• Is It the Beginning of the End for PWAs?
  • By Mahdhi Rezvi
  • Translation from: The Gold Project
  • This article is permalink: github.com/xitu/gold-m…
  • Translator: Hoarfroster
  • Proofreader: Chorer, Usualminds

Who will follow Firefox?

Progressive Web applications are changing our understanding of applications by giving us an experience similar to native applications in Web form. This approach allows applications to take advantage of new features supported by modern browsers, including the Service Worker and Web App Manifest, and also allows users to upgrade Web applications to progressive Web applications without regard to their native operating system.

However, PWA has also raised some privacy concerns over the years, leading Apple to disable some PWA features in Safari. You can learn more about this in a separate article.

However, other browsers such as Chrome and Firefox continue to support PWA development.

However, With the recent release of Firefox 85, which aims to prevent supercookies, Mozilla also seems to have dropped support for one of the basic features of desktop PWA, so let’s see what it is.

What is Firefox giving up?

Firefox dropped a feature that enabled the installation of a PWA on the desktop, known as the Site Specific Browser (SSB).

Those of you who have been following this issue may know that Mozilla has mentioned the possibility of dropping SSB support in future releases. We can find the reasons for abandoning this feature in the comments section of the bug tracker.

The SSB feature has always been enabled only with the hide option and has several known bugs. In addition, user surveys show that few people are aware of the benefits of this feature, so we have no intention of continuing to develop this feature at this time. We spent too much time fixing the bug, and the constant maintenance made it look like we still supported it, so we decided to remove it from Firefox.

What is SSB?

SSB is an experimental feature that allows any web site to run in desktop mode with its own Windows. Available in Firefox 73 and later, this feature lets you launch any web site in a window with a streamlined UI.

Is that a bad thing?

It all depends on your point of view and your intended use of the PWA. If you thought PWA would allow your app to be platform independent and run like a native app, you might be disappointed by this decision. But if you think PWA is just a desktop shortcut, you probably won’t care.

There were a lot of people who weren’t happy with the decision, but they were small compared to the total number of users. The main reason is that it’s an experimental function and not widely known.

As Ian says:

Users won’t be disappointed because they don’t know what features have been removed. Then again, why should they care about the extra effort you put into creating a native app?

Because of the rapid development of technology, companies invest a lot of resources in research and development. Experimental features are crucial, and they determine the future of your application. This can mislead the user community when important features are removed.

However, when the time comes and PWA becomes a prominent browser feature, it could turn Firefox away from a large number of users to other browsers.

Why all the fuss?

You might start to wonder if I’m a clickbait, right! But no, I’m not.

Common trends in science and technology are:

  • The company took a radical step
  • Their competitors laughed at them
  • A few years later, competitors who mocked the move did the same

You can relate this trend to notable events such as the removal of the headphone jack, the removal of the home button from phones and, most recently, the removal of chargers.

Mozilla mentioned that the SSB was removed because the feature caused trouble and wasted valuable time. In this case, similar products like Chrome and Edge may also think it’s in their interest to do the same, and we may lose desktop PWA for a while due to similar events in the past. While that’s unlikely to happen, it’s still possible, especially in technology.

What do you think of Mozilla’s move? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Thank you for reading.

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