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Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

ftwa.mathix.dev

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Re: Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

#33

Post by mathix »

brunorsini wrote: post #27

Been using Unite for years — https://www.bzgapps.com/unite . It's a little better since v5, but it's still pretty buggy, which frustrates me. Eager to try your product! Have you considered including it on SetApp?

I don't think it qualifies for SetApp, and I want to deliver ot freely.

Re: Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

#34

Post by mathix »

oulipo wrote: post #26

For people who want a "separate window" on Chrome osX (at least), you can go on the website, click on the "..." next to your profile picture, then "Cast, save and share" > "Install website as app" It does the same, but runs as a "separate app" so that cmd+Q only exits the app

Yes, it's pretty much the same for macOS I guess. On linux it's pretty different, I was using .desktop files over PWAs for years because of their bad UI on Linux.

Re: Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

#35

Post by mathix »

janaagaard wrote: post #31
frizlab wrote: post #14

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

I also could not figure out the difference between FTWA and Safari's "Add to Dock..."? Is FTWA an equivalent meant for other platforms like Windows?

FTWA was created for linux in the first place. I then added support for macOS as requested, but yeah on macOS is pretty similar to PWAs.

Re: Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

#36

Post by CWIZO »

usr1106 wrote: post #25
sigh_again wrote: post #5

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/. *…

Since Mozilla has started to provide an official Debian-style repository there is no reason to use snap on Ubuntu any more. Well, except if some users don't know or don't care to switch.

Do you have a good summary of why snap is bad?

Re: Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

#37

Post by usr1106 »

CWIZO wrote: post #36
usr1106 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Mozilla has started to provide an official Debian-style repository there is no reason to use snap on Ubuntu any more. Well, except if some users don't know or don't care to switch.

Do you have a good summary of why snap is bad?

One aspect is that the server side is not free software. So only Canonical can reasonably host a repo of snaps.

That was enough for me not to look into the technical merits of the clientside implementation. The few experiences I had with snap was that programs were starting slowly (Firefox) and e.g. GPU acceleration did not work (vlc). Not sure how good the sandboxing is. But I run my Firefox sandboxed by firejail and the overhead can not be felt in daily usage.

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