25 ms·

Firefox not planning on supporting PWA

226 points by thayne 6y ago

albertgoeswoof 6y ago
PWAs are actually kind of user hostile. They only benefit developers who don’t want to implement an extra app in a native/App Store language/env. In theory they could be great but apple/google make too much money off app stores.
- Fragoel2 6y ago
  Maintaining 2 different apps (a native one and a web one) is costly in terms of time/resources. The point its not that developers "don't want" to make both, is that many don't have the resources to make both.
  - albertgoeswoof 6y ago
    Right but how does that help users? If you don’t have the resources to build the right interfaces for them, then the business model isn’t working. Telling your customers to install a pwa is a terrible user experience and borderline rude
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      Not everyone is building a next Instagram for hundreds of millions users. There's a long tail of smaller business niches which might sustain a solo developer / small company and there having one codebase is obviously critical.
    - _ink_ 6y ago
      Rude is telling developers their business model is not good, because they cannot affort to build native apps for Windows, Mac, Gnome, Kde, Android, iOS and web. If you cannot work with PWAs maybe you just aren't in the targeted user group.
    - doteka 6y ago
      Hard disagree for the long tail of apps. My company’s payroll admin system uses a PWA as a mobile interface. I don’t need slick ui there, I need to view my payslips (click a link to open a pdf) and request time off (fill in a 4-field form). It’s perfectly fine for this usecase and there is no conceivable business value in pouring more resources into it. News flash: a majority of applications is simple CRUD like this. They don’t need a native UI or performance. They just need an icon on your homescreen.
    - twobitshifter 6y ago
      Actually I find that the user experience on PWAs and Electron apps is better than that on native desktop apps. Developers have always been challenged in building desktop apps because the available toolkits are generally crusty, limited, and complex. GTK, TK, QT, Windows Forms, don’t compare well against what can be done in the DOM.
    - postalrat 6y ago
      Nobody is telling users to install a PWA. Just because a site has all the features to be considered a PWA doesn't mean your user must use them. But they are telling users to install apps. Sites that depend on advertising want to force the app down your throat to eliminate ad blockers and to better track you.
  - jefftougas 6y ago
    The core problem with PWAs is that ultimately the success of the overall idea is held hostage by the level of consensus across the browser development teams. Whilst they "collaborate" on "common" web standards (they being many, btw), iOS and Android (note: only 2) have very well defined apis for how to create awesome native UX. The problem of creating a unifying native abstraction (like react native or flutter) that is actually effective from the User's POV, is far more attainable, than that of trying to create a consistently awesome PWA with such inconsistent browser support, across a far greater multitude of platforms than the iOS / Android bifurcation in native-land. My $.02. PWAs have always seemed like one of those beautifully idealistic yet totally doomed to fail ideas (at least for several years relative to native-based-approaches). Don't get me wrong, I think the web will ultimately evolve into the new JVM (read: via WASM), and the beatific promise that was foretold by PWA will finally reach the masses. Reality Check: We're not quite there yet. Firefox deleting a legacy, buggy, and dev-time-sink attempt at this, makes total sense to me so they can focus on the other awesome stuff they're doing that actually creates real value for the masses today. To be fair - perhaps they could've handled the ticket on this a bit more gracefully...? But then again - they know their stuff, so I don't blame them entirely :)
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I think you have it the wrong way around. The app stores are user hostile. Building applications on the web rather than locking them down on platforms is a really good idea. And if anything developers should move towards them to break the store dominance whenever possible.
  - bzb6 6y ago
    It’s been very long since they promised us that web apps that use systems such as Cordova would work as well as native apps. That hasn’t happened yet, and will never happen I guess.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    Web apps have a tendency to disappear andor change without the users wants or needs. I agree app stores are user hostile, but so are web apps.
    - radicalbyte 6y ago
      So do native apps, especially on iOS! It seems like every time I go back to using an iPad that I need to find replacements for a good number of apps.
    - tehbeard 6y ago
      I've had a perfectly good MP3 player on my phone get deleted because Google can't be arsed to leave it alone, they want to force me to a subscription based app to play songs when it's in my pocket! That thing is 100% native code, don't act like web apps are the only thing to do this. You can be a bad actor regardless of the tech stack.
  - bluescrn 6y ago
    Modern phones have very capable web browsers. But try to use them, and you get dumbed-down ‘mobile sites’ with massive ‘use the app instead!’ nags. The web on a mobile device is an unnecessarily lousy experience.
- VoxPelli 6y ago
  You do know that one can publish PWA:s to Google Play Store by using TWA:s + that Google are experimenting with allowing plain PWA:s there + have recently launched a way to still allow in app purchases in such? Also – on desktop many apps are Electron apps today, which is a user hostile workaround for lack of installable PWA:s.
  - eecks 6y ago
    What is TWA:s?
    - VoxPelli 6y ago
      Sorry, should have included that: https://developers.google.com/web/android/trusted-web-activity https://developers.google.com/web/android/trusted-web-activi... Basically: It’s a way to verify that an app represents your site and then that app can open up the PWA inside it (a bit tricky to explain, but it’s great if one wants to be in the store and/or have an existing non-PWA app that one wants to upgrade to a PWA) More info: https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore
- mijoharas 6y ago
  I can probably name 20 different websites that I use that have crappy apps (that they try and force on me). Using a PWA for any of those (provided it gets rid of their terrible app banners) solves that problem for me as a user. I don't want to try and guess which app has broken their copy/paste or back button and have 20 different slightly broken UI's and experiences. The advantage of the web is a consistent U.I. interface, with all the basics working (copy/paste, back button). This means there's a much higher chance of those working for the user, I don't see how you can say that's bad. Even ignoring that, which do you think would be better, a platform that they put 3* the amount of time into or 3 separate platforms (if the devs are forced to build the same thing 3 times)? There are many user benefits.
  - albertgoeswoof 6y ago
    You’re talking about poorly designed web apps, which are designed to get users to convert to native apps because installed apps have a higher retention rate and are easier to siphon data from. PWAs don’t solve those problems for marketeers either. They just annoy end users by making them do some funny dance to get the app on their home page, which then barely works and doesn’t support all the features a native app can handle anyway. So you end up in a world where developers say “we have a mobile app, it’s a PWA, just install that” and then no one installs it because they don’t know how, and the marketeers get frustrated that the current web app isn’t sticky enough on mobile and so they add banners in to make people download the “real” app and you’re back to square one. The only real solution is cross platform development toolchains (like electron) as they reduce the development overhead but allow for native apps.
    - nottorp 6y ago
      Electron is native? It's just another copy of Chrome...
      - sp332 6y ago
        In context, they mean native installation and app management instead of teaching users how to "install" a PWA.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Apps are actually user hostile by far. They're also developer hostile. Web apps are all about freedom. They're free for the developer to distribute, they allow the user freedom to run on any device they own and they also allow the user some freedom to alter the app via extensions/ad blocking/etc.
butz 6y ago
Could we, as users, do some fund raising and hire Igalia (or some other competent developer) to implement PWA support in Firefox? What would be the best way to organize it? Is Bountysource still a thing?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  One way to fund is through: https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ I'm currently supporting an open source UI library through it.
- kbrosnan 6y ago
  Getting major UI added to a browser is not Igalia/Tidelift/etc. forte. They provide development for engine level features like supporting a new CSS element or ECMAscript function. SSB needs OS integration on Windows, MacOS and Linux. It needs UI elements such as toolbar buttons and menu items. Getting that sorted is a non-trivial task. Then there is the ongoing maintenance. This is not something where a few unit tests are going to keep the feature functional as new code is developed.
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  Bountysource is dead, unfortunately
landsman 6y ago
This is very sad! PWA is future of agile apps development.
- janoc 6y ago
  More like a kludgy workaround for having to go through the submission process of the app store walled gardens of phone vendors. Nothing else. It has certainly nothing to do with any "agile apps development" and there is little to no market for it outside of mobile (i.e. desktop).
  - whereistimbo 6y ago
    Doesn't desktop user heavily consume web based apps? Think YouTube and Gmail. Edit: grammar fix.
    - janoc 6y ago
      And you know someone who uses an app for those on desktop instead of a browser? Especially a locked down one, full of unblockable ads? (cf Youtube app on mobile which is happy to insert 10 adds in a 10 minute video ...)
      - sp332 6y ago
        I do on my Chromebook, which indicates that I probably would on desktop if it were an option.
  - VoxPelli 6y ago
    Installable PWA:s could in many cases replace Electron apps completely and would be superior as they would contain a much more up to date browser.
    - janoc 6y ago
      In other words - replace one horrible mess with another for what is ultimately only a web app. Moreover, it is a complete red herring - there is not much advantage in a "much more up to date browser" in an app that will ever open/download a single page (so security or newer standard support is rarely a problem). Never mind that even the Electron apps can be (and are) updated frequently. Also, PWAs are unable to do many things that Electron apps can as PWA is still ultimately in a browser sandbox whereas Electron runs a Node.js backend that can do pretty much anything a regular desktop app can (networking, access hardware, etc.). That said, I am certainly not advocating Electron, it is a horrible kludge leading to poorly designed applications that break desktop usability conventions constantly, are enormous resource hogs and require weird workarounds for doing basic stuff only for the sake of being able to do user interface in HTML and javascript.
akmarinov 6y ago
PWAs are DOA until Apple adds proper support and they’ll never do that, since they’ll take a huge chunk of Appstore profits out of Apple’s hands.
- toadkicker 6y ago
  Ironically Apple is also the ones who kicked off the entire PWA race because of the lack of an SDK when the iPhone launched. The messaging then was "build for the web, that is better than native" and now its "native or gtfo" and web apps are not preferred. The last 5 years that I've built web versions of apps first, the client told me "look the web app is great, hard to tell its a web app honestly. Except when I want to..." and you all know the rest of the conversation from here. Firefox, I love you, but you're bringing me down. We need a powerful, semi-native, offline capable architecture for the web. I don't care about the PWA spec, it's quite messy handling the implementation of one. But I do think it has always been the vision that the web is accessible regardless of physical connection to it. As long as I can remember in this industry we've swung back and forth between "thin" and "thick" clients as if one way is the right way. Microservices over monoliths, etc. It's all the same symptom that naturally we don't want to grapple complexity. This announcement is yet another entry in the cannon of thin vs thick. It's a hard problem and any PM who only cares about optimizing time spent will say everything they can once they've zeroed in on the perceived waste.
  - z3t4 6y ago
    Also ironic is that Apple dont recommend adding web apps to the app store. Eg. wrapping web sites in an app.
  - blueblisters 6y ago
    Apple's love for native apps began - if I remember correctly - with the popularity of jailbroken devices and third party app stores like Cydia that could unleash the full potential of iPhone 1. Until then, Jobs was stubbornly against giving developers access to the native ecosystem and preferred that they develop web applications. I wonder if browsers would be full-fledged VMs by now if we had continued along the web application trajectory.
metalrain 6y ago
I'm not sure what is problem with that? Firefox supports service workers and other PWA stuff, right?
- makepanic 6y ago
  Yes this seems to only affect the Site-Specific Browser (SSB) implementation. This was previously implemented behind a feature flag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-site-specific-browser-firefox/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-site-specific-browser-...
krzyk 6y ago
What is PWA?
- trynewideas 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Progressive web apps.
- LucidLynx 6y ago
  http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=pwa http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=pwa
- masklinn 6y ago
  Same as REST: a meaningless buzzword.
BuzzwordBingo 6y ago
From the workaholics who literally said “RSS is too hard for us and besides super lame and old”.
dwaite 6y ago
I don't understand how we got to such misuse of "PWA" in this context (e.g, on both sides of the conversation). Progressive Web Apps are not a standard. Rather, it is the idea that a an application - presented through a web browser - can use additional features provided by browser _if_available_. The term is based on the concept of "Progressive Enhancement". Everyone's pet feature - service workers, single site browsers, offline mode, push notifications, video codec support - gets branded "PWA" in their rant that such and such browser is not keeping up. However, writing your web application to require a feature that not all of the common browsers support means fundamentally your application is _not_ written for progressive enhancement. The reality is that the term "Progressive Web Apps" was coined by Google as they started pushing harder for web apps to perform like native apps - but at the time they had a strategic initiative to have web apps instead of native apps (ChromeOS and the ChromeBooks, pre Android support). None of the other browser or OS platform vendors have that level of strategic investment in supporting web apps as a new 'native' format - especially considering the security model is usually different than that of the native platform.
- nottorp 6y ago
  At least the first comment I ran into on HN explained what a PWA is :)
  - sodapopcan 6y ago
    Ha, glad I wasn't the only one.
    - nottorp 6y ago
      It's interesting how the javascript ecosystem sucks you in until you stop being aware that there is anything else outside your bubble and assume everyone will understand your acronyms. But then, it's not new. Heard people saying they know "the Visual C language" ages ago. Guess that's how MS started its monopoly. What's worrying this time is that they're redefining "cross platform" to "runs in the same emulator".
cookiengineer 6y ago
The reason for keeping the XUL runner based legacy tech and to ditch something like a --pwa flag is...that it it has "some known bugs"? If there is no alternative to shipping apps via electron and chromium PWAs, there unlikely will be an open alternative that works everywhere. I honestly don't understand this decision.
- progval 6y ago
  What are you talking about? XUL Runner didn't get a release in five years, and XUL is being removed from Firefox. And where did you see Mozilla wants to "ditch app sandboxing"?
  - cookiengineer 6y ago
    Other Browsers have support for PWAs, including Safari/WebKit, which means that it's as simple as --pwa=url to ship your offline ready application. In Firefox, however, it still requires an application.ini file and an xul:webview to do so. XUL cannot be removed as long as something like a simple webview isn't possible. And something like --pwa=url via CLI is pretty much the correct way to offer this type of featureset in my opinion; as all other Browsers (read as: really all, even Edgium) have support for PWAs. WebKit, compared to Chromium, has due to the availability of its bindings (like webkit2gtk) even better sandboxing capabilities; with an isolated userdata cache and an isolated webdata cache that you can set to e.g. /tmp/websandbox. Trident, the old engine behind Internet Explorer, also had this kind of featureset; similar to how WebKit's bindings are built...which is the reason why they still stick around on Windows WPF based apps, and probably is the reason why Edgium and Chromium are working so much on the CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) in order to replace it. Additionally, firefox's profile manager concept doesn't allow to fully sandbox a web application in /tmp - not even with an XUL based webview, because it'll always leak out settings in various ways (on Windows, on MacOS, and on Linux).
VoxPelli 6y ago
Kind of misleading title – what isn’t planned to be supported is installing PWA:s as standalone apps on desktop Firefox: https://twitter.com/englishmossop/status/1344428028315590656?s=21 https://twitter.com/englishmossop/status/1344428028315590656... Service Workers, push notifications and such are still supported. And I believe you can install PWA:s on Firefox for Android?
- ksec 6y ago
  Yes and I thought it make sense. Do people not just use Electron App on Desktop? I mean the App would be packaged as such most consumer wont even notice. And I thought some of the comments in the Bug Tracker were quite hostile.
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    > Do people not just use Electron App on Desktop It would be nice to not have 80+ slightly different chrome installs on a desktop for all the apps these days. Shipping just the app code and using the runtime (edge or chrome i guess, would've been nice to have firefox as a modern xulrunner successor) on the end users machine makes more sense to me.
    - tuukkah 6y ago
      And it's not just the number of installs but also multitasking of multiple browser engines exhausting RAM on typically 16GB laptops.
    - pedro2 6y ago
      For Windows Chredge/Edgium is planned to support that via Microsoft’s something-something API which allows to declare Electronesque-mode for a app and get independent updates to the common Electron layer (and hopefully, reduce memory usage). I don’t recall if such is only available via Windows Store or is only dependent on APPX (which correlates but does not depend on Windows Store - at least not on the server side of it)
      - 6y ago
pojntfx 6y ago
Honestly the lack of PWA support (Spotify, Figma, code-server, background sync etc.) was the reason I dropped Firefox earlier this year. I now have a system with nothing but DWM, st and Chromium, and it’s beautiful; no maintenance, no hundreds of parallel Chromium/Electron installations, no need to support proprietary platforms and most importantly no need to be a slave to the Play store, App store or Microsoft store. Why Mozilla wouldn’t support such a libre ecosystem, even though they clearly benefit from it’s existence (check the mobile Firefox usage stats; it’s nothing even compared to the small desktop share) is beyond me. I’ve had high hopes for Firefox after the quantum release, but at this point using anything other than a Chromium or WebKit-based browser just seems to be a waste of time to me, and I’ll gladly take the downside of a monolithic system if it means that I and my users are free from proprietary platform-specific apps and proprietary distribution mechanisms.
- stepbeek 6y ago
  Genuine question: how do you reconcile a desire for a “liver ecosystem” with backing Chromium/WebKit? I never thought I’d be backing Apple, but at this point I’m hoping that safari remains independent of Google to provide some decentralization.
  - pojntfx 6y ago
    I absolutely see your point; in theory, a web of many engines and browsers would be awesome. In practice however, at least IMHO, Safari isn’t really a competitor to Chrome at this point, but rather a means of Apple to curb the web and to conform to it’s standards. Think WebP, WebM, WebA (or Ogg/Vorbis - no support for any free/libre codecs at all), PWAs, offline support, push notifications and the list goes on. A serious competitor like the Firefox from a few years ago would have been awesome, but Safari really just seems to push people away from the web platform, much like IE’s lack of support in the past has done. The alternative to a (kinda, but not really) monoculture web platform is IMHO preferable to a platform of fully proprietary native platforms.
    - Betelgeuse90 6y ago
intricatedetail 6y ago
Seems like Firefox is afraid of retaliation from Apple. If you could sidestep App store then likely Apple would have banned FF altogether from their computers and phones.
- rimliu 6y ago
  On iPhones the engine is Apple's. Firefox is just a skin.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Wow
rodmena 6y ago
I added the excuse to list of my favourite excuses: "Hey, I ditched the feature cause it had some known bugs".
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Though here it’s rather “we experimented with this thing, and it turned out to not be as useful as we expected, and it’s a maintenance burden, so we’re removing it”.
dazbradbury 6y ago
This title is a bit misleading. Progressive Web Apps are supported on Firefox mobile, on android at least. The real issue people should be discussing is Apple not supporting PWAs, or in fact, any browser engine other than Safari on iPhones. It's the real blocker to wider adoption of PWAs (and many other features!) Until that happens, whether Firefox desktop / other platforms support this specific behaviour (Single-Site Browser) is a bit moot as it's an edge case compared to 50% of mobile users.
- incrudible 6y ago
  PWA is a bag of features that is mostly supported on iOS. You can have fullscreen apps that run offline, launched from the home screen. However, you can not trigger an installation prompt like on Android.
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    You also have a ton of limitations like no background updates, no location, no bluetooth, the app’s data gets deleted after 7 days, if you don’t use it, etc
    - incrudible 6y ago
      > the app’s data gets deleted after 7 day This is not true, it's a misconception about how the seven-day-counter works when the app is installed on the home screen. Nevertheless, persistent data is a concern, because the standards do not specify how long data must be kept, so it could get wiped at some point, for example when the device is low on disk storage.
      - theklr 6y ago
        This. Majority of both Apple’s and Mozilla’s stance are based on the lack of standards for the PWA. The final checkboxes for both browsers have unchecked usually reflect the lack of clear specs from Google (since they shipped publicly before draft in W3C) pushed to help their own agenda.
brianzelip 6y ago
Title should be corrected to “Remove the Single Site Browser feature in Firefox”. It’s not about PWAs more generally than that.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  But a FF contributor did say: > there is currently no plan for PWA support in Firefox. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c8
mijoharas 6y ago
that's very sad. Just yesterday I helped a family member install firefox for their android device, and installed an adblocker, to replace their news apps with "Add to home screen" PWAs (they were sick of the billions of ads in the apps). Now it sounds like they're not killing the mobile PWA yet, but it's a big selling point of firefox as far as I'm concerned. I was also just starting to switch to firefox on desktop (just installed my main plugins yesterday) for my main browser, but this is really making me reconsider.
- Boltgolt 6y ago
  They support basically all PWA functionalities except installing the app to desktop. Is that really such a dealbreaker?
  - pimterry 6y ago
    Personally, yes, I enormously want this, and as a Firefox user I have various PWA apps that I have to run standalone via Chrome, purely because Firefox can't do it. Being able to have a desktop window and traditional shortcuts per 'application' is 80% of why electron exists and is so big in the first place. Chromium powers that whole market. Moving all of that to PWAs that could share a runtime and use Firefox internally would be a huge step in a good direction.
tuukkah 6y ago
> Unfortunately I think that the [user] research is confidential at the moment. Why can't Mozilla's user research be open?
- cube00 6y ago
  It wouldn't matter, it seems the decision has already been made. > The pile-on isn't helping, nor is questioning Dave's motives (or those of other Mozilla employees), so I'm going to restrict comments on this bug.
  - claytongulick 6y ago
    Honestly, it was this more than anything that made me decide to uninstall FF. I can forgive a decision I disagree with. I can never forgive silencing open discussion. Edit: the downvotes on this comment are particularly ironic given the subject matter.
- hackerfromthefu 6y ago
  I've been watching Mozilla's actions because they often seem to be incongruous with what you would expect them to be from their publicity. In other words they often say one thing, but do something else. Opening the user research would make this more obvious, so that's probably why they don't allow this visibility, even though it would make sense according to their published principles. Why are they doing this? I've no particular inside information, but occam's razor says it's follow the money - that Mozilla's true reason for existing is as a protection for Google, and that Mozilla's published positions are virtue signalling, but their actions serve their real masters at Google. It sounds controversial, right? But if you are ever interested in the red pill, explore this possibility by considering these facts.. (and if you're not - leave this post up so others get the chance to think about it for themselves) - Google provides 95% of the money for Mozilla - Mozilla is a lightning rod that attracts and focuses the user centric parts of the ecosystem/market, but ultimately fails to achieve the goals of giving users power and instead year after year the power remains with google - Mozilla must play a fine line between virtue signalling to prevent competitors who would truly organize for users benefit, vs actually doing things that would tip the balance of power towards users - Mozilla thus talks about lofty goals to capture the idealist mindshare, but consistently fails on good execution so the pragmatic choice remains to use google products instead - This pattern has been so consistent over the years I've come to the conclusion it's deliberate .. and the reason is probably because: follow the money, ie Mozilla is funded by Google - If Mozilla leadership isn't doing this intentionally then they are being used/played by Google, however Mozilla's CEO is now a corporate lawyer not an idealist, who's taking home big bucks, so that's an indication that Mozilla's leadership is in on the game . So in answer to your question, Mozilla's user research can't be open because that would increase visibility of situations where Mozilla's conflict of interests cause Moz to do things that benefit Google rather than general web users, and Moz's leadership don't want their hypocrisy to become known or their game will be up and the paychecks stop.
WhoCaresLies 6y ago
who cares, firefox only has just bellow 3% market share
- mrweasel 6y ago
  I was going to reverse that: who cares about PWAs. Sure in some edge cases I can see PWAs being a temporary solution. If you want to create a desktop app, just do the work or don’t do it at all. Don’t pretend you have a standalone desktop app if you need to start Chrome to run, yes Google I’m looking at you and your retarded Chat app.
cageface 6y ago
The unfortunate truth is that Firefox is irrelevant now. There’s just not enough value to users in a completely independently browser engine. And if there’s not enough value to users then there’s no sustainable business to build on top of it. Those of us that love the web should divert our energies to keeping Google and Apple honest IMO.
- kaba0 6y ago
  Just by being an independent browser engine, firefox is arguibly one of the most important open source software projects - since basically everything is web-based nowadays and they are the only thing making the web the web, instead of a fancy google chrome runtime. Other than that, I pretty much value having actual privacy when browsing, and firefox is really really good at that with ad-blocking (which may easily go away with chrome and with the pace of development on it, forks will be in a pretty bad situation), containers, etc.
  - cageface 6y ago
    I'm a big fan of Firefox as well and appreciate some of its unique features like containers. It's improved a lot in the last few releases. But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. As a thought experiment - what has the existence of FF done to prevent Apple & Google from going their own ways lately on web features? Not much if anything at all.
    - nottorp 6y ago
      > But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. I don't know... my bank launched a new web interface for online banking and they seem to take my firefox bug reports seriously. Show me another browser that runs uBlock Origin and has both a facebook and google container...
Santosh83 6y ago
I wonder what Firefox can do to halt this negative feedback loop it seems to be in? Now more than ever we need multiple competing implementations of the Web APIs, so that the Web doesn't go the way the native apps have already gone.
- ChrisSD 6y ago
  Nothing much, it's like fighting the sea at this point. Internet comments run on a hype cycle. Firefox had its high relatively recently with the Quantum project. Now it's on the downward slope where everything big and small is not just wrong but the worst thing ever. The upside is that eventually the hype cycle will again turn in their favour. Hopefully they can capitalize on that once it comes.
  - hu3 6y ago
    They'll need another differentiator other than privacy to start another hype cycle. Because unfortunately not enough people care about it.
  - vntok 6y ago
    > The upside is that eventually the hype cycle will again turn in their favour. Hopefully they can capitalize on that once it comes. Not necessarily. The market can stay rational much longer than they are acting solvent.
thefounder 6y ago
Never understood the point of instalable PWAs given they are restricted like simple websites(i.e CORS)
sildur 6y ago
> Additionally user research found little to no perceived user benefit to the feature > No the user research was not performed on the implementation in Firefox. > Unfortunately I think that the research is confidential at the moment. Right. Of course the source is confidential. Not a lot of people are comfortable with uploading photos of their own ass on the internet.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Users complain about browsers using too much memory but then make a fuss when a feature that they don’t use is removed
- esprehn 6y ago
  This is a feature that would save memory though. Instead of running N different copies of Electron or both Firefox and Electron, you could install PWAs to your desktop and have a single running browser on your system.
melomal 6y ago
Literally just switched a project site to a PWA because screw you AMP. PWA's are a great way to get around paying the 30% app store commissions and super useful as we get app fatigue. I have at max 4 apps on my phone, I delete more than I download and PWA's do more than enough to make me happy with my browsing experience.
jhunter1016 6y ago
Of all the organizations out there to support web technologies, I would have expected Firefox to be at the forefront of this. Sure, the Chrome team at Google push PWAs, coin terms, and lead many new feature pushes. But that’s all opportunity for Firefox to help standardize the idea of PWAs and make them something more. Web apps with native functionality can help break up monopolistic practices...but only with support from a wide range of actors.
FiredoxSuck 6y ago
Bye bye Firefox. Sad that we have ancient browsers like this existing anymore. Firefox want to support only apples appstore sandboxes. Uninstall ff today. Let's start cleaning the garbage.
freebuju 6y ago
Firefox seems hell bent on going down a deep dark path. A path only they seem convinced about. It will come a time where they'll have no takers. And we'll be left with chromium. Controversial take: I want to see this happen sooner rather than later. So the internet can finally wake up. And we will be forced to build something that actually works for ALL the internet.
- zepto 6y ago
  Most people in this thread seem to be arguing for both Mozilla and Apple to completely fail, and for Chromium to dominate. You as well. What makes you think anyone will wake up to anything? We’ll end up with the most closed system ever created. If you want something else to be built - why not argue for for it, rather than arguing for the worst possible outcome?
  - freebuju 6y ago
    Again another controversial take: I want Firefox to die and burn so that we can build a new FOR ALL browser based on it from its ashes. It is open source after all. The reason I'm arguing for the worst possible outcome is so that we can have the change we badly need. We cannot take back Firefox while Mozilla is still at the helm of the browser. Not listening to your user base and making iron-fist decisions like this over & over again will make this a reality sooner rather than later.
    - zepto 6y ago
      What makes you assume anything would different if Firefox dies? As far as I can either both Chromium and Firefox could be forked right now, just as easily as they could be in an objectively worse future that you seem to want. The reason Firefox and chromium are supported is because it’s an insane amount of professional work to develop a browser, and they are both funded by money from Google search. Where is the funding to develop an alternative going to come from?
      - freebuju 6y ago
xfalcox 6y ago
Damn, I use this feature everyday for the chat window at my job... It works wonders with i3WM/SwayWM and it's the best way to get a webapp in a independent wayland compatible window.
disposekinetics 6y ago
A good product is defined as much by what it does not include as what it does.
nathias 6y ago
PWA are the only plausible way towards a more free internet and apps, too bad people don't see it. No matter how much it benefits google, it benefits us all in opening up a world beyond app stores.
- zepto 6y ago
  The world is already open beyond app stores. What you are arguing for is the most closed platform the world has ever seen, completely driven by one company.
  - nathias 6y ago
    What's a viable alternative then?
    - zepto 6y ago
      Seems like there are lots of possibilities. 1. The iOS App Store is popular because of safety and privacy. Obviously that involves trusting Apple which is undesirable even if they happen to be good custodians right now. The play store is no better. If we had a decentralized solution to these problems, it would be a lot easier for other platforms to emerge. 2. It seems like we are close to the point where you could build an ‘app player’ which is based on a small subset of web technologies such as webgl, wasm, websockets, and webrtc. Implementing this could be done much more easily than supporting the giant stack required to browse the modern web, so it could be done by a genuine open coalition without a controlling corporate sponsorship as is required for a browser.
      - nathias 6y ago
        Possibilities aren't viable alternatives, the problem is that of all existing options PWA are the best because you can escape app store and play store while providing app-like experience to users. I think google is the greatest evil of our time, but in this case we have nothing better.
- disposekinetics 6y ago
postalrat 6y ago
Maybe its time for Mozilla to seriously consider abandoning Gecko and work to convert Firefox to Chromium. I use Firefox as my primary browser. I'm pretty disappointed to see the Firefox team continuously abandon features I've been hoping to see.
- LambdaComplex 6y ago
  This is probably the worst idea I've heard all day. If Mozilla did this then Google would officially control the world wide web. It would be like back when IE6 ruled, except quite possibly even worse.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    Mozilla could do whatever they want with their branch. I'd trust a chromium based browser controlled by mozilla over google chrome. Even now when I want chromium on windows I choose edge over chrome. I'd love to be able to choose something from mozilla instead. I've used firefox for years and will continue to use it. But at some point firefox will be a niche product trying to find it's niche.
ryukafalz 6y ago
This is a shame, I was waiting for this feature (and actually didn't realize it was already partially implemented). In the meantime I've been doing this with Epiphany, which is sadly a bit lacking in other ways - it still doesn't have WebRTC support for example. Hoping Epiphany will get WebRTC support soon, it's the most promising browser on Linux phones UI-wise, and I plan to use one of those when there's one powerful enough to be a daily driver.
lenkite 6y ago
I am utterly flabbergasted. Why is Mozilla being so dumb ? There should be no argument at all about delivering this feature. Are there people in Mozilla trying to kill Firefox ?
twic 6y ago
Respect to Dave Townsend for responding to those comments in a calm and factual way.
esprehn 6y ago
I've removed a bunch of features over the years from Blink/Chromium so I get where they're coming from (and I've written basically the same rationale about the implementation being buggy and unmaintained/not on a path to shipping). That said, while I don't have access to the user research they quote, I do wonder if this move is short sighted in the bigger picture of desktop apps being built with web tech. Given the popularity of Electron and the recent gaming platforms built as PWAs, it seems likely apps will probably start being distributed as desktop PWAs in the near future. With this move Firefox have cut themselves out of the running though so they'll get caught off guard when some big name player releases a popular desktop app through this channel. I can only hope that someone at Mozilla is taking business strategy into account and not only technical complexity.
wejick 6y ago
On the conversation they mentioned about higher priorities on the Firefox, I wonder if they have open roadmap for us to understand the priority in Firefox.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Firefox has been dead for a long time. I don't know why people even bother. There is a reason it has < 8% marketshare. At this point, you might as well use MS Edge

226 points by thayne 6y ago

PWAs are actually kind of user hostile. They only benefit developers who don’t want to implement an extra app in a native/App Store language/env. In theory they could be great but apple/google make too much money off app stores.

Fragoel2 6y ago
Maintaining 2 different apps (a native one and a web one) is costly in terms of time/resources. The point its not that developers "don't want" to make both, is that many don't have the resources to make both.
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  Right but how does that help users? If you don’t have the resources to build the right interfaces for them, then the business model isn’t working. Telling your customers to install a pwa is a terrible user experience and borderline rude
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    Not everyone is building a next Instagram for hundreds of millions users. There's a long tail of smaller business niches which might sustain a solo developer / small company and there having one codebase is obviously critical.
  - _ink_ 6y ago
    Rude is telling developers their business model is not good, because they cannot affort to build native apps for Windows, Mac, Gnome, Kde, Android, iOS and web. If you cannot work with PWAs maybe you just aren't in the targeted user group.
  - doteka 6y ago
    Hard disagree for the long tail of apps. My company’s payroll admin system uses a PWA as a mobile interface. I don’t need slick ui there, I need to view my payslips (click a link to open a pdf) and request time off (fill in a 4-field form). It’s perfectly fine for this usecase and there is no conceivable business value in pouring more resources into it. News flash: a majority of applications is simple CRUD like this. They don’t need a native UI or performance. They just need an icon on your homescreen.
  - twobitshifter 6y ago
    Actually I find that the user experience on PWAs and Electron apps is better than that on native desktop apps. Developers have always been challenged in building desktop apps because the available toolkits are generally crusty, limited, and complex. GTK, TK, QT, Windows Forms, don’t compare well against what can be done in the DOM.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    Nobody is telling users to install a PWA. Just because a site has all the features to be considered a PWA doesn't mean your user must use them. But they are telling users to install apps. Sites that depend on advertising want to force the app down your throat to eliminate ad blockers and to better track you.
- jefftougas 6y ago
  The core problem with PWAs is that ultimately the success of the overall idea is held hostage by the level of consensus across the browser development teams. Whilst they "collaborate" on "common" web standards (they being many, btw), iOS and Android (note: only 2) have very well defined apis for how to create awesome native UX. The problem of creating a unifying native abstraction (like react native or flutter) that is actually effective from the User's POV, is far more attainable, than that of trying to create a consistently awesome PWA with such inconsistent browser support, across a far greater multitude of platforms than the iOS / Android bifurcation in native-land. My $.02. PWAs have always seemed like one of those beautifully idealistic yet totally doomed to fail ideas (at least for several years relative to native-based-approaches). Don't get me wrong, I think the web will ultimately evolve into the new JVM (read: via WASM), and the beatific promise that was foretold by PWA will finally reach the masses. Reality Check: We're not quite there yet. Firefox deleting a legacy, buggy, and dev-time-sink attempt at this, makes total sense to me so they can focus on the other awesome stuff they're doing that actually creates real value for the masses today. To be fair - perhaps they could've handled the ticket on this a bit more gracefully...? But then again - they know their stuff, so I don't blame them entirely :)
Barrin92 6y ago
I think you have it the wrong way around. The app stores are user hostile. Building applications on the web rather than locking them down on platforms is a really good idea. And if anything developers should move towards them to break the store dominance whenever possible.
- bzb6 6y ago
  It’s been very long since they promised us that web apps that use systems such as Cordova would work as well as native apps. That hasn’t happened yet, and will never happen I guess.
- tpxl 6y ago
  Web apps have a tendency to disappear andor change without the users wants or needs. I agree app stores are user hostile, but so are web apps.
  - radicalbyte 6y ago
    So do native apps, especially on iOS! It seems like every time I go back to using an iPad that I need to find replacements for a good number of apps.
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    I've had a perfectly good MP3 player on my phone get deleted because Google can't be arsed to leave it alone, they want to force me to a subscription based app to play songs when it's in my pocket! That thing is 100% native code, don't act like web apps are the only thing to do this. You can be a bad actor regardless of the tech stack.
- bluescrn 6y ago
  Modern phones have very capable web browsers. But try to use them, and you get dumbed-down ‘mobile sites’ with massive ‘use the app instead!’ nags. The web on a mobile device is an unnecessarily lousy experience.
VoxPelli 6y ago
You do know that one can publish PWA:s to Google Play Store by using TWA:s + that Google are experimenting with allowing plain PWA:s there + have recently launched a way to still allow in app purchases in such? Also – on desktop many apps are Electron apps today, which is a user hostile workaround for lack of installable PWA:s.
- eecks 6y ago
  What is TWA:s?
  - VoxPelli 6y ago
    Sorry, should have included that: https://developers.google.com/web/android/trusted-web-activity https://developers.google.com/web/android/trusted-web-activi... Basically: It’s a way to verify that an app represents your site and then that app can open up the PWA inside it (a bit tricky to explain, but it’s great if one wants to be in the store and/or have an existing non-PWA app that one wants to upgrade to a PWA) More info: https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore https://firt.dev/pwa-playstore
mijoharas 6y ago
I can probably name 20 different websites that I use that have crappy apps (that they try and force on me). Using a PWA for any of those (provided it gets rid of their terrible app banners) solves that problem for me as a user. I don't want to try and guess which app has broken their copy/paste or back button and have 20 different slightly broken UI's and experiences. The advantage of the web is a consistent U.I. interface, with all the basics working (copy/paste, back button). This means there's a much higher chance of those working for the user, I don't see how you can say that's bad. Even ignoring that, which do you think would be better, a platform that they put 3* the amount of time into or 3 separate platforms (if the devs are forced to build the same thing 3 times)? There are many user benefits.
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  You’re talking about poorly designed web apps, which are designed to get users to convert to native apps because installed apps have a higher retention rate and are easier to siphon data from. PWAs don’t solve those problems for marketeers either. They just annoy end users by making them do some funny dance to get the app on their home page, which then barely works and doesn’t support all the features a native app can handle anyway. So you end up in a world where developers say “we have a mobile app, it’s a PWA, just install that” and then no one installs it because they don’t know how, and the marketeers get frustrated that the current web app isn’t sticky enough on mobile and so they add banners in to make people download the “real” app and you’re back to square one. The only real solution is cross platform development toolchains (like electron) as they reduce the development overhead but allow for native apps.
  - nottorp 6y ago
    Electron is native? It's just another copy of Chrome...
    - sp332 6y ago
      In context, they mean native installation and app management instead of teaching users how to "install" a PWA.
wayneftw 6y ago
Apps are actually user hostile by far. They're also developer hostile. Web apps are all about freedom. They're free for the developer to distribute, they allow the user freedom to run on any device they own and they also allow the user some freedom to alter the app via extensions/ad blocking/etc.

butz 6y ago

Could we, as users, do some fund raising and hire Igalia (or some other competent developer) to implement PWA support in Firefox? What would be the best way to organize it? Is Bountysource still a thing?

chrisco255 6y ago
One way to fund is through: https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ I'm currently supporting an open source UI library through it.
kbrosnan 6y ago
Getting major UI added to a browser is not Igalia/Tidelift/etc. forte. They provide development for engine level features like supporting a new CSS element or ECMAscript function. SSB needs OS integration on Windows, MacOS and Linux. It needs UI elements such as toolbar buttons and menu items. Getting that sorted is a non-trivial task. Then there is the ongoing maintenance. This is not something where a few unit tests are going to keep the feature functional as new code is developed.
corytheboyd 6y ago
Bountysource is dead, unfortunately

landsman 6y ago

This is very sad! PWA is future of agile apps development.

janoc 6y ago
More like a kludgy workaround for having to go through the submission process of the app store walled gardens of phone vendors. Nothing else. It has certainly nothing to do with any "agile apps development" and there is little to no market for it outside of mobile (i.e. desktop).
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  Doesn't desktop user heavily consume web based apps? Think YouTube and Gmail. Edit: grammar fix.
  - janoc 6y ago
    And you know someone who uses an app for those on desktop instead of a browser? Especially a locked down one, full of unblockable ads? (cf Youtube app on mobile which is happy to insert 10 adds in a 10 minute video ...)
    - sp332 6y ago
      I do on my Chromebook, which indicates that I probably would on desktop if it were an option.
- VoxPelli 6y ago
  Installable PWA:s could in many cases replace Electron apps completely and would be superior as they would contain a much more up to date browser.
  - janoc 6y ago
    In other words - replace one horrible mess with another for what is ultimately only a web app. Moreover, it is a complete red herring - there is not much advantage in a "much more up to date browser" in an app that will ever open/download a single page (so security or newer standard support is rarely a problem). Never mind that even the Electron apps can be (and are) updated frequently. Also, PWAs are unable to do many things that Electron apps can as PWA is still ultimately in a browser sandbox whereas Electron runs a Node.js backend that can do pretty much anything a regular desktop app can (networking, access hardware, etc.). That said, I am certainly not advocating Electron, it is a horrible kludge leading to poorly designed applications that break desktop usability conventions constantly, are enormous resource hogs and require weird workarounds for doing basic stuff only for the sake of being able to do user interface in HTML and javascript.

akmarinov 6y ago

PWAs are DOA until Apple adds proper support and they’ll never do that, since they’ll take a huge chunk of Appstore profits out of Apple’s hands.

toadkicker 6y ago
Ironically Apple is also the ones who kicked off the entire PWA race because of the lack of an SDK when the iPhone launched. The messaging then was "build for the web, that is better than native" and now its "native or gtfo" and web apps are not preferred. The last 5 years that I've built web versions of apps first, the client told me "look the web app is great, hard to tell its a web app honestly. Except when I want to..." and you all know the rest of the conversation from here. Firefox, I love you, but you're bringing me down. We need a powerful, semi-native, offline capable architecture for the web. I don't care about the PWA spec, it's quite messy handling the implementation of one. But I do think it has always been the vision that the web is accessible regardless of physical connection to it. As long as I can remember in this industry we've swung back and forth between "thin" and "thick" clients as if one way is the right way. Microservices over monoliths, etc. It's all the same symptom that naturally we don't want to grapple complexity. This announcement is yet another entry in the cannon of thin vs thick. It's a hard problem and any PM who only cares about optimizing time spent will say everything they can once they've zeroed in on the perceived waste.
- z3t4 6y ago
  Also ironic is that Apple dont recommend adding web apps to the app store. Eg. wrapping web sites in an app.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  Apple's love for native apps began - if I remember correctly - with the popularity of jailbroken devices and third party app stores like Cydia that could unleash the full potential of iPhone 1. Until then, Jobs was stubbornly against giving developers access to the native ecosystem and preferred that they develop web applications. I wonder if browsers would be full-fledged VMs by now if we had continued along the web application trajectory.

metalrain 6y ago

I'm not sure what is problem with that? Firefox supports service workers and other PWA stuff, right?

makepanic 6y ago
Yes this seems to only affect the Site-Specific Browser (SSB) implementation. This was previously implemented behind a feature flag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-site-specific-browser-firefox/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-site-specific-browser-...

krzyk 6y ago

What is PWA?

trynewideas 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application
StavrosK 6y ago
Progressive web apps.
LucidLynx 6y ago
http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=pwa http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=pwa
masklinn 6y ago
Same as REST: a meaningless buzzword.

BuzzwordBingo 6y ago

From the workaholics who literally said “RSS is too hard for us and besides super lame and old”.

dwaite 6y ago

I don't understand how we got to such misuse of "PWA" in this context (e.g, on both sides of the conversation). Progressive Web Apps are not a standard. Rather, it is the idea that a an application - presented through a web browser - can use additional features provided by browser _if_available_. The term is based on the concept of "Progressive Enhancement". Everyone's pet feature - service workers, single site browsers, offline mode, push notifications, video codec support - gets branded "PWA" in their rant that such and such browser is not keeping up. However, writing your web application to require a feature that not all of the common browsers support means fundamentally your application is _not_ written for progressive enhancement. The reality is that the term "Progressive Web Apps" was coined by Google as they started pushing harder for web apps to perform like native apps - but at the time they had a strategic initiative to have web apps instead of native apps (ChromeOS and the ChromeBooks, pre Android support). None of the other browser or OS platform vendors have that level of strategic investment in supporting web apps as a new 'native' format - especially considering the security model is usually different than that of the native platform.

nottorp 6y ago
At least the first comment I ran into on HN explained what a PWA is :)
- sodapopcan 6y ago
  Ha, glad I wasn't the only one.
  - nottorp 6y ago
    It's interesting how the javascript ecosystem sucks you in until you stop being aware that there is anything else outside your bubble and assume everyone will understand your acronyms. But then, it's not new. Heard people saying they know "the Visual C language" ages ago. Guess that's how MS started its monopoly. What's worrying this time is that they're redefining "cross platform" to "runs in the same emulator".

cookiengineer 6y ago

The reason for keeping the XUL runner based legacy tech and to ditch something like a --pwa flag is...that it it has "some known bugs"? If there is no alternative to shipping apps via electron and chromium PWAs, there unlikely will be an open alternative that works everywhere. I honestly don't understand this decision.

progval 6y ago
What are you talking about? XUL Runner didn't get a release in five years, and XUL is being removed from Firefox. And where did you see Mozilla wants to "ditch app sandboxing"?
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  Other Browsers have support for PWAs, including Safari/WebKit, which means that it's as simple as --pwa=url to ship your offline ready application. In Firefox, however, it still requires an application.ini file and an xul:webview to do so. XUL cannot be removed as long as something like a simple webview isn't possible. And something like --pwa=url via CLI is pretty much the correct way to offer this type of featureset in my opinion; as all other Browsers (read as: really all, even Edgium) have support for PWAs. WebKit, compared to Chromium, has due to the availability of its bindings (like webkit2gtk) even better sandboxing capabilities; with an isolated userdata cache and an isolated webdata cache that you can set to e.g. /tmp/websandbox. Trident, the old engine behind Internet Explorer, also had this kind of featureset; similar to how WebKit's bindings are built...which is the reason why they still stick around on Windows WPF based apps, and probably is the reason why Edgium and Chromium are working so much on the CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) in order to replace it. Additionally, firefox's profile manager concept doesn't allow to fully sandbox a web application in /tmp - not even with an XUL based webview, because it'll always leak out settings in various ways (on Windows, on MacOS, and on Linux).

VoxPelli 6y ago

Kind of misleading title – what isn’t planned to be supported is installing PWA:s as standalone apps on desktop Firefox: https://twitter.com/englishmossop/status/1344428028315590656?s=21 https://twitter.com/englishmossop/status/1344428028315590656... Service Workers, push notifications and such are still supported. And I believe you can install PWA:s on Firefox for Android?

ksec 6y ago
Yes and I thought it make sense. Do people not just use Electron App on Desktop? I mean the App would be packaged as such most consumer wont even notice. And I thought some of the comments in the Bug Tracker were quite hostile.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  > Do people not just use Electron App on Desktop It would be nice to not have 80+ slightly different chrome installs on a desktop for all the apps these days. Shipping just the app code and using the runtime (edge or chrome i guess, would've been nice to have firefox as a modern xulrunner successor) on the end users machine makes more sense to me.
  - tuukkah 6y ago
    And it's not just the number of installs but also multitasking of multiple browser engines exhausting RAM on typically 16GB laptops.
  - pedro2 6y ago
    For Windows Chredge/Edgium is planned to support that via Microsoft’s something-something API which allows to declare Electronesque-mode for a app and get independent updates to the common Electron layer (and hopefully, reduce memory usage). I don’t recall if such is only available via Windows Store or is only dependent on APPX (which correlates but does not depend on Windows Store - at least not on the server side of it)
    - 6y ago

pojntfx 6y ago

Honestly the lack of PWA support (Spotify, Figma, code-server, background sync etc.) was the reason I dropped Firefox earlier this year. I now have a system with nothing but DWM, st and Chromium, and it’s beautiful; no maintenance, no hundreds of parallel Chromium/Electron installations, no need to support proprietary platforms and most importantly no need to be a slave to the Play store, App store or Microsoft store. Why Mozilla wouldn’t support such a libre ecosystem, even though they clearly benefit from it’s existence (check the mobile Firefox usage stats; it’s nothing even compared to the small desktop share) is beyond me. I’ve had high hopes for Firefox after the quantum release, but at this point using anything other than a Chromium or WebKit-based browser just seems to be a waste of time to me, and I’ll gladly take the downside of a monolithic system if it means that I and my users are free from proprietary platform-specific apps and proprietary distribution mechanisms.

stepbeek 6y ago
Genuine question: how do you reconcile a desire for a “liver ecosystem” with backing Chromium/WebKit? I never thought I’d be backing Apple, but at this point I’m hoping that safari remains independent of Google to provide some decentralization.
- pojntfx 6y ago
  I absolutely see your point; in theory, a web of many engines and browsers would be awesome. In practice however, at least IMHO, Safari isn’t really a competitor to Chrome at this point, but rather a means of Apple to curb the web and to conform to it’s standards. Think WebP, WebM, WebA (or Ogg/Vorbis - no support for any free/libre codecs at all), PWAs, offline support, push notifications and the list goes on. A serious competitor like the Firefox from a few years ago would have been awesome, but Safari really just seems to push people away from the web platform, much like IE’s lack of support in the past has done. The alternative to a (kinda, but not really) monoculture web platform is IMHO preferable to a platform of fully proprietary native platforms.
  - Betelgeuse90 6y ago

intricatedetail 6y ago

Seems like Firefox is afraid of retaliation from Apple. If you could sidestep App store then likely Apple would have banned FF altogether from their computers and phones.

rimliu 6y ago
On iPhones the engine is Apple's. Firefox is just a skin.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Wow

rodmena 6y ago

I added the excuse to list of my favourite excuses: "Hey, I ditched the feature cause it had some known bugs".

chrismorgan 6y ago
Though here it’s rather “we experimented with this thing, and it turned out to not be as useful as we expected, and it’s a maintenance burden, so we’re removing it”.

dazbradbury 6y ago

This title is a bit misleading. Progressive Web Apps are supported on Firefox mobile, on android at least. The real issue people should be discussing is Apple not supporting PWAs, or in fact, any browser engine other than Safari on iPhones. It's the real blocker to wider adoption of PWAs (and many other features!) Until that happens, whether Firefox desktop / other platforms support this specific behaviour (Single-Site Browser) is a bit moot as it's an edge case compared to 50% of mobile users.

incrudible 6y ago
PWA is a bag of features that is mostly supported on iOS. You can have fullscreen apps that run offline, launched from the home screen. However, you can not trigger an installation prompt like on Android.
- akmarinov 6y ago
  You also have a ton of limitations like no background updates, no location, no bluetooth, the app’s data gets deleted after 7 days, if you don’t use it, etc
  - incrudible 6y ago
    > the app’s data gets deleted after 7 day This is not true, it's a misconception about how the seven-day-counter works when the app is installed on the home screen. Nevertheless, persistent data is a concern, because the standards do not specify how long data must be kept, so it could get wiped at some point, for example when the device is low on disk storage.
    - theklr 6y ago
      This. Majority of both Apple’s and Mozilla’s stance are based on the lack of standards for the PWA. The final checkboxes for both browsers have unchecked usually reflect the lack of clear specs from Google (since they shipped publicly before draft in W3C) pushed to help their own agenda.

brianzelip 6y ago

Title should be corrected to “Remove the Single Site Browser feature in Firefox”. It’s not about PWAs more generally than that.

hundchenkatze 6y ago
But a FF contributor did say: > there is currently no plan for PWA support in Firefox. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682593#c8

mijoharas 6y ago

that's very sad. Just yesterday I helped a family member install firefox for their android device, and installed an adblocker, to replace their news apps with "Add to home screen" PWAs (they were sick of the billions of ads in the apps). Now it sounds like they're not killing the mobile PWA yet, but it's a big selling point of firefox as far as I'm concerned. I was also just starting to switch to firefox on desktop (just installed my main plugins yesterday) for my main browser, but this is really making me reconsider.

Boltgolt 6y ago
They support basically all PWA functionalities except installing the app to desktop. Is that really such a dealbreaker?
- pimterry 6y ago
  Personally, yes, I enormously want this, and as a Firefox user I have various PWA apps that I have to run standalone via Chrome, purely because Firefox can't do it. Being able to have a desktop window and traditional shortcuts per 'application' is 80% of why electron exists and is so big in the first place. Chromium powers that whole market. Moving all of that to PWAs that could share a runtime and use Firefox internally would be a huge step in a good direction.

tuukkah 6y ago

> Unfortunately I think that the [user] research is confidential at the moment. Why can't Mozilla's user research be open?

cube00 6y ago
It wouldn't matter, it seems the decision has already been made. > The pile-on isn't helping, nor is questioning Dave's motives (or those of other Mozilla employees), so I'm going to restrict comments on this bug.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Honestly, it was this more than anything that made me decide to uninstall FF. I can forgive a decision I disagree with. I can never forgive silencing open discussion. Edit: the downvotes on this comment are particularly ironic given the subject matter.
hackerfromthefu 6y ago
I've been watching Mozilla's actions because they often seem to be incongruous with what you would expect them to be from their publicity. In other words they often say one thing, but do something else. Opening the user research would make this more obvious, so that's probably why they don't allow this visibility, even though it would make sense according to their published principles. Why are they doing this? I've no particular inside information, but occam's razor says it's follow the money - that Mozilla's true reason for existing is as a protection for Google, and that Mozilla's published positions are virtue signalling, but their actions serve their real masters at Google. It sounds controversial, right? But if you are ever interested in the red pill, explore this possibility by considering these facts.. (and if you're not - leave this post up so others get the chance to think about it for themselves) - Google provides 95% of the money for Mozilla - Mozilla is a lightning rod that attracts and focuses the user centric parts of the ecosystem/market, but ultimately fails to achieve the goals of giving users power and instead year after year the power remains with google - Mozilla must play a fine line between virtue signalling to prevent competitors who would truly organize for users benefit, vs actually doing things that would tip the balance of power towards users - Mozilla thus talks about lofty goals to capture the idealist mindshare, but consistently fails on good execution so the pragmatic choice remains to use google products instead - This pattern has been so consistent over the years I've come to the conclusion it's deliberate .. and the reason is probably because: follow the money, ie Mozilla is funded by Google - If Mozilla leadership isn't doing this intentionally then they are being used/played by Google, however Mozilla's CEO is now a corporate lawyer not an idealist, who's taking home big bucks, so that's an indication that Mozilla's leadership is in on the game . So in answer to your question, Mozilla's user research can't be open because that would increase visibility of situations where Mozilla's conflict of interests cause Moz to do things that benefit Google rather than general web users, and Moz's leadership don't want their hypocrisy to become known or their game will be up and the paychecks stop.

WhoCaresLies 6y ago

who cares, firefox only has just bellow 3% market share

mrweasel 6y ago
I was going to reverse that: who cares about PWAs. Sure in some edge cases I can see PWAs being a temporary solution. If you want to create a desktop app, just do the work or don’t do it at all. Don’t pretend you have a standalone desktop app if you need to start Chrome to run, yes Google I’m looking at you and your retarded Chat app.

cageface 6y ago

The unfortunate truth is that Firefox is irrelevant now. There’s just not enough value to users in a completely independently browser engine. And if there’s not enough value to users then there’s no sustainable business to build on top of it. Those of us that love the web should divert our energies to keeping Google and Apple honest IMO.

kaba0 6y ago
Just by being an independent browser engine, firefox is arguibly one of the most important open source software projects - since basically everything is web-based nowadays and they are the only thing making the web the web, instead of a fancy google chrome runtime. Other than that, I pretty much value having actual privacy when browsing, and firefox is really really good at that with ad-blocking (which may easily go away with chrome and with the pace of development on it, forks will be in a pretty bad situation), containers, etc.
- cageface 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of Firefox as well and appreciate some of its unique features like containers. It's improved a lot in the last few releases. But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. As a thought experiment - what has the existence of FF done to prevent Apple & Google from going their own ways lately on web features? Not much if anything at all.
  - nottorp 6y ago
    > But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. I don't know... my bank launched a new web interface for online banking and they seem to take my firefox bug reports seriously. Show me another browser that runs uBlock Origin and has both a facebook and google container...

Santosh83 6y ago

I wonder what Firefox can do to halt this negative feedback loop it seems to be in? Now more than ever we need multiple competing implementations of the Web APIs, so that the Web doesn't go the way the native apps have already gone.

ChrisSD 6y ago
Nothing much, it's like fighting the sea at this point. Internet comments run on a hype cycle. Firefox had its high relatively recently with the Quantum project. Now it's on the downward slope where everything big and small is not just wrong but the worst thing ever. The upside is that eventually the hype cycle will again turn in their favour. Hopefully they can capitalize on that once it comes.
- hu3 6y ago
  They'll need another differentiator other than privacy to start another hype cycle. Because unfortunately not enough people care about it.
- vntok 6y ago
  > The upside is that eventually the hype cycle will again turn in their favour. Hopefully they can capitalize on that once it comes. Not necessarily. The market can stay rational much longer than they are acting solvent.

thefounder 6y ago

Never understood the point of instalable PWAs given they are restricted like simple websites(i.e CORS)

sildur 6y ago

> Additionally user research found little to no perceived user benefit to the feature > No the user research was not performed on the implementation in Firefox. > Unfortunately I think that the research is confidential at the moment. Right. Of course the source is confidential. Not a lot of people are comfortable with uploading photos of their own ass on the internet.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Users complain about browsers using too much memory but then make a fuss when a feature that they don’t use is removed

esprehn 6y ago
This is a feature that would save memory though. Instead of running N different copies of Electron or both Firefox and Electron, you could install PWAs to your desktop and have a single running browser on your system.

melomal 6y ago

Literally just switched a project site to a PWA because screw you AMP. PWA's are a great way to get around paying the 30% app store commissions and super useful as we get app fatigue. I have at max 4 apps on my phone, I delete more than I download and PWA's do more than enough to make me happy with my browsing experience.

jhunter1016 6y ago

Of all the organizations out there to support web technologies, I would have expected Firefox to be at the forefront of this. Sure, the Chrome team at Google push PWAs, coin terms, and lead many new feature pushes. But that’s all opportunity for Firefox to help standardize the idea of PWAs and make them something more. Web apps with native functionality can help break up monopolistic practices...but only with support from a wide range of actors.

FiredoxSuck 6y ago

Bye bye Firefox. Sad that we have ancient browsers like this existing anymore. Firefox want to support only apples appstore sandboxes. Uninstall ff today. Let's start cleaning the garbage.

freebuju 6y ago

Firefox seems hell bent on going down a deep dark path. A path only they seem convinced about. It will come a time where they'll have no takers. And we'll be left with chromium. Controversial take: I want to see this happen sooner rather than later. So the internet can finally wake up. And we will be forced to build something that actually works for ALL the internet.

zepto 6y ago
Most people in this thread seem to be arguing for both Mozilla and Apple to completely fail, and for Chromium to dominate. You as well. What makes you think anyone will wake up to anything? We’ll end up with the most closed system ever created. If you want something else to be built - why not argue for for it, rather than arguing for the worst possible outcome?
- freebuju 6y ago
  Again another controversial take: I want Firefox to die and burn so that we can build a new FOR ALL browser based on it from its ashes. It is open source after all. The reason I'm arguing for the worst possible outcome is so that we can have the change we badly need. We cannot take back Firefox while Mozilla is still at the helm of the browser. Not listening to your user base and making iron-fist decisions like this over & over again will make this a reality sooner rather than later.
  - zepto 6y ago
    What makes you assume anything would different if Firefox dies? As far as I can either both Chromium and Firefox could be forked right now, just as easily as they could be in an objectively worse future that you seem to want. The reason Firefox and chromium are supported is because it’s an insane amount of professional work to develop a browser, and they are both funded by money from Google search. Where is the funding to develop an alternative going to come from?
    - freebuju 6y ago

xfalcox 6y ago

Damn, I use this feature everyday for the chat window at my job... It works wonders with i3WM/SwayWM and it's the best way to get a webapp in a independent wayland compatible window.

disposekinetics 6y ago

A good product is defined as much by what it does not include as what it does.

nathias 6y ago

PWA are the only plausible way towards a more free internet and apps, too bad people don't see it. No matter how much it benefits google, it benefits us all in opening up a world beyond app stores.

zepto 6y ago
The world is already open beyond app stores. What you are arguing for is the most closed platform the world has ever seen, completely driven by one company.
- nathias 6y ago
  What's a viable alternative then?
  - zepto 6y ago
    Seems like there are lots of possibilities. 1. The iOS App Store is popular because of safety and privacy. Obviously that involves trusting Apple which is undesirable even if they happen to be good custodians right now. The play store is no better. If we had a decentralized solution to these problems, it would be a lot easier for other platforms to emerge. 2. It seems like we are close to the point where you could build an ‘app player’ which is based on a small subset of web technologies such as webgl, wasm, websockets, and webrtc. Implementing this could be done much more easily than supporting the giant stack required to browse the modern web, so it could be done by a genuine open coalition without a controlling corporate sponsorship as is required for a browser.
    - nathias 6y ago
      Possibilities aren't viable alternatives, the problem is that of all existing options PWA are the best because you can escape app store and play store while providing app-like experience to users. I think google is the greatest evil of our time, but in this case we have nothing better.
disposekinetics 6y ago

postalrat 6y ago

Maybe its time for Mozilla to seriously consider abandoning Gecko and work to convert Firefox to Chromium. I use Firefox as my primary browser. I'm pretty disappointed to see the Firefox team continuously abandon features I've been hoping to see.

LambdaComplex 6y ago
This is probably the worst idea I've heard all day. If Mozilla did this then Google would officially control the world wide web. It would be like back when IE6 ruled, except quite possibly even worse.
- postalrat 6y ago
  Mozilla could do whatever they want with their branch. I'd trust a chromium based browser controlled by mozilla over google chrome. Even now when I want chromium on windows I choose edge over chrome. I'd love to be able to choose something from mozilla instead. I've used firefox for years and will continue to use it. But at some point firefox will be a niche product trying to find it's niche.

ryukafalz 6y ago

This is a shame, I was waiting for this feature (and actually didn't realize it was already partially implemented). In the meantime I've been doing this with Epiphany, which is sadly a bit lacking in other ways - it still doesn't have WebRTC support for example. Hoping Epiphany will get WebRTC support soon, it's the most promising browser on Linux phones UI-wise, and I plan to use one of those when there's one powerful enough to be a daily driver.

lenkite 6y ago

I am utterly flabbergasted. Why is Mozilla being so dumb ? There should be no argument at all about delivering this feature. Are there people in Mozilla trying to kill Firefox ?

twic 6y ago

Respect to Dave Townsend for responding to those comments in a calm and factual way.

esprehn 6y ago

I've removed a bunch of features over the years from Blink/Chromium so I get where they're coming from (and I've written basically the same rationale about the implementation being buggy and unmaintained/not on a path to shipping). That said, while I don't have access to the user research they quote, I do wonder if this move is short sighted in the bigger picture of desktop apps being built with web tech. Given the popularity of Electron and the recent gaming platforms built as PWAs, it seems likely apps will probably start being distributed as desktop PWAs in the near future. With this move Firefox have cut themselves out of the running though so they'll get caught off guard when some big name player releases a popular desktop app through this channel. I can only hope that someone at Mozilla is taking business strategy into account and not only technical complexity.

wejick 6y ago

On the conversation they mentioned about higher priorities on the Firefox, I wonder if they have open roadmap for us to understand the priority in Firefox.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Firefox has been dead for a long time. I don't know why people even bother. There is a reason it has < 8% marketshare. At this point, you might as well use MS Edge