PWA Installation for all websites
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Any updates on this?
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@Gwen-Dragon said in Please, PWA Installation for all websites:
@Rajul05 Open vivaldi://experiments and activate use of PWA menu.
As is know, after restart you can install a PWA by page or tab context menu.Is this in the latest Dev version?
The behaviour you describe is not present in the current stable, though the Experiments options are there. -
Thank you for the info! Glad to know this feature is arriving!
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Twitter.com
Youtube.com
Vivaldi Settings
Vivaldi: 3.1.1929.23 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision: b5105df33c7fcde90c7fec8cd2a81f58fbc100b2
OS: Windows 10 OS Version 2004 (Build 19041.264)
JavaScript: V8 8.3.110.9Also, I was sure to restart Vivaldi after toggling the "Menu entries for installing Progressive Web Apps" experiment. It seems it only shows these options for sites that report back as PWA's. I believe OP's request would be to add the "Create shortcut..." option for all sites (full stop) and keep the "Install <app>..." restricted to proper PWA's. That seems most in line with other Chromium-based browsers (namely looking at Chrome itself and Edge).
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@primes1022 You've got the right idea! That's exactly what I meant - "Create shortcut..." for all sites, and "Install <app>..." for "proper PWAs". So the new version of Vivaldi still isn't doing this
? The Vivaldi menu entries in your post are the same old ones that have been there for several versions already, once the experimental options are enabled. @Gwen-Dragon, is it different on your snapshot versions?To be honest, "proper PWAs" are so rare, that I believe it would be more useful to have just "Install <app>..." for all websites. E.g. what is the difference between Create shortcut and Install app? two menu entries to do the same thing, only difference as far as a user like myself can see is "Install app..." shows that the website has a properly configured PWA (and I don't care about that, I just want whatever website is in question to be "Installed" and appear on my desktop/start menu, and open in a tab-less window).
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I'm having some issues with the feature?
I've recorded a video to be easier to say what I mean: https://youtu.be/m_gXpHFH2yEFirst thing everything looks like it should when I click from the context menu "Open in Twitter" (I already clicked install twitter before). Everything is fine, the window bars are nice and giving the 'app' feel of the PWA.
Note:
For some reason when I closed the app it closed the normal vivaldi window too.
When I pin the app (pwa) to the taskbar or shortcut it to the desktop as seen in the video and open it, it just opens what seems to be a popup version of a normal window with extensions and everything! That shouldn't be happening, right?
System info:
OS: Arch Linux (Manjaro KDE) Kernel 5.4.43
Vivaldi version: 3.1.1929.29 (Stable channel) (64-bit) -
I also migrated to vivaldi, I miss the PWA, waiting for this role!
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@Rodrigodil uh, yeah, how to urge vivaldi team to bring this feature request into production process
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@mohamadeen Someone on Reddit has the same problem: https://old.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/hhwrob/pwa_shortcut_opening_with_address_bar_visible/
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@Gwen-Dragon , could you please change the flair of this thread to "unresolved", please, as the issue is currently unresolved in Vivaldi?
As a matter of fact, PWA support is worse than ever in Vivaldi
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Before, there was a workaround where you could save any website to the bookmarks bar, then drag it in to vivaldi://apps, and it would be added as a PWA. This no longer works as of the latest version.
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Vivaldi still only has experimental options to allow PWAs for a few select websites (e.g. Twitter) that have them properly configured. Chrome, Chromium, and Edgium all support PWAs for all websites.
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Any PWAs installed in an older version of Vivaldi (that are still left in the user profile, as no new ones can be added) will not "Open as window" even if set to do so - they open with an adressbar, extension list, etc. (only thing missing is tabs and theme) e.g. see this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/h7deob/pwa_apps_open_as_window_functioning_differently/
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@Darthagnon said in Please, PWA Installation for all websites:
To be honest, "proper PWAs" are so rare, that I believe it would be more useful to have just "Install <app>..." for all websites. E.g. what is the difference between Create shortcut and Install app? two menu entries to do the same thing, only difference as far as a user like myself can see is "Install app..." shows that the website has a properly configured PWA (and I don't care about that, I just want whatever website is in question to be "Installed" and appear on my desktop/start menu, and open in a tab-less window).
I disagree strongly. What you want is just bookmarks to sites on your desktop, that’s not the point of a PWA at all. I’d go as far as to say that only proper PWAs should get an entry on desktop / in app folder and be handled correctly. Anyway, it’s clear this feature isn’t a priority right now, support only came because it’s being worked on by the Chromium team, not sure what the Vivaldi team coded, if anything. Would be interested to know though.
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@luetage less of a bookmark, more of a way of making a website look like an installed program - e.g. my main browser is Edgium, and I use a "fake" PWA of FB Messenger all the time, to launch it in its own window (no bookmarks bar, tabs, etc. just the website and window controls), with its own taskbar icon, and it appears in my Start Menu, so I can launch it quickly.
I'd have to jump through hurdles, manually copying *.lnk files around, manually changing the icon.ico, and it would still launch with tabs, bookmark bar, etc. if it was just a web shortcut. In my experience, properly configured PWAs are very rare, too - I don't see much point in having menu options that are useful only for a handful of websites, when they could work for every website.
FB Messenger, Reddit, BBC News, Instagram, GitHub, Krunker.io (and various other web games), VirusTotal, the Epic Store, Discord, iCloud Contacts, etc. don't have PWAs. I like to use all of them on occasion within their own windows. without losing approx. 75px of vertical screen space. It's also a handy way to avoid having to install bloated Electron apps (Discord, Epic Games (sort of, not technically Electron, but just as bloated)).
Mobile Twitter, Google Maps, and Web Telegram do have PWAs.
There's a reason I asked for Vivaldi to preserve a feature that is present in the Chromium core (as well as many competitors, e.g. Chromium, Chrome, Edgium, Internet Explorer 11 even has/had a basic version). Plus, in a browser that's all about customisability and fitting in with lots of different workflows, it hardly seems proper to drop/hide features that are already present.
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@Darthagnon I get that, but it’s still just bookmarks launched from your desktop. It has nothing to do with progressive web apps and misses the mark. Why don’t you simply install another Vivaldi—either stable or snapshot, the opposite of what you are using right now, set it up with no UI at all and only save webpages you want to use as pseudo PWA as bookmarks? For the purpose you are intending this would make a lot of sense and in case you use quick commands to launch your instances it would be both faster and more convenient. Just a suggestion.
By the way I agree that Vivaldi should have support for PWAs, but you’re diluting your own feature request with suggestions which simply don’t make much sense in my opinion.
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@luetage it's different, when installed as pwa and clicking the icon, the window is not the normal browser window, it has thin title bar and no address bar nor tab bar
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@datdinhquoc Just toggle user interface. It’s inbuilt in Vivaldi.
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@luetage I'm confused what PWA means to you? It literally it's made to have install-able websites that caches things locally and updates regularly making you feel it's native app...
HavingTwitterandDev.tofor example (verfied pwas) on my desktop is just easier, which is the point, It's exactly -kind of- what you said it's ui-less browser. I don't see how having it as shortcut on desktop defies the point of PWA. -
@mohamadeen it does mean something, it looks like native application:
- thin title bar
- no address bar
- no menu bar
- no bookmark bar
- no other bars
Recent Vivaldi update makes the PWA don't look that way any more, but u can see it
by- open Chrome
- visit any website
- menu (tripledots) >> more tools >> create shortcut >> open as window
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@mohamadeen I’m confused what PWA means to you. A progressive web app is an application built on web technologies, meant to work both online and offline and is an alternative to native apps. They don’t need any kind of platform/store to be distributed, in theory any web browser should suffice. What it doesn’t mean: loading a random webpage in its own window.
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@luetage said in Please, PWA Installation for all websites:
mohamadeen I’m confused what PWA means to you. A progressive web app is an application built on web technologies, meant to work both online and offline and is an alternative to native apps. They don’t need any kind of platform/store to be distributed, in theory any web browser should suffice. What it doesn’t mean: loading a random webpage in its own window.
I agree, that's what a PWA is meant to be, but current usage/tech limitations means they don't work offline (e.g. try the "real" PWAs offered by Google Maps and Mobile Twitter - I believe Chrome, Chromium, Edgium all will call them apps/web apps/PWAs/whatever the latest marketing term is). iirc Google Docs was the sole exception on Chrome, where it worked offline if you installed an extension from Google. And very few websites have them properly configured. So Chrome/Chromium/Edgium have perhaps jumped the gun and are allowing "installation" of any website as a "fake" app/PWA/whatever, regardless of whether the site includes necessary scripts to qualify as a "real" PWA, in an attempt to mainstream their usage. It's an inconsistency, but it's one that exists in the major competitors and the FOSS core of Vivaldi. Vivaldi has just disabled a feature that already exists, for no obvious reason (unless, since it only stopped working in recent versions, so they could clutter the UI with useless clocks/widgets).
tbh I'm not a web developer nor expert on the semantics of it all. Maybe I should have titled this feature request "Please allow pinning of a website and opening it in a borderless window of its own". That's what I meant by the original feature request. Just that my current primary browser, Edgium calls these pinned, windowed websites (albeit incorrectly) "apps", and Chrome/ium did so when I last used it, too
I don't really want to install another Vivaldi and configure it to have no UI just to launch some websites - the reason I use fake PWAs of Discord, FB Messenger, etc. is to avoid having 200mb Chromium-based installs per web-service cluttering my PC. I'm actually against the whole move to Software-as-a-service and web-apps, so I don't personally care if my browser supports "real" PWAs or not (e.g. Opera made a move to introduce some proprietary PWA-ripoff junk called "dApps" - I stopped using Opera partially because of that). In my book, any web-service is deserving of a browser page, no more - it is undesirable to install an Electron instance for each SaaS I use, and they're part of the unreliable, fast moving, quickly made, quickly abandoned world of web dev, so permanent, large installations are out. Much nicer to run them via the browser. And since they're used as software (until abandoned/closed down by the devs), it's nice for them to have a native window, without bookmarks/tabs/extensions/full browser cluttering things.
datdinhquoc, mohamadeen, JohnConnorBear seem to understand what was intended
Sorry for the wall of text. Dunno if it's useful or not; don't mean to fight with anyone here - just wanted to make clear my understanding of the issue, and what I meant when this feature request was first posted.
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I know, it is late in the topic... but could you elaborate in one or two sentences what a "PWA" is? I am not familiar with the abbreviation (and maybe add it to the inital post if possible). Thank you!
