Site-Specific Browsers

Saturday, June 24, 2023

At the recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple previewed their new OS for the Mac, macOS Sonoma. I have to admit, at first, I didn't pay too much attention to the announcements. I used to believe OS updates could be life-changing, but that was before these operating systems reached the level of maturity that they have currently. Now, I have more of a casual level of interest in the evolutionary offerings that a new OS brings.

Once I took a second look at macOS Sonoma, a few things jumped out at me. One new feature that I could see myself using pretty heavily is web apps. Web apps could perhaps more appropriately be called site-specific browsers (SSB). They are a browser instance dedicated to a single site. This could be a web app, but it could also be any other page. It is likely that the feature will mostly be used for apps, though. This concept has been around for some time. Years ago, I used an app called Fluid that performed the same function as the new web apps feature in macOS. It made a lot of sense for frequently used apps like Gmail to have their own space. Admittedly, in 2011, it seemed a lot more revolutionary than it does 12 years later. If Fluid were still in active development, you might even say it was being sherlocked.

One question I have is how much this will impact my usage of the Arc browser. I love Arc, but I mainly use it for its ability to "favorite" web apps, so they are pinned in a specific space and can function more like standalone applications (with notifications, access to common functions, outbound links opening in a different tab, etc.). With Apple's new Web Apps feature, I might no longer have a compelling use case for Arc.

I can see myself using the new web apps capability for Micro.blog, Ghost, Matter, etc. For what sites do you imagine yourself creating site-specific browsers?