’Create application shortcut...' Chrome's feature in Firefox?

firefox web-application

56,129

Solution 1

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There were several alternatives to Prism, but it seems that all of them have been discontinued and are no longer active or available for download.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.

Solution 2

New Update 2020

Please see Amer's excellent answer. (If you want the icon to remain in the taskbar, right-click it and click "Pin to taskbar".)

Caveats:

Since the Site-Specific Browser (SSB) feature is disabled (off) by default, it might be experimental.
There's no "Loading" progress indicator in the SSB window. Sometimes you'd stare at a blank window and wonder what's happening.
There's no Zoom function. If you had already set Zoom level in Firefox main window, it doesn't carry to the SSB window. It's always at 100% zoom level.
The window title never changes. It's always the fixed title. This is bad for web-apps that change the title to indicate something. (I suppose the icon may not change either.)
If you had already enabled notifications via Firefox main window you may get them, however if you've never enabled it, I'm not sure if you can enable it from the SSB window.
There's no standard right-click context menu - not even on text fields. This really hampers usability since you cannot copy, paste, refresh page, etc. without using keyboard shortcuts. (Application-specific right-click menus still work, since these are part of the website's own code, not from the browser itself.)
The web app's window doesn't remember its last position and size.

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.

Previous Update 2017

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.

Previous Answer

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 -width and -height do 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 uxsms followed by net start uxsms.

Other than the above problems, it works fine.

Solution 3

New Update 2020:

With FF (Firefox) you can now natively get the same experience as Google Chrome without the need for a JavaScript shortcut:

Update to the latest version of FF.
Open "about:config" setting page.
Search for "browser.ssb.enabled" Boolean and set it to TRUE (or create a new Boolean with that name if not exist).

Restart FF.
Open your favorite website in FF, then click on the … (3 dots button) beside the address bar to open the Page Action menu and select “Use this site in App mode”.
A shortcut will be placed on your desktop and the app will open immediately.

Solution 4

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:

Close all instances of firefox
Create a saparate firefox profile
1. open run (win+r)
2. run firefox -P
3. create a new profile app
4. select the default profile
5. exit
Create a mklink of the firefox folder
1. Run cmd as administrator. Search for cmd and open with a right click.
2. Enter: cd "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
3. Create a folder link with mklink /D "Mozilla Firefox App" "Mozilla Firefox"
4. Move the link "Mozille Firefox App" out of the "Mozilla Firefox" folder
Open the new profile in the new folder
1. go to the Mozilla Firefox App folder and create a shortcut of the firefox.exe on the desktop
2. Open the shortcut target and add -P app no-remote
3. The shortcut should look for instance like this: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox WhatsApp\firefox.exe" -P whatsapp -no-remote
Install extensions and change settings
1. Install the extension "Hide Tab bar with one Tab"
2. Install the extension "Hide Navigation Bar". After installation use F2 to hide the navigation bar.
3. Install the extension "Change Profile's Window Icons". Please read the instructions of the extension, to make it work, and use it with care.

Other solutions:

You could use the standalone extension but for me it was to buggy.

Sources:

Solution 5

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.

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56,129

Author by

defhlt

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

defhlt almost 2 years

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.
CMCDragonkai over 9 years

This feature is so useful for apps like StackEdit, Regex101. Can't believe Mozilla would discontinue it.
childno͡.de over 8 years

doesn't work for me under WIndows, with Firefox 44 and profiles, it just starts ff with the default page (no clue which component is wrong, I bet it's Windows :p )
ADTC about 8 years

@childno.de appears to have stopped working for me too. I think Firefox developers removed the flag support. I updated the answer.
Charles Roper over 6 years

Now that Quantum is out, I've switched back to Firefox and this is the only thing I'm really missing from Chrome. Seems unbelievable that there's currently no way to do this in Firefox at all.
doublehelix over 6 years

The javascript-bookmark solution works well. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to set a proper Window-Title (which is displayed in the taskbar). So the window in the taskbar is an unsexy https URL whereas in chrome I can set it to SomeGreatApp. Setting the windowName property in the bookmark doesn't help and the developer docs state that it's not supposed to set the title. :-(
user48949 over 5 years

your piece of code is awesome. I really don't understand coding, so, if you don't mind, could you please show me how to edit your code so it simply opens a WhatsApp window directly, without that first window with all those options you provided? Thanks a lot for your attention.
AmitK over 5 years

@user48949 yours is a simple use-case (only one website to launch from the bookmarklet). Just follow ADTC's solution and replace https://www.google.com/ with https://web.whatsapp.com/.
G-Wiz almost 5 years

To get separate, ungrouped taskbar icons, I had to follow the instructions here support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1233574 (and bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577867) instead of steps 3 and 4.
G-Wiz almost 5 years

I also used this extension instead of those listed in step 5: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mpt-hide-browser-ui . I didn't need a special extension for the custom icon; just started the app with a specific profile, pinned the taskbar icon that popped up to the taskbar, opened its properties, changed the icon image, and then restarted Explorer.
Admin over 4 years

Post-bounty note: The timeline hinted that at least 10 users found this answer useful in three years time. Despite updated in late-2017, this was the only answer that is most recent and does the trick, which I could find on SU.
kyb about 4 years

Looks good. Thank you. But the window still has firefox icon and grouped with others. Is it possible to make it look like a different application?
ADTC almost 4 years

@kyb Have you tried the new update given by Amer? superuser.com/a/1565622
ADTC almost 4 years

I've linked to you in my own answer, but expanded it there with several caveats (disadvantages). Hopefully they will be fixed in future Firefox versions :) Also: you may want to add a tip about pinning the icon to the taskbar.
Amer almost 4 years

@ADTC Thank you, and thanks for the information about Caveats, it is a great addition to the topic.
Ray over 3 years

Another disadvantage of 2020: It does not remember the window position and size.
markasoftware over 3 years

I think it only works for https
Jon Bentley over 3 years

Sadly it looks like Mozilla (for reasons which seem pretty ridiculous to me) have removed this feature. Forced back to Chromium again to get this functionality.
Jon Bentley over 3 years

Sadly it looks like Mozilla (for reasons which seem pretty ridiculous to me) have removed this feature. Forced back to Chromium again to get this functionality.
Skystrider over 3 years

darn. would have loved to have this feature