Google's search deal with Mozilla is such a sizeable portion of its overall income that without it, Firefox would struggle to compete - or even survive,
That’s not quite true with the pwa thing. Many of the features of pwa support, particularly the interesting ability to have them work offline, were and are still supported in firefox.
What doesn’t work is the ability to view websites as their own “app”. This feature was most likely dropped because Firefox had to basically rewrite their UI engine, but now that it’s done, we are seeing things like native sidebar (instead of topbar) tabs, and web apps (2025 article) get added again/officially.
Yeah I just did a quick test with photopea.com and it worked offline in firefox.
WebRunner, cousin of XULRunner, was basically an implementation of PWA introduced 5-6 years before the acronym PWA was created. Discontinued 2011.
Firefox OS, 2013-2016, allowed you to run Web Apps as full fledged apps. Discontinued after Google unveiled PWAs.
Firefox support for PWA, introduced shortly after Google announced what a PWA was in 2016 (and realizing they had most of it already), was discontinued in 2020. To this day, Firefox doesn’t support PWAs fully. You can’t add an icon to a PWA to your desktop and have it run in its own window, which is basically what a PWA is.
So yeah, if you stretch the definition of PWA to not include all the requirements, I guess Firefox supports it since 2010. Or, if you look at it from another vantage point, you see the programmers innovating and creating things the public wants, only to be shutdown by corporate before it gets much steam.
only to be shutdown by corporate before it gets much steam.
So I guess you just completely ignored the part where I mentioned how they are readding support for site-specific-browsers (the ability to install a PWA as an app) and also officially adding vertical tabs? If that’s your definition of “shutdown”, then I don’t know what to tell you.
But I’m sure the fact that features that explicitly affect the UI being added only after a rewrite/refactor of firefox’s UI is completely coincidental.
EDIT: To me, it’s clear that they didn’t want to add these features officially since all the work would get wasted and overwritten if the UI rewrite happened. But there was always unofficial support, like this browser extension, and for PWA’s with service workers, they would work offline as well (which was built into the browser itself).
I didn’t ignore it at all, I addressed it by saying it was shut down five years ago. Until they release something to the public, it’s still unsupported.
Vertical tabs? PWAs don’t even have tabs. Why are you bringing this up? The browser extension you mentioned is from a 3rd party (and I have tried in the past and gave up because it just didn’t work, which was a far cry from the easy to use PWA support Firefox once had).
Look, just because we disagree, doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. I am not personally attacking you.
Vertical tabs? PWAs don’t even have tabs. Why are you bringing this up?
They are examples of extremely wanted features that the firefox community has been asked for a while, but have only been added now.
he browser extension you mentioned is from a 3rd party (and I have tried in the past and gave up because it just didn’t work, which was a far cry from the easy to use PWA support Firefox once had).
Worked on my machine ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I disagree with the idea that Google’s money comes with strings attached that influence the development of Mozilla Firefox. Google props Firefox up in order to avoid being hit by anti trust laws. Trying to explicitly or implicitly use that money for to intentionally Firefox bad, would be extremely risky, as if the slightest bit of evidence was out, they would immediately be hit with an antitrust suit, and it would defeat the purpose of the money.
Well, they are being hit with one right now, but it’s not about the Google-Mozilla relations, but instead Google’s dominance as a default search engine.
The loss of PWA Site-Specific Browsers is an interesting coincidence — but that’s all it is, a coincidence. The fact that they are being readded as an official feature, but only after Firefox got a UI rewrite is evidence that there are other internal and unrelated factors at play.
Google maintains their dominance by adding to web standards very quickly, making it difficult for other browser engines to keep up, and “accidentally” breaking youtube on other browsers, in addition to other shenanigans. No browser engine will have the resources to keep up with that, and they don’t have to keep firefox intentionally bad by denying power users features when the vast majority of users will find something that youtube doesn’t work on unusable.
That’s not quite true with the pwa thing. Many of the features of pwa support, particularly the interesting ability to have them work offline, were and are still supported in firefox.
What doesn’t work is the ability to view websites as their own “app”. This feature was most likely dropped because Firefox had to basically rewrite their UI engine, but now that it’s done, we are seeing things like native sidebar (instead of topbar) tabs, and web apps (2025 article) get added again/officially.
Yeah I just did a quick test with photopea.com and it worked offline in firefox.
So yeah, if you stretch the definition of PWA to not include all the requirements, I guess Firefox supports it since 2010. Or, if you look at it from another vantage point, you see the programmers innovating and creating things the public wants, only to be shutdown by corporate before it gets much steam.
So I guess you just completely ignored the part where I mentioned how they are readding support for site-specific-browsers (the ability to install a PWA as an app) and also officially adding vertical tabs? If that’s your definition of “shutdown”, then I don’t know what to tell you.
But I’m sure the fact that features that explicitly affect the UI being added only after a rewrite/refactor of firefox’s UI is completely coincidental.
EDIT: To me, it’s clear that they didn’t want to add these features officially since all the work would get wasted and overwritten if the UI rewrite happened. But there was always unofficial support, like this browser extension, and for PWA’s with service workers, they would work offline as well (which was built into the browser itself).
I didn’t ignore it at all, I addressed it by saying it was shut down five years ago. Until they release something to the public, it’s still unsupported.
Vertical tabs? PWAs don’t even have tabs. Why are you bringing this up? The browser extension you mentioned is from a 3rd party (and I have tried in the past and gave up because it just didn’t work, which was a far cry from the easy to use PWA support Firefox once had).
Look, just because we disagree, doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. I am not personally attacking you.
They are examples of extremely wanted features that the firefox community has been asked for a while, but have only been added now.
Worked on my machine ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I disagree with the idea that Google’s money comes with strings attached that influence the development of Mozilla Firefox. Google props Firefox up in order to avoid being hit by anti trust laws. Trying to explicitly or implicitly use that money for to intentionally Firefox bad, would be extremely risky, as if the slightest bit of evidence was out, they would immediately be hit with an antitrust suit, and it would defeat the purpose of the money.
Well, they are being hit with one right now, but it’s not about the Google-Mozilla relations, but instead Google’s dominance as a default search engine.
The loss of PWA Site-Specific Browsers is an interesting coincidence — but that’s all it is, a coincidence. The fact that they are being readded as an official feature, but only after Firefox got a UI rewrite is evidence that there are other internal and unrelated factors at play.
Google maintains their dominance by adding to web standards very quickly, making it difficult for other browser engines to keep up, and “accidentally” breaking youtube on other browsers, in addition to other shenanigans. No browser engine will have the resources to keep up with that, and they don’t have to keep firefox intentionally bad by denying power users features when the vast majority of users will find something that youtube doesn’t work on unusable.