Firefox Is Finally (Re)Adding Support for Web Apps
omgubuntu.co.uk> Similarly, Rubino says web apps in Firefox will not use a minimal browser frame and will continue to show a main toolbar with address bar, extensions, bookmarks...
Why is this so hard to understand? Why are they so against just making it work like it's supposed to? PWAs are actively useful and great and this is just frustrating.
PWAs that prevent you from getting at your browser extensions are an inherently user-hostile idea.
Any person's first contact with a PWA is going to be in the full-chrome browser. The user has to voluntarily choose "install as web app" to actually lose the browser chrome. Not giving users this choice and opting them into a windowed mode forever makes PWA support largely useless -- just open the app from your bookmarks!
Isn’t there a middle where you don’t show the whole browser chrome by default and still allow access to the extensions? Maybe add a tiny button to show the browser UI or add a shortcut?
That is how it works in Chrome, right? Or am I going insane? When I open a web app I made with Chrome, there's a small icon in the top right of my window that opens the extensions dropdown.
From the Connect post I gather that a middle ground is basically the plan - you'll still have e.g. your extensions accessible, but there won't be a tab bar.
Which is an issue I haven't had with Chrome or Gnome Web ('s version of extensions), even with things like VSCode which overrides the title bar as well
The complaint here is that Firefox won't do what Chromium does, and Chromium's extensions are active and reachable in installed PWAs.
I don't really understand this viewpoint, Chrome does show your extensions
It is frustrating to not know what url I have open. Some apps add info based on account .
There is clearly a use case for keeping the whole UI. But it is the major use case and should the whole product philosophy be based on it ?
I feel there will be more sites where the URL won't matter or where the user will prefer simplicity to control.
I use Google Maps 99.99% in PWA mode and never mourned the lack of the URl bar, especially as I can open the site in normal browser mode anytime I ever want the full controls.
What if you want to copy and share the page?
I'd be fine with a 2~3 click operation to get the URL.
Which is basically how it works in Chrome in PWA mode: a few basic actions (get the URL, print, cast, adjust zoom etc) in a menu, and an option to punt it to the full chrome if needed.
That’s a fine idea.
Every PWA starts in a webpage, and you have to manually install it as PWA. If it's important for you to see the url, use it in the browser and don't install it? Installation only makes sense if the website/app is build for it.
Nobody is forcing you to use an installed PWA. Use it in a browser.
Then use it as a web page?
As I understand it, two problems are:
1) There's no clear definition of what it's "supposed" to. Not everyone who uses the term PWA wants the same things.
2. Some things are just a lot harder to implement than others.
1. if 90% of the people don't want a toolbar in a PWA (I'm being generous about 10% wanting it), it makes sense to not have it
2. It is not harder to implement a button to show the toolbar menu
In all case, it should be (it already is by the spec!) a developer option, not something enforced by the browser.
I have learned a long time ago not to make claims about how hard it is to implement something in other people's projects - I get it wrong often enough about my own.
(Also, I don't think there's a single "PWA spec".)
Firefox's UI can be easily tweaked with CSS. It's trivial, for example, to get rid of all chrome. The real problem is their ideological stance against PWAs.
It's definitely doable to make the bar disappear with a tiny bit of CSS. Did it myself in the past and the Firefox team does it partially for their vertical tabs feature
> Why are they so against just making it work like it's supposed to?
Who are you to tell the user how their device is supposed to work?
A frustrated user probably.
My take is they just want the 'browser' to be visible, kinda like how banks insist on their logos being visible on co-branded credit cards. Considering Firefox is nearly entirely how Mozilla makes money, and that browser has been disappearing more and more starting with Chrome's launch way back in 2008, this just feels like pearl clutching.
> Considering Firefox is nearly entirely how Mozilla makes money,
Is it? I thought they made money by taking it from theGoogs to be the "default" search when theGoogs probably thinks of it as ensuring there is "competition" so they are not tagged as monopoly. Same as the payment they make to Apple
I’m not sure what Mozilla has been doing the last ten years but I’m fairly certain it has little to do with what users want.
I am thoroughly finished with them as an organization; hopefully they represent the end of an ugly era, which to my recollection began in about 2013. I will not mourn their inevitable slide into complete irrelevance and financial insolvency.
I will mourn the lack of a non-Chrome browser engine with enough market share to prevent Chrome from unilaterally changing the web.
Someone can fork chromium if need be. There are at least a couple organizations with chromium-based browsers that have maintained their own engines in the past. Chromium is objectively very good so it’s not like it’s the time when we were left with IE5. The biggest problem now is Google trying to protect their ad business and the other Chromium browsers have been working around that. I don’t think we are nearly as bad off as we have at other times in the past.
A fork of Chromium is still a Chromium-based engine, and does nothing to combat the browser engine monoculture.
I'm personally hoping for Servo/Verso, as well as hoping that Firefox turns around.
I dunno. Forcing ads on everybody seems bad to me. YMMV.
Safari / WebKit.
It's unironically better than Chrome in nearly every way, except dev tools.
And being proprietary, and only running on one family of operating systems.
Safari is proprietary and runs on one platform, not WebKit. Orion and a couple other browsers run cross platform.
I was referring to Safari here. I'm aware that WebKit is cross-platform, but it has vanishingly small market share if you ignore Safari, and it doesn't provide sufficient competition to browsers based on Chromium/Blink to keep the web from being a monoculture.
Safari has 20% of the market in The US?
In the comment you're replying to:
> but it has vanishingly small market share if you ignore Safari
Safari doesn't help here because it's proprietary and only runs on one family of OSes. WebKit doesn't have any substantive market share without Safari.
The context of the thread is
> I will mourn the lack of a non-Chrome browser engine with enough market share to prevent Chrome from unilaterally changing the web.
Ignoring Safari makes no sense as they are the ones preventing this.
Every time Mozilla is on here people go crazy.
And they wrote their comment using Chrome or some skin. Which they have used for a decade. Because the button on the left seemed off on Firefox compared to Chrome (always something). So fuck Firefox.
On hacker news.
Crazy.
> On hacker news.
You have the wrong expectations toward HN :) It's a lot less frustrating if you correct them.
It's the community forum for a US-based, web-heavy startup accelerator, not a "hacker's corner" in terms of the original scene. The priorities and values and interests do differ.
Agreed. These who would rather use a browser from an Orwellian company are not hackers. They are tools.
Are there any forums more focused on being a "hacker's corner"?
Stack Overflow. Not a 'forum' per se but is otherwise built around the discussion of browser hacks.
alt.hackers or something like that maybe? IYKYK
lobste.rs is way more hacker and technical.
More than half of its front page is identical to HN's.
Only when the front page is full of technical content. There you don't see posts like:
- Elon Musk's SpaceX Allows Investment from China
- We're Still Not Done with Jesus
- Angelina Jolie Was Right About Computers
They're also little shitfucks who ban my freaking browser.
Any chance you can provide an invite?
sure, just sent it to the email in your profile
Thanks, appreciate it.
Can I get an invite too please?
Sent one to the email in your HN profile. Cheers!
Thank you x
AI heavy now
I think such types are frustrated because they have enough domain specific knowledge to know the basics of how to fix their pet hate. But realise they will never have the motivation, skill and dedication required to follow through.
This time it is justified, because web apps have been working in Chrome since 2015.
I have been installing some PWAs lately at work and... I love them. They have been replacing the need for electron and they also feel integrated with the OS.
In chrome, there is always a button to "bring back" the app from pwa into a browser tab (really nice). There is the option to open links directly in the pwa, you can access your extension from a small icon. I read that on the specs there might be an option to keep tabs around, for things like notion where your might need tabs (that would be really cool).
Overall, I'm impressed positively. Apple it's right to be scared about those, I would use PWAs for everything that's online for sure, for stuff that's offline probably too.
Excalidraw is great as PWA :)
> Chrome PWAs have been replacing the need for Electron
Isn't Electron based on Chromium?
Yes, it was suggesting it from a weird side: a user that thinks the need for releasing electron apps is way less now.
It's a weird side because I have no control over an app using electron or not.
Thank you very much, Excalidraw is the best PWA implementation I have seen so far.
Mozilla were ruined by big Google checks. How they could let this opportunity slip while electron became the ui for every major desktop app… such a shame.
Personally, I feel Mozilla did not market XUL[1] enough. Had they done that, it could have become what Electron is today, with a native look and feel, and with a much reduced footprint while still offering a JS-based runtime for applications.
90% of what XUL accomplished was rendered moot and obsolete by HTML5. The remaining 10% isn't worth it.
I remember using Songbird. It was nice.
Or chatzilla.
They had support for PWA in 2021, before they pulled it. Hard to see this is anything other than a concession to its biggest funder, Google. Chrome, Edge and Safari all support installing PWAs, while FF, the biggest beneficiary of such a change, intentionally gimped theirs.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress...
Good to know: this is about desktop. Firefox for Android already supports installable web apps.
Why would I want to use a pwa that hides the things that allow me to control what the browser does? I actively use websites over apps solely because I have more control over the interaction.
Perhaps because you've chosen to install a PWA instead of continuing to use the website? The experience is different, if you want a browser like environment, just use the browser.
This whole article leaves me thinking that they just reinvented having a separate window for each page, and are just calling them "taskbar tabs" instead of "windows". After inventing tabs, we've now come full circle.
Web apps seem more beneficial to the business than to the end user. Like who cares?
What do you mean? I can have an app that i use a lot in its separate window accessible by cmd+tab, without unnecessary toolbars on top, it's not hidden among tens of other browser tabs and windows i have open. Works offline. That seems quite useful to me.
For the first time ever, it is possible to build an app that runs on anything that can run webkit. I use the same app on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Debian, even GrapheneOS. No AppStore, no account needed. I think it benefits or at least could benefit the end user a lot in the long term, but it hurts the walled/semiwalled gardens of MS, Apple and Google and their business. Which is why they seem so reluctant to support it better. How Firefox does not see this potential app freedom is beyond me.
Well, there was FirefoxOS then a fork of it called KaiOS..
How so? Businesses and middlemen make a killing with non-web-apps.
First Certificate Transparency[1] now PWAs. Looks like Firefox is finally catching up.
I would like to see them re develop positron (firefox + electron) https://github.com/mozilla/positron
I don't really understand what this is for then if it doesn't spawn in a minimal frame. This is somehow worse than just having a shortcut to open the app in a regular browser tab.
At this point, Firefox might want to shift to the advanced web browser user market. And maybe unleash a simple firefox product called firefox tails.
Finally, I had installed Brave just for the web-app support.
Yesterday afternoon I transitioned from Brave to Firefox. Brave was struggling, admittedly after a system uptime of 69 days, even after killing it brave would regularly struggle and do a whole ton of disc I/O, bringing my system to its knees. Rebooting fixes it, FYI, but it seems weird that "pkill -f brave" doesn't seem to resolve it. Slack also has similar struggles, this is under Ubuntu 22.04.
So far Firefox has been a bit rocky, I don't seem to be able to open Jira tickets. Some might consider that a feature, but my job isn't one of them. That's shaken my faith in Firefox more than a bit.
If you have site-specific issues, if you're up to it it would be great if you could report it via the menu (or Help, on MacOS) -> Report broken site, or via https://webcompat.com.
Thanks, I'll give it a try! I also see in "Help" there is a "Troubleshoot".
FWIW my default Firefox profile is chock full of content blockers, so I expect demanding sites to fail on first load. I grant additional permissions manually, when I must.
But I had no (extra) trouble opening Jira tickets a few months ago when working with a partner integration.
So, Jira definitely should work on Firefox.
It’s never too late, glad to see feature work that gets attention.
Hopefully they keep building from here & do full PWA and then from there to an answer to Electron!
Too little too late?
Curiously, what is the alternative? Chromium-based browsers?
Sorry, but I don't trust Google's push to Manifest V3.
I daily drive https://kagi.com/orion/ on mobile and will likely begin to switch on desktop as their cross platform support emerges.
for web apps I ended up going with Gnome Web, but Tangram and Ferdium are other options I'm considering
Zen is Gecko-based.
Hopefully (re)adding hotkeys to Firefox for Android is next.
I used Firefox for the lack of these features. Time to look at an alternative.
You are using Firefox because it does not support PWAs like Chromium does? So what alternatives are left on the table for you? Lynx?
Maybe Ladybird?