Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

ftwa.mathix.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 53 posts

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

#41

Post by otsaloma »

Two questions:

1. Does this make the apps show up as separate windows in Alt+Tab and a Dock etc? (FWIW I use GNOME + Dash to dock + Wayland)

2. Let's say you have a mail app and you click a link. Does that link open in the separate default browser?

I remember trying these command line options for Brave/Chrome, but I couldn't find a way where both of the above were working and thus they didn't feel like proper apps. I've only been using this for something like Apple Music, where I never click on any link that takes me outside. For everything else, like mail and notes, I've been using pinned tabs, but that feels suboptimal too.

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

#42

Post by dddw »

hackernudes wrote: post #9

I just switched to Firefox and struggled with this exact functionality. The posted site ships a script for curl|sh that creates a new firefox profile with a custom userChrome.css. There is an official thread here with people discussing how the single-page-as-an-app functionality should work: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-c... I ended up writing a firefox extension to open up URLs in a new…

Oh nice extension, will check if cohesion works with it, the SSO buttons are broken there

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

#43

Post by mathix »

otsaloma wrote: post #41

Two questions: 1. Does this make the apps show up as separate windows in Alt+Tab and a Dock etc? (FWIW I use GNOME + Dash to dock + Wayland) 2. Let's say you have a mail app and you click a link. Does that link open in the separate default browser? I remember trying these command line options for Brave/Chrome, but I couldn't find a way where both of the above were working and thus they didn't feel like proper apps. I…

1. Yes

2. This could do the trick for you https://askubuntu.com/a/251738/1163389 make it point to the desktop file that ftwa created in this folder: ~/.local/share/applications

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

#45

Post by arcanemachiner »

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?

Ubuntu has replaced the deb version of Firefox with Snaps a few times on my computer.

On at least 3 occasions, I became aware of this when I would open Firefox and nothing would happen, except a message that "Firefox is already running". The only resolution was to install the deb Firefox package.

A couple months ago, I needed to do a fresh install since my system got borked during the upgrade to 24.04 LTS. As usual, the Firefox snap package was installed, so I decided to give it a try.

To its credit, it actually works this time. However, it will not save images on right click or open Zoom meeting links in the desktop client. I am fairly certain this problem would disappear if I switched back to the deb package, but it's not a big enough hassle for me to bother. I can live with some workarounds for now.

Overall, I don't mind snaps, but the Firefox snap has been far more trouble than it's worth.

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

#46

Post by sigh_again »

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.

>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.

Also known as "90% of your users". Defaults stick, and there's nothing bad enough about snaps that i'd waste time of my day adding the debian repo, trying to switch my profiles over, etc.

Post reply on HN