Michael VealeThe seasonal news that #WhatsApp will stop working on #iPhone 5 and below #Android 4.3 highlights how the lack of Web apps is a significant environmental problem. Phones become obsolete in part because they don’t get OS updates, and they become incompatible with compiled apps. A lightweight OS for old phones would be more feasible if it mainly had to have a solid Web browser that facilitated a proper selection of #ProgressiveWebApps (& if manufacturers made open drivers/docs). #PWA #PWAs
Damien@mikarv Meanwhile, #Firefox doesn't even support #ProgressiveWebApps on desktop. I have wanted to switch but can't because I use #PWA for quite a few things.
Nemo_bis 🌈@damcoole What's missing? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps
Are you talking about the so-called "installation"?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Installable_PWAs
@nemobis I'm talking about being able to install pretty much ANYTHING as a web app from the browser. See this screenshot from Edge for example. Unless I am missing something, Firefox does not have a similar function, not at least as far as I can find.
@damcoole Thanks for the examples.
Sorry for being dense, but what's the benefit in that? Every single time a website attempted to do that on my Chromium browser, it was something actively hurtful.
If I understand correctly, it's all about the ability for the website to install code that constantly runs in the background and phones home and cannot be shut down. Why is that beneficial to anyone apart from the website owner?
@nemobis It creates separate instances of just the app with notification support and it essentially feels like a native app as opposed to a browser window. For example, this is what my taskbar looks like, I have separate windows for all the apps which are easily alt-tab switchable and aren't tied to my current browser instance. Also, for example here is a shot of my Mastodon instance running as an app as well.
@damcoole Do they use system notifications in Windows?
Personally I just keep such websites in their own tabs, on their own browser window if needed. I close them when I don't want to be bothered.
Also, I disable most notifications and I don't want anything except perhaps Thunderbird and irssi to take space in the system notifications.
@nemobis Yes, they use the Windows system notifications, but you can disable them per 'app' as well. I prefer them to be there so I have them enabled.
I heavily rely on alt-tab and alt-tab doesn't work to switch between browser tabs. While I know there is ctrl-tab for browser switching, I don't want to have to switch between the two.
Regardless, Edge shows that it is possible and works great - I would just love it if Mozilla would implement it as well.
@damcoole I see. Personally I like ctrl-tab, ctrl-page up and ctrl-page down, so for me that's not a big factor.