Can't add a website icon to the homescreen since "pin the web"?

B2G OS Foxfooding
#1

In the past, I could add a website icon to the homescreen. It seems that since the “pin the web” feature, I can now only pin it, which obviously is only useful if the new “pin the web homescreen” has been selected.

I don’t mind pinning the web or the new pin the web homescreen (I’m having some issues though), but I liked being able to add a web page to my main home screen, as if it was an app.

For example, the “dropbox app” in the marketplace is really just a website, and indeed the button doesn’t say “install” but “open the website”.

Is there a way to still add a website to the “main homescreen”?

(BTW, what’s the vocabulary here, how do you call the first page of the “pin the web homescreen”, where you have all your app icons, and the second page where you have the pinned content?)

Mathieu

#2

Hi Magopian,

If you open the pinning menu and select “Pin Site” as opposed to “Pin
Page”, this should add the website to your homescreen’s main panel (in both
the Default and Legacy homscreen) just like the old "Add to Homscreen"
button did. What functionality are you missing in the pin-the-web version
of Add to Homscreen that the old system gave you?

#3

Oh wow, then either it’s confusing or I totally missed the point: when presented with the “pin” screen, I have two choices:
1/ pin page: which shows me a little preview of the current page I’m on
2/ pin site: which doesn’t show me the little preview, but instead the favicon (if there’s one)

I don’t know why, but I thought the difference was between pinning the current page, or the base domain (like pinning dropbox.com/m/browse for the page, or dropbox.com/ for the base domain). I now realize this doesn’t make sense, and my reasoning was flawed. I’m curious why I thought that though…

Anyway, that’s great, I can add the icon to the homescreen which is excellent. Maybe the “pin site” could be named “pin the site to homescreen” or something like that?

#4

If you tap Pin the site instead of Pin the page, you get a bookmark in what
you call the main homescreen.

Best regards,
Gabriela
QA Mozilla Hispano Team Responsible

#5

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Magopian discourse@mozilla-community.org wrote:

I don’t know why, but I thought the difference was between pinning the
current page, or the base domain (like pinning dropbox.com/m/browse for
the page, or dropbox.com/ for the base domain). I now realize this
doesn’t make sense, and my reasoning was flawed. I’m curious why I thought
that though…

This is great feedback. We are still exploring terminology and
discover-ability, so we need to hear these things.

#6

FWIW your reasoning wasn’t flawed, this is exactly what it’s intended to do. You can either pin an individual page (which currently gets added as a card to the right pane on the homescreen which deep links to that URL) or you can pin a whole site (which currently gets added to the left pane, like an app, and opens the site at its start URL).

An issue we have is that not all websites specify a base URL (start URL) and because some hostnames are split into multiple websites we can’t just assume that when you’re on google.com/maps that the base URL is google.com/ for example. That means that when no start URL is provided we have to default to the current page URL, which is confusingly similar to pinning the current page.

This is an area we’re still working on refining so feedback like this is very welcome!