As you probably know 'Create application shortcut...' in Chrome creates desktop/taskbar shortcut to the web application (current URL). When the corresponding shortcut is clicked, Chrome opens separate window for just this URL w/o navigation bar.
So now I can use Google translate (almost) as desktop app.
Does (last) Firefox have this feature? Built-in or plugin? Actually I recall Firefox having this feature once, but I may be just dreaming.
Please see Amer's excellent answer. (If you want the icon to remain in the taskbar, right-click it and click "Pin to taskbar".)
These caveats make the SSB solution less than ideal right now. Hopefully they fix these in future FF versions. But if all you're looking for is a dedicated window for your web-app through Firefox, it's a good solution.
You can sort-of do this now, with a small config change and a bookmarklet. (I have not experimented with desktop shortcuts, but it might be possible.)
Go to about:config and set dom.disable_window_open_feature.location to false.
This is optional, but it removes the disabled location bar at the top of the window.
Create a bookmarklet (that's really just a regular bookmark but executes Javascript):
javascript:(function(){window.open("https://www.google.com/","_blank","menubar=no,location=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,left=150,top=50");})();
Replace https://www.google.com/ with your URL.
When you open this bookmarklet, it will open the site in a separate dedicated window. You may want to adjust the values of left and top as needed.
Bonus Tip: If you have "Show your windows and tabs from last time" enabled, when you exit and restart Firefox with the dedicated window open, it is also restored.
Update: Support for this flag appears to have been removed from the latest versions of Firefox.
Firefox has a terribly under-documented flag -chrome:
firefox.exe -chrome http://superuser.com
Like Chrome application shortcut:
- Creates a basic window with just the web page and the plain window chrome (no tab bar, address bar, etc).
- Usable as an "application".
Unlike Chrome application shortcut:
- The window is always created with the full size of the page. For AJAX-based empty pages that only fill themselves after page-load, this would result in a very tiny window at the top-left corner of the screen. Thankfully you can manually resize the window.
- If you try
superuser.com, you will get a window that's very very long.- Undocumented flags
-widthand-heightdo not work.- It may be possible to have a post-launch process find the window and adjust the window size automatically, but that seems too much work for the average user.
- Favicon is not used as the window icon. The window still has the Firefox icon.
- In Windows taskbar grouping, the window is grouped with Firefox's main window. In Google Chrome, an application shortcut really runs as separate Windows program and is not grouped with Chrome's main window.
- Due to this, if a shortcut to the app is pinned in the taskbar, the shortcut doesn't become the window of the app.
- Also, exiting Firefox will close the app. Launching again will not restore the app even if Firefox is set to restore all tabs and windows.
- No right-click menu. No back-forward functionality (even with keyboard shorcuts). Cannot reload or zoom. Doesn't remember zoom set in Firefox main window.
- Using arrow keys to move text caret when typing in a textbox can sometimes produce weird results.
- This feature sometimes causes Windows to enter a black screen and come back with "Windows Basic Color Scheme" mode (all Aero effects will be gone). I would classify this as a bug. It doesn't always happen.
- If this happens, open command prompt and run
net stop uxsmsfollowed bynet start uxsms.
Other than the above problems, it works fine.
With FF (Firefox) you can now natively get the same experience as Google Chrome without the need for a JavaScript shortcut:
Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner) by Mozilla Labs featured the "Create application shortcut" in Firefox:
Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner) is a product which integrates web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser.
Users can manually create web applications using
Tools > Convert Website to Application.
However, since November 2010, Prism is listed as an inactive project at the Mozilla labs website. On February 1, 2011, Mozilla labs announced it would no longer maintain Prism.
There were several alternatives to Prism, but it seems that all of them have been discontinued and are no longer active or available for download.
In the following question: Why is Firefox Prism not in the repositories anymore?, there are two useful answers, regarding the discontinue of Prism and possible alternatives and solutions. It was mentioned that web application support in Firefox is currently in progress. Also, some workarounds have been suggested.
Create a separate profile and run it as separate process. The window will look similar to an chrome app and will not be grouped in the windows task bar. Is also will have it's own icon and a hidden tab bar and navigation bar.
Steps:
run (win+r)firefox -Pcd "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"mklink /D "Mozilla Firefox App" "Mozilla Firefox"-P app no-remote"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox WhatsApp\firefox.exe" -P whatsapp -no-remoteOther solutions:
You could use the standalone extension but for me it was to buggy.
Sources:
Here's my solution:
I wrote a small piece of code to create an application window, and present a list of webapps based on a custom-defined list. Copy the code I posted here, then create a bookmerklet that points to: javascript:[paste code here].
Just customise the details in the appList object to match your needs.
Note you still need to configure Firefox as explained in ADTC's answer to allow window.open to create tab-less, toolbar-less, scrollbar-less windows.
Progressive Web Apps for Firefox is a Firefox extension capable of doing exactly what you ask.
From the official repository, https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox,
A tool to install, manage and use Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in Mozilla Firefox.
Use this extension to open app in separate window: https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/popup-window/
And this to have this window for specific app after restart: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-app-mode/
Option with "browser.ssb.enabled" don't work well with gmail (doesn’t allow opening links, and disappear after restart)
To expand upon the answers by Amer and ADTC, you can also access SSB mode from the command line. In this way you can simply make a shortcut directly to the page you want, instead of having to do it from within Firefox. To do so simply run (or create a shortcut to):
firefox --ssb www.example.com
This comes with the same disadvantages as described in the other answers.
Save this somewhere of your choosing:
<script>
function my_open(my_url) {
window.open(my_url, '_blank', 'popup');
}
my_open('https://web.whatsapp.com');
my_open('https://mail.someprovider.com');
// Add more as needed.
window.close();
</script>
Let's say you save it under /tmp/launcher.html.
Then run firefox file:///tmp/launcher.html.
From about:preferences you should find "Block pop-up windows" and add file:///tmp/launcher.html as an exception.
I tested this only on my machine, which runs (Void) Linux, X, dwm and Firefox 134.0 (also in Firefox 112.0.2). This works fine, except for... Well, see "Further Work" below.
I couldn't find a documented way to do this according to my wishes. So I decided to post my method.
My wishes:
SSB (site specific browser) seemed to be the way to go at first. But it's been removed: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1348811
I tried the kiosk mode too. But I couldn't get out of fullscreen + other new windows that I'll use for my regular websites started to open in fullscreen too.
I tried creating a second profile. I couldn't get userChrome.css to work. Even if I could, this would go against my 2nd wish. I want to use my own profile, with all my settings. Plus, when I try open a link from the "app-ized webpage", it should open in a new tab in my profile.
AmitK's answer is actually the precursor to this answer. Its problem is that it has a rather long piece of code that pulls resources from all over the internet so it goes against my first wish.
This still comes with an address bar. What I want is the behaviour when you click on the about page (Kebab Menu > Help > About Firefox). I tried to find the piece of code that opens that page but I couldn't (I'm sure it's there but I couldn't invest enough time to searching).
So I searched the web. Replacing the 3rd argument in the code above, i.e. 'popup', with 'popup,location=no' should solve that too, but it doesn't. Apparently it's a security feature. Fair enough. Any website could draw Firefox's address bar and make you think you are browsing your online banking system, I guess. But I would disable it if I could. I tried. Setting dom.disable_window_open_feature.location to true did not work.
