Firefox

4272 readers

52 users here now

A community for discussion about Mozilla Firefox.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

lightbeam24@lemmy.world

PWAs broke again. I think removing them from Firefox was a bad idea. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world to c/firefox@lemmy.world

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Chrome and Edge make it simple to 'install' pages, so they're easy to pin to the task bar. PWAs for Firefox gives that capability to Firefox, but it's a bit brittle, and breaks easily if Firefox updates. It's broken again for me tonight and the usual 'reinstall this reinstall that' hasn't fixed it.

In my opinion Firefox took a significant backwards step when they killed that feature years ago.

I appreciate I might not be the target audience for Lemmy since I'm half Windows half Unix, and a Gmail / Keep / Calendar / Facebook / Messenger user.

top 11 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] whatwasthat@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I didn't even know you could use PWAs on desktop. I would've loved that. Too late now I guess.

[–] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The PWAs for Firefox extension does a good job most of the time. Just frustrating when it gets broken.

Had it set up on both Windows and Fedora / Debian without issues.

[–] vzq@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

On the one hand, I agree that it’s a step back. In the other hand, I think it’s also partly a recognition that PWAs have not lived up to the promise and are essentially impossible to get right.

I’m sad for the slow languishing death of PWAs, but I’m not faulting FF for pulling the plug once it became clear it was a doomed endeavor.

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 8 points 2 days ago

Are PWAs dying though? I don't think they are. They are still very popular and I use several every day.

[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

What is impossible to get right about it, and why doesn't Chrome have this issue? I've been out of the loop for the removal of PWAs from Firefox, but I didn't see an issue beforehand, and do miss not being able to have a web app look like a normal app on my desktop.

[–] I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I guess really all I want is the option to have a task bar icon for each 'website' - I've doubled them up in the screenshot as half are broken at the moment. Each Gmail session is tied to a separate address, so could technically just be a 'bookmark' but it's nice that they act as their own window, analagous to being an app. That doesn't really have to be a PWA I guess, but a separate window.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago

If you do this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/create-desktop-shortcut-website
...and then edit the created shortcut to add "--new-window" as argument, does that work?

Maybe you can even drag the shortcut onto the Windows Taskbar...?

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The fact that it breaks so often might be a pointer as to why it was removed - sounds like it would be quite a maintenance burden.

However:

I guess really all I want is the option to have a task bar icon for each 'website'

You might be in luck! https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 days ago

Wow, sounds like he gets it - just make tabs move able to task bar.

[–] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I fixed mine just yesterday on my W11. The stuff the addon tells you to install is out of date. You have to install the latest version from their github releases page. It fixed mine being blank white pages.

firefoxpwa-2.13.2-x86_64.msi

But also, I agree. It's a shame this all isn't a baked in FF feature.

[–] d_k_bo@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago

I just hat to run "Patch profiles and runtime" in the extension settings.

https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox/issues/600#issuecomment-2567782397