14 ms·

How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

80 points by ReadCarlBarks 2y ago

aidog 2y ago
I would be happy to just get the old PWA mode back. Turn a webapp into a window.
- leejoramo 2y ago
  Exactly this. I have to use Chrome (or one of its non-Google flavors) to easily create dedicated Desktop apps for websites. I would prefer to use Firefox but they killed this feature long ago. Glad Firefox is revisiting PWA/WebApps
  - cranberryturkey 2y ago
    Anyone know why Firefox killed PWA support?
    - erichdongubler 2y ago
      I think it's addressed in the article: > As you may know, we built a prototype for desktop PWAs a few years ago, and unfortunately user testing on our solution showed confusion and lack of perceived value. We didn’t release it because we didn’t have an approach that could meet the needs of power users without causing confusion among the broader user base.
      - cranberryturkey 2y ago
        it was live for awhile...don't know why they removed it for that reason. seems like your average user wouldn't know to use a PWA but the power users got screwed.
jarsin 2y ago
Easy privacy/identity management per app. Easy payment processing builtin to browser. Easy social that spans apps that we fully control. I should be able to see who my hackernews friends are and if we have both chosen what other apps we have in common. I still can't believe we have to sign up for every single app. Enter all kinds of different payment methods across a variety of payment processors. And are trapped using big tech platforms. The browser is the killer app but none of these browser makers take it to the next level. Its still same as it was since mid 2000's.
- fragmede 2y ago
  > I still can't believe we have to sign up for every single app. sign in with apple/Google/Facebook/whatever has reduced the number of signups for me. > Enter all kinds of different payment methods across a variety of payment processors apple pay is super convenient - merchant gets my payment and my address, but there's also PayPal and Amazon pay and Shopify pay and stripe link. there's a complaint to be had about the nunnery of choices there are, but that's different from the automation not working. > And are trapped using big tech platforms. can't do anything about that unless you wanna work with crypto, but then you're using crypto. we're not still stuck in the year 2000 unless you choose to be.
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > sign in with apple/Google/Facebook/whatever has reduced the number of signups for me. That's an awfully high-risk solution to having to maintain multiple identities. The last thing I want is to be cut off from my (business) calendar because of something I said in a forum somewhere. Remember back when having your identity tracked across multiple websites was malicious and websites would do their best to perform the tracking surreptitiously. Now it's all different - websites having users lining up to dox themselves. I'm afraid if someone wants to dox many of the online pseudo-anonymous personas I use, they going to have to do all the work to dox me; I'm not lifting a finger to help them, much less actually do it for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnugnf_2CYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnugnf_2CYM
- Ajedi32 2y ago
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
I would like browsers to offer a true "local app mode": Locally installed code (HTML/JS) that would be run using the browser runtime, but with enhanced privileges behind a permission model (e.g. the possibility to grant filesystem access etc.). Currently, developers that need a single thing they can't get from within a browser are generally forced to create an Electron app, which means they essentially bundle an outdated (and often never updated) version of a browser with their app. It would be much better if you could just use the already installed, always updated browser as the runtime for your "local" app. That would also create an incentive to develop in the browser ecosystem, and possibly move to a PWA - or at least it would show why devs prefer "real" applications to PWAs.
- wkirby 2y ago
  Genuine question: is this not exactly what the Tauri project aims to do?
  - cranberryturkey 2y ago
    And primatejs just released desktop support
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
    Looks like it's very close to what I meant! I was thinking of something like `/usr/bin/firefox --webapp-mode /var/opt/path/to/approot/` (in my model, the browser would contain code to load some standard webapp format, while with Tauri it looks like the app bundles a small piece of code that loads local webkit) but that's just a detail. The downside of Tauri is that you likely run the built-in runtime with regular (full) access, while with a browser-controlled flow, the browser could enforce a permission system.
    - plonq 2y ago
      FWIW Tauri has a comprehensive permission system
      - 2y ago
solarkraft 2y ago
> Recently, other browsers have implemented or enhanced their approach to PWAs, for example by making it easy to install any website as a web app (even if no PWA manifest is provided) Chrome has had this for at least 5 years, probably longer. Firefox has had "Site Specific Browser" functionality a long, long time ago.
- rascul 2y ago
  > Firefox has had "Site Specific Browser" functionality a long, long time ago. I was using Mozilla Prism but they went and killed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism
xk_id 2y ago
Every day we stray further from using the web to deliver documents.
- simonw 2y ago
  It's pretty clear at this point that the web also being a universal zero-installation-required sandboxed application runtime is a much more exciting vision than if it was restricted to only documents.
  - middleendian2 2y ago
    Why, because you can charge for cramming 50 MB of tracking JavaScript down the pipe to people paying $10 a month for the privilege?
    - simonw 2y ago
      Only if you suck at making web apps. (Admittedly a lot of people suck at making web apps.)
  - xk_id 2y ago
    I used to feel a lot more excitement in 2000 than i feel now.
    - create-account 2y ago
      In year 2000, we were around 24 years younger and the web was still an undeveloped plot of land for kids to play. Now, it’s mostly a corporate canvas for economic transactions, like the rest of the human experience in the west
      - steve1977 2y ago
        The dot-com bubble would like to have a word with you.
    - spankalee 2y ago
amanzi 2y ago
Lack of PWA support is the only reason why I keep other browsers handy, so I'm glad to see some movement on this long-outstanding issue. But I do have some concerns with the tone of this post and I hope they don't try too hard to re-imagine what "web apps" should be and end up with either a half-baked solution or a proprietary one.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
I think one big problem with web apps is that browser storage is generally seen as ephemeral, causing data that the user would want to keep to be deleted together with relatively meaningless, truly ephemeral data. For example, I have my browser set to delete cookies on exit. Others use "delete recent history". I don't know if these things also wipe PWA data, but if they do, that can be a nasty surprise.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  In Firefox, cookies and "site data" have separately delete settings but definitely can be done. My browser is configured to delete everything (cookies, data, history) when I close it.
- thepra 2y ago
  as a pwa developer, that's a continuous concern, lately I was thinking of notifying the users after certain actions to go and save locally the data that's withing the web app(it's all JSON btw) and restore it later when in need, but that's too cumbersome as a solution for many... ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
- datavirtue 2y ago
  The data should pass through to the OS environment app data folder the way you store data in any other app.
jay_kyburz 2y ago
The thing I want most is the thing specifically ruled out .. > "it’s not a goal to make it feel like you’re not in Firefox." I'm perfectly happy to have my app in a pinned tab or bookmark. Do we really need a third kind of bookmark. Why do we need yet another method for installing apps on our desktop. On a phone I can understand the convenience of saving a bookmark on your home screen, and removing the space consuming address bar, but desktops don't have the same constraints. I wish they would just make an Electron alternative, but try and do it better. Make it easy to carve out features you don't need to make the process smaller and lighter. Don't need WebGL or Canvas? Don't need audio or video? How small can you make a browser by cutting features? How cool would it be to visit a website with a bunch of check boxes that allow you to select the features you want for your app runtime, then it compiles an executable for you on demand.
BadHumans 2y ago
I want it to be easier to develop local-only offline apps and I want to verify that they are offline by being able to see if they are sending network traffic in the same way I can currently use browser tools to see what data is coming from this web page. Dealing with service workers for local apps feels like a hack at best.
devwastaken 2y ago
Firefox lost that market a long time ago. Electron won because chromium is modular, the tech can be re-used for other purposes. Firefox lost because it's a monolith you can't use in your projects. WPA's and webviews are non solutions. You can't have web sandboxing and also the privileges a desktop app needs. Wasm is a failed experiment that did not result in the performance improvements promised. You still need to compile C++ modules for all kinds of things.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  I started evaluating electron and discovered that I would have to build messages for every single thing I wanted to do on the desktop and then tweak absolutely everything for performance. Not a great dev experience. I would much rather build a blazor app in a webview where I only have to send messages to the HTML for data binding. That shit is smooooth.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
Many people already said this, but isolation is core. From the moment I press "install pwa": separate desktop icon, separate storage. I should be able to choose for which profile the app is installed (to support multiple profiles) and the window should be managed separately. Since I use kwin, possibly a separate window class too, so I can easily make rules specifically for the installed app. file system access would be great, with long term storage, so i can stay authenticated for long time. I should be able to tell file extensions to be opened by the pwa on my desktop. Notifications should be available too. A permission management window for installed pwa would be great. Something that would be cool is some sort of storage within Firefox sync, so that installing the pwa somewhere else restores my status and settings
- powersnail 2y ago
  I sort of achieved this by 1) creating a separate profile for a web app, 2) create a Desktop File which points to that profile, with a `--class` option set to the app's name. It seems that the logins are staying for as long as the website allows. The caveat is that the `--class` option doesn't seem to always be reliable; sometimes the window still gets grouped with the normal firefox instances in the task bar. I haven't got around to find out whether it's the fault of firefox or kwin.
mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
Per app/site theming - Built in 'Dark Reader' for PWA/web pages Make development/programming apps intuitive/fun to tinker with things for new people coming in to development. (For local development) Make memory management more controllable for firefox, multiple tabs with bloated JS pages using 7GB of 8GB total system RAM gets.. fun (manjaro+xfce, does it on different installs, has for years) A service level worker for push notifications with the ability to run a local push server easily for testing webapp creation. (Won't work if firefox isn't running, but not that big of a deal, but is, if firefox is using all the RAM.) Per tab/app containers with bandwidth/resource limitations. Ability to save window sizes, volumes, etc. 'Save States' By default, nothing outside of the browser address bar hitting 10.* 192.* 0.0.0.0 127.0.* addresses in scripts/apps without user permission/knowing. Apps accessible only through DoH/DoT only. Bookmarks manager shouldn't close/minimize when you click a bookmarks link. Incentive to create FREE web applications and keep them free without micro transactions/some other hidden/rabbit hole fees.
was8309 2y ago
back then I chose prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism because the user wanted a local app and I only wanted to work with the most ubiquitous UI. was lightweight and wish it was still available
throwaway290232 2y ago
[dead]
KronisLV 2y ago
I kind of wish we’d have a popular alternative to Electron, based on the tech behind Firefox. That’d actually do a lot for the userbase.
kkfx 2y ago
Maybe it's about time to state that widgets-based GUIs are dead, time to switch to DocUIs, because that's essentially the point and the point is that WebApp today do much but are heavy monsters with very limited flexibility. The current trend could be just ditch desktop environments just substituting them with a WebVM (the name "browsers" should have nowadays) instance. After a bit of time this model will explode, like the widget-based GUIs model, due to it's crappyness done only to disarm the user.
Carmytutino 2y ago
[dead]
nipperkinfeet 2y ago
How about no bloated webapps at all? Let's get back to developing reliable native applications.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  I like the WAMR approach... utilize the portability of WASM but with a wrapper for writing desktop native apps with it.
willywanker 2y ago
Never could see the difference between a so called web app and a shortcut to the site in question on the desktop. It is not a standalone application when it depends on the browser runtime. Much rather prefer Mozilla's sadly vanished application platform, where you could create powerful standalone cross platform desktop applications with knowledge of just XML(XUL being a subset) and Javascript. Firefox and Thunderbird themselves were great examples of such apps and it would have been any day a better alternative to Electron, these applications actually respected the look and feel conventions of each OS they ran on. Mozilla had a separate XULRunner runtime to bundle with your app for it to be fully standalone, or you could invoke it with the locally installed Firefox instance. There were several, like Songbird (media player), FireFTP/FireSSH (originally began as extensions and now available as standalone software)

80 points by ReadCarlBarks 2y ago

aidog 2y ago

I would be happy to just get the old PWA mode back. Turn a webapp into a window.

leejoramo 2y ago
Exactly this. I have to use Chrome (or one of its non-Google flavors) to easily create dedicated Desktop apps for websites. I would prefer to use Firefox but they killed this feature long ago. Glad Firefox is revisiting PWA/WebApps
- cranberryturkey 2y ago
  Anyone know why Firefox killed PWA support?
  - erichdongubler 2y ago
    I think it's addressed in the article: > As you may know, we built a prototype for desktop PWAs a few years ago, and unfortunately user testing on our solution showed confusion and lack of perceived value. We didn’t release it because we didn’t have an approach that could meet the needs of power users without causing confusion among the broader user base.
    - cranberryturkey 2y ago
      it was live for awhile...don't know why they removed it for that reason. seems like your average user wouldn't know to use a PWA but the power users got screwed.

jarsin 2y ago

Easy privacy/identity management per app. Easy payment processing builtin to browser. Easy social that spans apps that we fully control. I should be able to see who my hackernews friends are and if we have both chosen what other apps we have in common. I still can't believe we have to sign up for every single app. Enter all kinds of different payment methods across a variety of payment processors. And are trapped using big tech platforms. The browser is the killer app but none of these browser makers take it to the next level. Its still same as it was since mid 2000's.

fragmede 2y ago
> I still can't believe we have to sign up for every single app. sign in with apple/Google/Facebook/whatever has reduced the number of signups for me. > Enter all kinds of different payment methods across a variety of payment processors apple pay is super convenient - merchant gets my payment and my address, but there's also PayPal and Amazon pay and Shopify pay and stripe link. there's a complaint to be had about the nunnery of choices there are, but that's different from the automation not working. > And are trapped using big tech platforms. can't do anything about that unless you wanna work with crypto, but then you're using crypto. we're not still stuck in the year 2000 unless you choose to be.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > sign in with apple/Google/Facebook/whatever has reduced the number of signups for me. That's an awfully high-risk solution to having to maintain multiple identities. The last thing I want is to be cut off from my (business) calendar because of something I said in a forum somewhere. Remember back when having your identity tracked across multiple websites was malicious and websites would do their best to perform the tracking surreptitiously. Now it's all different - websites having users lining up to dox themselves. I'm afraid if someone wants to dox many of the online pseudo-anonymous personas I use, they going to have to do all the work to dox me; I'm not lifting a finger to help them, much less actually do it for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnugnf_2CYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnugnf_2CYM
Ajedi32 2y ago

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

I would like browsers to offer a true "local app mode": Locally installed code (HTML/JS) that would be run using the browser runtime, but with enhanced privileges behind a permission model (e.g. the possibility to grant filesystem access etc.). Currently, developers that need a single thing they can't get from within a browser are generally forced to create an Electron app, which means they essentially bundle an outdated (and often never updated) version of a browser with their app. It would be much better if you could just use the already installed, always updated browser as the runtime for your "local" app. That would also create an incentive to develop in the browser ecosystem, and possibly move to a PWA - or at least it would show why devs prefer "real" applications to PWAs.

wkirby 2y ago
Genuine question: is this not exactly what the Tauri project aims to do?
- cranberryturkey 2y ago
  And primatejs just released desktop support
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Looks like it's very close to what I meant! I was thinking of something like `/usr/bin/firefox --webapp-mode /var/opt/path/to/approot/` (in my model, the browser would contain code to load some standard webapp format, while with Tauri it looks like the app bundles a small piece of code that loads local webkit) but that's just a detail. The downside of Tauri is that you likely run the built-in runtime with regular (full) access, while with a browser-controlled flow, the browser could enforce a permission system.
  - plonq 2y ago
    FWIW Tauri has a comprehensive permission system
    - 2y ago

solarkraft 2y ago

> Recently, other browsers have implemented or enhanced their approach to PWAs, for example by making it easy to install any website as a web app (even if no PWA manifest is provided) Chrome has had this for at least 5 years, probably longer. Firefox has had "Site Specific Browser" functionality a long, long time ago.

rascul 2y ago
> Firefox has had "Site Specific Browser" functionality a long, long time ago. I was using Mozilla Prism but they went and killed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism

xk_id 2y ago

Every day we stray further from using the web to deliver documents.

simonw 2y ago
It's pretty clear at this point that the web also being a universal zero-installation-required sandboxed application runtime is a much more exciting vision than if it was restricted to only documents.
- middleendian2 2y ago
  Why, because you can charge for cramming 50 MB of tracking JavaScript down the pipe to people paying $10 a month for the privilege?
  - simonw 2y ago
    Only if you suck at making web apps. (Admittedly a lot of people suck at making web apps.)
- xk_id 2y ago
  I used to feel a lot more excitement in 2000 than i feel now.
  - create-account 2y ago
    In year 2000, we were around 24 years younger and the web was still an undeveloped plot of land for kids to play. Now, it’s mostly a corporate canvas for economic transactions, like the rest of the human experience in the west
    - steve1977 2y ago
      The dot-com bubble would like to have a word with you.
  - spankalee 2y ago

amanzi 2y ago

Lack of PWA support is the only reason why I keep other browsers handy, so I'm glad to see some movement on this long-outstanding issue. But I do have some concerns with the tone of this post and I hope they don't try too hard to re-imagine what "web apps" should be and end up with either a half-baked solution or a proprietary one.

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

I think one big problem with web apps is that browser storage is generally seen as ephemeral, causing data that the user would want to keep to be deleted together with relatively meaningless, truly ephemeral data. For example, I have my browser set to delete cookies on exit. Others use "delete recent history". I don't know if these things also wipe PWA data, but if they do, that can be a nasty surprise.

SoftTalker 2y ago
In Firefox, cookies and "site data" have separately delete settings but definitely can be done. My browser is configured to delete everything (cookies, data, history) when I close it.
thepra 2y ago
as a pwa developer, that's a continuous concern, lately I was thinking of notifying the users after certain actions to go and save locally the data that's withing the web app(it's all JSON btw) and restore it later when in need, but that's too cumbersome as a solution for many... ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
datavirtue 2y ago
The data should pass through to the OS environment app data folder the way you store data in any other app.

jay_kyburz 2y ago

The thing I want most is the thing specifically ruled out .. > "it’s not a goal to make it feel like you’re not in Firefox." I'm perfectly happy to have my app in a pinned tab or bookmark. Do we really need a third kind of bookmark. Why do we need yet another method for installing apps on our desktop. On a phone I can understand the convenience of saving a bookmark on your home screen, and removing the space consuming address bar, but desktops don't have the same constraints. I wish they would just make an Electron alternative, but try and do it better. Make it easy to carve out features you don't need to make the process smaller and lighter. Don't need WebGL or Canvas? Don't need audio or video? How small can you make a browser by cutting features? How cool would it be to visit a website with a bunch of check boxes that allow you to select the features you want for your app runtime, then it compiles an executable for you on demand.

BadHumans 2y ago

I want it to be easier to develop local-only offline apps and I want to verify that they are offline by being able to see if they are sending network traffic in the same way I can currently use browser tools to see what data is coming from this web page. Dealing with service workers for local apps feels like a hack at best.

devwastaken 2y ago

Firefox lost that market a long time ago. Electron won because chromium is modular, the tech can be re-used for other purposes. Firefox lost because it's a monolith you can't use in your projects. WPA's and webviews are non solutions. You can't have web sandboxing and also the privileges a desktop app needs. Wasm is a failed experiment that did not result in the performance improvements promised. You still need to compile C++ modules for all kinds of things.

datavirtue 2y ago
I started evaluating electron and discovered that I would have to build messages for every single thing I wanted to do on the desktop and then tweak absolutely everything for performance. Not a great dev experience. I would much rather build a blazor app in a webview where I only have to send messages to the HTML for data binding. That shit is smooooth.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

Many people already said this, but isolation is core. From the moment I press "install pwa": separate desktop icon, separate storage. I should be able to choose for which profile the app is installed (to support multiple profiles) and the window should be managed separately. Since I use kwin, possibly a separate window class too, so I can easily make rules specifically for the installed app. file system access would be great, with long term storage, so i can stay authenticated for long time. I should be able to tell file extensions to be opened by the pwa on my desktop. Notifications should be available too. A permission management window for installed pwa would be great. Something that would be cool is some sort of storage within Firefox sync, so that installing the pwa somewhere else restores my status and settings

powersnail 2y ago
I sort of achieved this by 1) creating a separate profile for a web app, 2) create a Desktop File which points to that profile, with a `--class` option set to the app's name. It seems that the logins are staying for as long as the website allows. The caveat is that the `--class` option doesn't seem to always be reliable; sometimes the window still gets grouped with the normal firefox instances in the task bar. I haven't got around to find out whether it's the fault of firefox or kwin.

mrinfinitiesx 2y ago

Per app/site theming - Built in 'Dark Reader' for PWA/web pages Make development/programming apps intuitive/fun to tinker with things for new people coming in to development. (For local development) Make memory management more controllable for firefox, multiple tabs with bloated JS pages using 7GB of 8GB total system RAM gets.. fun (manjaro+xfce, does it on different installs, has for years) A service level worker for push notifications with the ability to run a local push server easily for testing webapp creation. (Won't work if firefox isn't running, but not that big of a deal, but is, if firefox is using all the RAM.) Per tab/app containers with bandwidth/resource limitations. Ability to save window sizes, volumes, etc. 'Save States' By default, nothing outside of the browser address bar hitting 10.* 192.* 0.0.0.0 127.0.* addresses in scripts/apps without user permission/knowing. Apps accessible only through DoH/DoT only. Bookmarks manager shouldn't close/minimize when you click a bookmarks link. Incentive to create FREE web applications and keep them free without micro transactions/some other hidden/rabbit hole fees.

was8309 2y ago

back then I chose prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism because the user wanted a local app and I only wanted to work with the most ubiquitous UI. was lightweight and wish it was still available

throwaway290232 2y ago

[dead]

KronisLV 2y ago

I kind of wish we’d have a popular alternative to Electron, based on the tech behind Firefox. That’d actually do a lot for the userbase.

kkfx 2y ago

Maybe it's about time to state that widgets-based GUIs are dead, time to switch to DocUIs, because that's essentially the point and the point is that WebApp today do much but are heavy monsters with very limited flexibility. The current trend could be just ditch desktop environments just substituting them with a WebVM (the name "browsers" should have nowadays) instance. After a bit of time this model will explode, like the widget-based GUIs model, due to it's crappyness done only to disarm the user.

Carmytutino 2y ago

[dead]

nipperkinfeet 2y ago

How about no bloated webapps at all? Let's get back to developing reliable native applications.

ranger_danger 2y ago
I like the WAMR approach... utilize the portability of WASM but with a wrapper for writing desktop native apps with it.

willywanker 2y ago

Never could see the difference between a so called web app and a shortcut to the site in question on the desktop. It is not a standalone application when it depends on the browser runtime. Much rather prefer Mozilla's sadly vanished application platform, where you could create powerful standalone cross platform desktop applications with knowledge of just XML(XUL being a subset) and Javascript. Firefox and Thunderbird themselves were great examples of such apps and it would have been any day a better alternative to Electron, these applications actually respected the look and feel conventions of each OS they ran on. Mozilla had a separate XULRunner runtime to bundle with your app for it to be fully standalone, or you could invoke it with the locally installed Firefox instance. There were several, like Songbird (media player), FireFTP/FireSSH (originally began as extensions and now available as standalone software)