A community for discussion about Mozilla Firefox.
I fixed mine just yesterday on my W11. The stuff the addon tells you to install is out of date. You have to install the latest version from their github releases page. It fixed mine being blank white pages.
firefoxpwa-2.13.2-x86_64.msi
But also, I agree. It's a shame this all isn't a baked in FF feature.
I just hat to run "Patch profiles and runtime" in the extension settings.
https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox/issues/600#issuecomment-2567782397
The fact that it breaks so often might be a pointer as to why it was removed - sounds like it would be quite a maintenance burden.
However:
I guess really all I want is the option to have a task bar icon for each 'website'
You might be in luck! https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561
Wow, sounds like he gets it - just make tabs move able to task bar.
I didn't even know you could use PWAs on desktop. I would've loved that. Too late now I guess.
It's not broken - It's an add-on that has to be updated every time that Firefox updates. The devs seem to not like it much since it is basically a workaround, but I've been using it for a couple years now with no issues. It can be tedious to update/reinstall every time FF updates, but It's not so bad.
The PWAs for Firefox extension does a good job most of the time. Just frustrating when it gets broken.
Had it set up on both Windows and Fedora / Debian without issues.
On the one hand, I agree that it’s a step back. In the other hand, I think it’s also partly a recognition that PWAs have not lived up to the promise and are essentially impossible to get right.
I’m sad for the slow languishing death of PWAs, but I’m not faulting FF for pulling the plug once it became clear it was a doomed endeavor.
Firefox is currently in the process of rebuilding the official support. I don't have particularly high hopes that they will get it right, but I'm reserving judgement until I see it.
Are PWAs dying though? I don't think they are. They are still very popular and I use several every day.
What is impossible to get right about it, and why doesn't Chrome have this issue? I've been out of the loop for the removal of PWAs from Firefox, but I didn't see an issue beforehand, and do miss not being able to have a web app look like a normal app on my desktop.
I guess really all I want is the option to have a task bar icon for each 'website' - I've doubled them up in the screenshot as half are broken at the moment. Each Gmail session is tied to a separate address, so could technically just be a 'bookmark' but it's nice that they act as their own window, analagous to being an app. That doesn't really have to be a PWA I guess, but a separate window.
If you do this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/create-desktop-shortcut-website
...and then edit the created shortcut to add "--new-window" as argument, does that work?
Maybe you can even drag the shortcut onto the Windows Taskbar...?