Original post by: MuyComputer
To read the original in Spanish by J Pomeyrol, click here
We continue to talk about web browsers, but if before we did it by adding, now we do it by subtracting, as is the usual trend in Mozilla. Specifically, the company has decided to end support for installing desktop web applications in Firefox, a fairly popular feature in the Chromium environment and derivatives of which users of the “alternative browser” will not be able to enjoy.
But let’s explain it well: what Mozilla is eliminating is the support of SSB (“site-specific browser” for its acronym in English), a mechanism through which it is possible to create web applications that integrate into the desktop with their own icon on the desktop. applications menu and the task manager, as well as showing only the border of the native window and the interface of the application in question, thus offering an application aspect independent of the browser.
As we say, it is a common feature in Chrome that Mozilla has been working on for a long time, although it can only be tested by activating advanced preferences and its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. For this reason, and because according to the company the effort does not compensate them for the little that their users use this function (how are they going to use it, if it is not available?) they have decided to eliminate this feature.
“Our focus is on developing and exposing features that deliver real value to our users,” said Romain Testard, Product Manager at Mozilla. “Initial exploration showed that [the current approach to the web application] would not provide that value,” he added. Which is curious, when Google claims the opposite, that more and more users are using web applications in SSB format both on desktop and mobile.
In fact, Mozilla will keep SSB support on mobile, but not on desktop.
The big problem with Mozilla’s decision, however, is not only the end of SSB support, but that this component is one of the components that make the most sense to progressive web applications (PWA), one of the trends that are settling by the numerous advantages they offer and that in addition to Chrome, it is receiving a lot of attention in Microsoft Edge and it will also have it in the rest of Chromium derivatives. That Firefox refuses to implement SSB support significantly affects future PWA support in Firefox.
“The signal I hope we are sending is that PWA support is not coming to desktop Firefox anytime soon,” said Dave Townsend, Firefox architect, last December.
In short, bad news for Firefox users and for Mozilla itself, whose decisions seem to be determined not to give an option to revive the popularity of a browser that has many good things, but that continues to sink little by little due to these errors. They consider offering PWA support secondary, but tweaking the Firefox interface, redesigned three years ago, that does have priority for them.