• sigh_again 7 hours ago

    Pretty good! Just a few observations:

    * The Firefox (BETA) entry does not work on default Ubuntu installs, where Firefox is a Snap. Yes, snap bad, bla bla bla, but it still remains one of the most likely way Firefox will be installed on Ubuntu. This comes from the fact that your script attempts to locate the profile folder in ~/.mozilla/firefox, whereas snaps stores them in ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/firefox/.

    * New profiles unfortunately don't share logins on Firefox, which means your app is disconnected at first. Not a big deal, but could maybe be changed by copying some things from the default profile ?

    * Firefox does not display _any_ titlebar when ran in this way.

    Love the idea. There's many times where I'd like something to have a bit more "privilege" on my toolbar than what a regular tab (even pinned) gets.

    • mathix 4 hours ago

      Thanks!

      - Yes I could create a second firefox preset for snap installs - I would prefer not to touch such sensible files, but will give instructions on how to do it manually

      • powersnail an hour ago

        I had written a similar program (but very barebone compared with what you've made), with Firefox only. The way I dealt with profile, is to specify the full path of the profile, rather than a name. This way, I don't have to know where Firefox is searching for profiles, and I can keep all the additional profiles in a separate directory, so they don't mix with normal profiles and don't clog up profile manager.

        • mathix an hour ago

          Yes I saw this option as well, but it seems that it's not possible for macOS

    • hackernudes 2 hours ago

      I just switched to Firefox and struggled with this exact functionality. The posted site ships a script for curl|sh that creates a new firefox profile with a custom userChrome.css.

      There is an official thread here with people discussing how the single-page-as-an-app functionality should work: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-c...

      I ended up writing a firefox extension to open up URLs in a new "popup" window[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-app-maker.... I just checked it on Windows (usually using linux) and the popup window type does not allow the maximize button to work. Oh well...

      [1]https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

      • Zetaphor an hour ago

        There's an excellent extension that makes this pretty simple to manage. Additionally the windows it creates have some pwa specific settings, like how links should be handled.

        https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox/

      • harryvederci 14 hours ago

        Cool stuff!

        @mathix maybe you can make it clear on the website that this doesn't create app/play store apps, as most people probably think about them when they read "turn any website into an app".

        From the github readme[0]:

        > FTWA uses the --app='https://app.example' parameter with Chromium-based browsers to launch a website in "app mode".

        > [...]

        > When choosing linux as target OS, FTWA generate a shell script that will create a .desktop file and it's icons.

        [0]: https://github.com/mathix420/free-the-web-apps?tab=readme-ov...

        • mathix 12 hours ago

          Thanks! Yes I didn't realized I don't speak about this on the website, good advice!

        • chakintosh 6 hours ago

          So I did this, turned out it's not only just Firefox without the browser UI, but it also bricked my actual Firefox browser and now it doesn't connect to the internet.

          • mathix 4 hours ago

            Oh pretty strange, could you please raise on issue on GitHub so I can have any chance of debugging this?

          • frizlab 11 minutes ago

            Is this the “Add to Dock…” feature of Safari?

            • EffrafaxOfWug 9 hours ago

              If you are interested in using this then I can also highly recommend webapp manager.

              https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager

              • doubleorseven 2 hours ago

                Kinda off topic but this is a "Linux First" UI application(?) and I love it.