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Show HN: FTWA – Turn any website into an app

(ftwa.mathix.dev)
143 points mathix | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 23:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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sigh_again ◴[15 Oct 24 12:38 UTC] No.41847943[source]▶
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/.

* New profiles unfortunately don't share logins on Firefox, which means your app is disconnected at first. Not a big deal, but could maybe be changed by copying some things from the default profile ?

* Firefox does not display _any_ titlebar when ran in this way.

Love the idea. There's many times where I'd like something to have a bit more "privilege" on my toolbar than what a regular tab (even pinned) gets.

replies(2): >>41849308 #>>41856733 #
usr1106 ◴[16 Oct 24 08:11 UTC] No.41856733[source]▶
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.
replies(2): >>41858131 #>>41861258 #
CWIZO ◴[16 Oct 24 12:07 UTC] No.41858131[source]▶
Do you have a good summary of why snap is bad?
replies(2): >>41858213 #>>41861241 #
1. usr1106 ◴[16 Oct 24 12:17 UTC] No.41858213[source]▶
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.