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Comment by wbharding | Hacker News Reader

Sure would be nice if Firefox desktop would join the browsers that support PWAs. We build an app that has been PWA-first, but it is unfortunate that this generally requires users to have a Chrome instance running. Would much rather point people to Firefox, and it seems like it would be to their advantage to give apps a reason to recommend FF, if they built a smoother PWA integration than Chrome.

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Mozilla's removal of SSB support (single-site browser[0]) which is the key missing piece here is completely mystifying.

I reckon that CEO salary has to come from somewhere though.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/uwojh7/why_did_fir...

Agreed. On Firefox, if I navigate to the main page I can scroll and look at all the items. If I go to a sub-page, then back to the main page, I can no-longer scroll to see all of the "supported" features. :/

I don't understand the point of PWAs on desktop.

I find it much easier to open a website from the addressbar then to open an "app" using spotlight.

I always have a browser window open anyway.

Same reason why you might prefer to use an app over a website in general. I use PWAs a lot on Windows, and for me the single biggest benefit is that they don't clutter my browser tabs, but instead show up as separate icons that I can Alt+Tab to, see in taskbar along with their notifications, move and resize the window as I see fit etc. Sure, I could also run them in separate browser windows, but then window management gets much messier.

But I don't prefer using an app over a website in general. For me, the biggest benefit of tabs is is that they don't clutter my task bar or my workspaces and that I can ctrl+tab through them.

What does it even mean to "clutter" a taskbar if you exclusively use websites? i.e. what is the point of a taskbar devoid of apps other than the browser?

In-app tabs are supposed to be the second level of grouping, hence why it gets its own shortcut. What you're describing is an attempt to flatten that hierarchy, which is a valid approach, but why are you surprised that not everybody shares your enthusiasm for it?

Firefox on Android is worse experience than Chrome too, at least for this app. The app is harder to install (no prompt), the icon looks worse, and the icon has a Firefox badge on it.

I wonder if that's down to config for the PWA or a Firefox shortcoming. Anyone know?

> and the icon has a Firefox badge on it

This is something enforced by android. If every app was able to pin apps to the homescreen without such a badge, phishing would be too easy ... add something that looks like a bank app to the homescreen, get people to type in their password ...

It's not fair, since that's not true for chrome, but there's no obvious solution, other then I guess having some sort of "super trustworthy" status for a few other browsers like firefox.

At least with Nova launcher, you can "edit" a PWA icon once it's on the home screen and un-check the badge to make it look more seamless.

I really wish they would do that.

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