To use SSB with Firefox, you must be running Firefox 73 or newer-which won’t be hard, as the latest version is 84-and you have to enable it first. An SSB also has tighter integration with the OS and desktop than a typical web application running through a web browser.” Some people have called it a ‘distraction-free browser’ because none of the typical browser chrome is used. “It doesn’t have the menus, toolbars, and accouterments of a normal web browser. “An SSB is an application with an embedded browser designed to work exclusively with a single web application,” Mozilla explains.

I can’t explain why I wasn’t aware of this (at least the desktop bit), but it’s called Site Specific Browser (SSB) and it’s here now for those interested in testing it. And Mozilla started testing a similar approach for supplying this functionality on desktop almost a year ago. The mobile versions of Firefox have been able to create apps from webpages since 2017. But it turns out that the firm didn’t give up completely. I’ve long wondered why Mozilla dropped Prism and discontinued the ability to run web apps as if they were native apps. But as web apps have grown more sophisticated in more recent years, Chrome and other browsers have picked up similar capabilities, and Google has an entire platform, called Chrome OS, dedicated to running these apps outside of the normal browser container. What’s odd about this feature is that Mozilla originally innovated the ability to run webpages and apps as if they were native applications using a technology called Prism that has long since been stripped out of that browser. A reader tipped me off to an experimental Firefox feature that lets it work as seamlessly with PWAs as does Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other Chromium-based web browsers.

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