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Firefox still doesn't have PWA support (connect.mozilla.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/firefox

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I really wish there was more word from mozilla on this. There are a few electron apps that I'd much rather use a PWA for so I can totally ditch chromium/electron

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[–] BendyLemmy 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still need someone to fully explain to me why they want some way to pretend a website is an application.

Especially as, when I tried using PWA (so I could open, for example, Lazada PWA as if it was a specific application instead of just Lazada running in Firefox) the only benefit was that - erm - it worked in it's own profile, without any add-ons from the main browser profile.

For this, I can simply use the WebApp manager https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager - yet I find that right now I only have a single one which is in use (that's the Plex Web interface which I bound to open with a mouse gesture).

Take that away and - well, I just hit menu, type 'ple' and see the Firefox bookmark - Enter to open that.

Hardly really worth the resources and efforts for a tiny minority when a browser is struggling to survive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If "installing a "Web App"" is downloading a my most-visited webpage/template, or even the website to local storage to improve load times and responsiveness, ok i get it, its a PWA, I am all for it. Only if they can do that, in 2023 (where still no one can properly implement). But if what they want to do is calling everything you have on a computer an "App", then no thanks Apple and Fuck You.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea, I really don't get what a PWA even is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't really know the technical details, but my mental model is it's like an electron app but your browser is what powers it, and you don't get all the bloat an electron app brings with it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why is this news? We had these for over a decade - Firefox had XULRunner, Opera back then had some sort of app thingy, I feel like this comes around every so often and it never really catches on because you could just run the website in the browser anyway - doing it with less browser controls / UI never seems to catch on. Maybe this time it will but...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well electron apps have caught on, but a standard like this that lets you do it directly with your browser seems like it would be better

[–] BendyLemmy 1 points 1 year ago

I did enjoy Vivaldi for that reason, though, you could do 'hide UI'. Whilst all the controls/tabs/URLbar were still there, they got hidden. It LOOKED exactly like a webapp - but without creating a separate profile for the website in question.

If I want to isolate (which I generally do with a separate user/profile) then I'll do it that way... so if I really wanted a separate 'Amazon' application, it'd be firefox -p Amazon.

Having a separate shortcut in Firefox to HIDE UI would definitely be nice.

[–] Godnroc 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that not just a web browser with extra steps?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A PWA or electron?

[–] Godnroc 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

PWA

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Sort of. Pwas can be closer to an app, sandboxed, and work offline. There are a few other benefits as far as i know, the main thing that frustrates me about it is that microsoft is dropping support for their teams for linux app and switching to a pwa

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

so I can totally ditch chromium/electron

GNOME Web isn't Chromium-based and does support PWAs, so it might work for your usecase.

[–] PumpkinEscobar 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is a Firefox extension that works pretty well for PWAs (I’ve used it on windows and Linux). I wish it was folded back into the desktop browser too but I can appreciate that Mozilla has limits to what they can do and need to focus on more important/used features.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately it doesn't work with librewolf 😔 but i can appreciate that too. It is still frustrating though that chromium is pretty flatly winning in this regard