• xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        They open in a window separate from the browser and don’t display the browser toolbar, so not just shortcuts.

        • Gamey@feddit.rocks
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The main purpose of PWAs is not to remove the browser toolbar but rather cache most of the website to improve speed and reduce data usage if I am not wrong, there are external tools to get rid of the toolbar but Firefox dropped the PWA spec which includes a lot more than just that.

          • AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The caching is the result of service workers which Firefox definitely supports.

            edit: oh just scrolled down and saw you already commented that later.

      • Vent@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Real PWAs, though PWAs aren’t that different from shortcuts tbh

        • Gamey@feddit.rocks
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          As far as I know their main purpose is to cache various parts of the website properly which is a lot more than just a shortcut.

          • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Regular websites can do that too using service workers - Lemmy’s webapp uses this to show an error when an instance is unreachable

            What we call a PWA is usually just a webpage with a webmanifest, and a service worker script to manage loading those cached resources you mentioned

            • Gamey@feddit.rocks
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Seems like you are right, the caching for proper offline usage and use with very limited internet connections is all done trough service workers. Their main job seems to be system integration and while Firefox Android kind of sucks at that too it doesn’t seem like they ever cut that down so they just dropped it for desktop users.

      • lw6352@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        On Android at least, Firefox PWA’s don’t seem to support registering system-level things (like ‘Share To’ handlers) - you need to use a Chrome PWA for that…

  • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think it was “do not want to support” it was more of a “cannot support”.

    Only so much developer time to go around, have to pick your battles.

    • MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Also, mobile Firefox has supported PWAs for a long time. I wouldn’t say PWAs on desktop would be useless, but they make much more sense on mobile than on desktop.

      • mihnt@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Only use I’ve found for them on desktop personally is the web interfaces for local hardware. I did use it when I was playing with stable diffusion for a bit but never fine tuned it because stable diffusion kept crashing.

      • I_Miss_Daniel@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I like them as task bar icons…

        Have to use an extension for that.

        It’s a native feature of Edge, and a buggy version exists in Chrome.

      • dan@upvote.au
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        PWAs are useful on desktop if there’s web apps you use a lot every day. For example, some people at my Workplace are in Google Docs a lot, so a Google Docs PWA would be useful. Separate taskbar/launcher icon, separate window in Alt-Tab, and at least in Chrome, Google Docs has some basic support working while offline.

    • Gamey@feddit.rocks
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not really, they dropped them wuth the massive layoffs during which they dropped various projects (or more like the entire teams behind them) and increased executive pay… :/

  • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    Erm… Writing a manifest is like, an hour of work for a dev? Supporting PWAs is like… years? So um, not really comparable.

  • potajito@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    For what is worth, the pwaforfirefox project works beautifully, I use it with discord, teams and tidal everyday.

      • deadcadeA
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        The native client has application level access to the rest of your machine. They use this to run process loggers “for the activity display”, or the button that allows you to quickly stream a game if it’s running. They could theoretically use this access for keylogging or accessing the mic without explicit user permission. Running the Discord web client keeps the source of collected telemetry within the webbrowser, which doesn’t offer keylogging or process logger features, and requires explicit user permission to give websites access to a microphone, camera, or the screen for streaming.

        Yes, they do process log on the native client, and from my own GDPR data request it appears they keep this data in detail for a couple of years: https://github.com/snapcrafters/discord/issues/43

      • nin0dev@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago
        1. better privacy as no process scanning or direct access to cam/mic
        2. better performance as discord desktop app for windows still uses 32bit electron, which makes it slower than the web app
      • potajito@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        In Linux the native client is quite bad,especially streaming, as its not hardware accelerated and doesn’t stream sound. The browser version doesn’t have any of those issues.