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Firefox Is Finally (Re)Adding Support for Web Apps
- uutangohotel 1y agoToo little too late?
- agiacalone 1y agoCuriously, what is the alternative? Chromium-based browsers? Sorry, but I don't trust Google's push to Manifest V3.
- Apocryphon 1y agoZen is Gecko-based.
- dharmab 1y agoI daily drive https://kagi.com/orion/ https://kagi.com/orion/ on mobile and will likely begin to switch on desktop as their cross platform support emerges.
- its-summertime 1y agofor web apps I ended up going with Gnome Web, but Tangram and Ferdium are other options I'm considering
- mentalgear 1y agoFinally, I had installed Brave just for the web-app support.
- linsomniac 1y agoYesterday 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.
- Vinnl 1y agoIf 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 https://webcompat.com.
- linsomniac 1y agoThanks, I'll give it a try! I also see in "Help" there is a "Troubleshoot".
- quesera 1y agoFWIW 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.
- blizdiddy 1y agoMozilla 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.
- supriyo-biswas 1y agoPersonally, 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL
- dralley 1y ago90% of what XUL accomplished was rendered moot and obsolete by HTML5. The remaining 10% isn't worth it.
- coffeeling 1y agoI remember using Songbird. It was nice.
- 0x073 1y agoOr chatzilla.
- rchaud 1y agoThey 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-progressive-web-apps/idi-p/35 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress...
- breckinloggins 1y agoI’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.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoI will mourn the lack of a non-Chrome browser engine with enough market share to prevent Chrome from unilaterally changing the web.
- jm4 1y agoSomeone 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.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI dunno. Forcing ads on everybody seems bad to me. YMMV.
- JoshTriplett 1y agoA 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.
- nwienert 1y agoSafari / WebKit. It's unironically better than Chrome in nearly every way, except dev tools.
- ctoth 1y ago> 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.
- nashashmi 1y agoIt is frustrating to not know what url I have open. Some apps add info based on account .
- makeitdouble 1y agoThere 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.
- nashashmi 1y agoWhat if you want to copy and share the page?
- makeitdouble 1y agoI'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.
- nashashmi 1y agoThat’s a fine idea.
- bergheim 1y agoEvery 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.
- sho_hn 1y ago> 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.
- cube00 1y agoAI heavy now
- raytopia 1y agoAre there any forums more focused on being a "hacker's corner"?
- dylan604 1y agoalt.hackers or something like that maybe? IYKYK
- owebmaster 1y agolobste.rs is way more hacker and technical.
- rchaud 1y agoMore than half of its front page is identical to HN's.
- owebmaster 1y ago
- nashashmi 1y agoAt this point, Firefox might want to shift to the advanced web browser user market. And maybe unleash a simple firefox product called firefox tails.
- fracus 1y agoWeb apps seem more beneficial to the business than to the end user. Like who cares?
- brulard 1y agoWhat 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.
- miramba 1y agoFor 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.
- iszomer 1y agoWell, there was FirefoxOS then a fork of it called KaiOS..
- jampekka 1y agoHow so? Businesses and middlemen make a killing with non-web-apps.
- Vinnl 1y agoGood to know: this is about desktop. Firefox for Android already supports installable web apps.
- thinkingemote 1y agoI would like to see them re develop positron (firefox + electron) https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron
- account-5 1y agoWhy 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.
- icdtea 1y agoPerhaps 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.
- throwawa14223 1y agoI used Firefox for the lack of these features. Time to look at an alternative.
- trallnag 1y agoYou are using Firefox because it does not support PWAs like Chromium does? So what alternatives are left on the table for you? Lynx?
- throwawa14223 1y agoMaybe Ladybird?
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoI 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 :)
- HelloUsername 1y ago> Chrome PWAs have been replacing the need for Electron Isn't Electron based on Chromium?
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoYes, 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.
- miramba 1y agoThank you very much, Excalidraw is the best PWA implementation I have seen so far.
- nolist_policy 1y agoFirst Certificate Transparency[1] now PWAs. Looks like Firefox is finally catching up. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175793
- mary-ext 1y agoI 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.
- mid-kid 1y agoThis 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.
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoIt’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!
- antifa 1y agoHopefully (re)adding hotkeys to Firefox for Android is next.