Progressive Web Apps for Firefox

Filip Š — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 14:33:22 +0000

Progressive Web Apps are web apps that use emerging web browser APIs and features along with traditional progressive enhancement strategy to bring a native app-like user experience to cross-platform web applications. Although Firefox supports many of Progressive Web App APIs, it does not support functionality to install them as a standalone system app with an app-like experience.

Because support for installable PWAs has been a heavily requested feature, I decided to implement it as a Firefox addon/extension with a companion native program. It allows users to install basically any website as a standalone native-like app, with its own start/app menu entry, taskbar icon, and window. I've been working on the project for the last couple of months, and now it is ready for wider use!

filips123 / PWAsForFirefox

A tool to install, manage and use Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in Mozilla Firefox

Progressive Web Apps for Firefox

A tool to install, manage and use Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in Mozilla Firefox.

Description

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web apps that use web APIs and features along with progressive enhancement strategy to bring a native app-like user experience to cross-platform web applications. Although Firefox supports many of Progressive Web App APIs, it does not support functionality to install them as a standalone system app with an app-like experience.

This project creates a custom modified Firefox runtime to allow websites to be installed as standalone apps and provides a console tool and browser extension to install, manage and use them.

Usage

TLDR: Install the browser extension and follow in-browser installation instructions. Check the repository wiki for simple usage instructions.

For detailed and more technical documentation how to set up, use and develop the project, see the READMEs of the native and extension part:

View on GitHub

To use the project, you can download the extension from the Firefox Add-ons store. You will need to install the native program; you will be prompted to install it after installing the extension. You can check installation and usage instructions in the repository wiki.

If you use Firefox and want to install websites as standalone apps, please give it a try! Remember to post any feedback, ideas, feature requests or bug reports on GitHub :)

Feel free to also check it on ProductHunt and leave a review there.

How it works:

Browser extensions normally cannot launch arbitrary programs and modify browser UI, so my extension uses Native Messaging API to communicate with the native program. It is written in Rust and handles features that the extension alone cannot do. The program installs an independent Firefox runtime, patches it with the UserChrome modifications to reorganize the Firefox UI and remove all unnecessary UI elements, and handles installing and launching PWAs. I created a bit more detailed explanation of how this project works in the repository wiki.

Template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites

Filip Š — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 18:36:56 +0000

ZeroNet is a decentralized web platform. It allows decentralized, open, free and uncensorable websites using Bitcoin cryptography and BitTorrent network.

Developing of static and simple ZeroNet sites is easy. You just need to create content.json as described in ZeroNet documentation and then create and edit files.

But things can get complicated if the site becomes bigger. It can use NPM dependencies, SASS, TypeScript or other NPM tools. It is then hard to maintain all those things and develop the actual site at the same time.

Because of that, I created a template that simplifies a process of creating and developing ZeroNet sites. It supports NPM dependencies and it uses Gulp and Browserify for bundling scripts. It also supports SASS and automatic deployments with Travis CI.

It's available on GitHub and GitCenter.
Post about it is also available on Reddit and ZeroTalk.

filips123 / ZeroTemplate

Template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites

ZeroNet Template

Template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites.

Description

This project provides a template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites.

It supports NPM dependencies and it uses Gulp and Browserify for bundling scripts. It also supports SASS and automatic deployments with Travis CI.

Usage

Requirements

You must have Git and Node.js installed on your computer. It is recommended that use the latest versions.

It is also recommended to also install Python and ZeroNet for easier developing and deploying. You need to use Python 3 version of ZeroNet.

Start

If you don't already have your own ZeroNet site, you should create it from ZeroNet. Details are available in ZeroNet documentation. You must have a site's address and a private key.

You can then clone or fork this repository and install dependencies. It already contains an example site and code with ZeroFrame API.

$ git clone https://github.com/filips123/ZeroTemplate.git my-new-site

…

View on GitHub

DEV Community: Filip Š

Progressive Web Apps for Firefox

filips123 / PWAsForFirefox

A tool to install, manage and use Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in Mozilla Firefox

Progressive Web Apps for Firefox

Description

Usage

Template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites

filips123 / ZeroTemplate

Template for creating and developing ZeroNet sites

ZeroNet Template

Description

Usage

Requirements

Start