Zooming out is not possible without reaching to the device. “Desktop mode” is being ignored and all “modern” sites are broken in terms of scaling (pure html sites like safe-now.eu are fine)
All in all, Firefox on bigger screens looks like the really old (talking Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and so on) Andriod apps looked like on tablets.
For those who don’t know: Thats Android 3.0 to 5.1.1.
11-15 years since those.