BuildTheWorld

Does anyone remember how Netscape tried to expand the browser by adding email, news, an html editor, a calendar and other stuff?

This reminds me of that strategy.

And does anyone remember how Chrome killed Internet Explorer? By making a slim, fast and standard compliant browser without any bells and whistles.

I wish Firefox would focus on making the browser a great basis for software that runs in it. And leave the development of applications and tools to websites and plugins.

That Firefox does not support the file system access API makes Firefox users have a really clunky load+save experience in web apps for example. This is the reason I use Chrome and suggest using Chrome to the users of my software. Not because Firefox has to few bells and whistles.

The ability to access the native filesystem (via showOpenFilePicker()) is indeed only available in Chromium.

For Firefox and Safari users, one can offer a fallback via "download file" and "upload file" functionality. Which is clunky, because it does not reliably remember the directory. So the user often has to navigate to the correct dir again. Also it does not offer to save with the same filename by default. So the user will be offered to download "myfile(2).txt" or something instead. But at least it works and you can tell your users to use Chromium for a better experience.

Now that websites can use the File System Access API to load and save files, the Desktop is "solved" for me. Everybody can use my software simply by opening the url in their browser.

The new challenge is phones. Mobile browsers do not support the File System Access API.

What is a solution to this? Is there a reputable service that converts a web page into an Android/iOS app so that it can load and save files?