Turn ChatGPT and Bard into well-behaved potty-trained Windows desktop PWA shortcuts

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Figure 1 – Lawrence Fishburn holding a Duracell-like C size battery in the Matrix, prior to moving on to portraying homeless city martial arts gang leader, turned urban pigeon farmer, in the John Wick franchise. Duracell obviously didn’t sponsor the movie and therefore the Wachowski’s were being careful to avoid licensing and trademark infringement issues.

Disclaimer: If you already know this stuff, just click here and move on to something more challenging or interesting. This is for people unfamiliar with Progressive Web Apps, or PWA’s, which essentially turn a web page into a shortcut that opens in a separate “app window” of sorts.

I’m using ChatGPT and Google Bard for examples only. You can do this pretty much with ANY web site. In my humblest of humbled humble opinions, PWA’s are best for VERY simple UI web sites, such as single form layouts, like the main Google search page. Busier layouts tend to get over-crowded in the windowed-frame of a PWA, but that’s just my backwoods, corn-fed, raised-by-wolves, back alley, semi-educated, oh-shit-the-toaster-is-burning, opinion. Feel free to disregard.

The experience of creating a PWA shortcut is a little different in each browser. It’s worth noting that PWA shortcuts aren’t really “portable”, so don’t expect much if you try to copy the shortcuts to another machine. You need to recreate them on other machines.

I will demonstrate, while standing on one leg, with both eyes closed, and a small poodle, hanging by his teeth from my left butt cheek, how to do this in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave browser, and Mozilla Firefox.

If you use another browser, like Safari, you’re probably not even reading this right now, or if you use Opera, Vivaldi, or whatever, I don’t know. Individuality died decades ago. We’re all supposed to dress, eat, talk, and act alike now. Let’s move on…

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Figure 2 – ChatGPT (background) and Bard (foreground) PWA forms, along with their desktop shortcuts at upper left.

Google Chrome

1. Click the options menu (ellipsis “…” at top right)
2. Click “More tools >”
3. Click “Create shortcut…”
4. Accept or edit the name, and check “Open as window”
5. Click “Create”

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Figure 3 – cheap graphics produced with Greenshot.

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Figure 4 – more cheap graphics.

Microsoft Edge

1. Click the options menu (ellipsis “…” at top right)
2. Click “Apps”
3. Click “Install this site as an app”
4. Accept the name (or edit it). Click “Edit” to assign a custom icon if you wish
5. Click “Install”
6. After the App is created, it will open and display another options menu
7. Check the options you prefer:
   • Pin to taskbar
   • Pin to Start
   • Create Desktop shortcut
   • Auto-start on device login
8. Click “Allow” or “Don’t allow”

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Figure 5 – even more cheap graphics.

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Figure 6 – you guessed it.

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Figure 7 – even cheaper graphics.

Brave

The process for creating a PWA with Brave browser is exactly the same as with Google Chrome. That’s because Brave is built on the same Chrome engine, but removes all the Google tracking bullshit and adds wonderful tracking and script blockers.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox doesn’t do PWA’s yet. I just wanted to see if you read this far.

Conclusion

PWA’s can be handy for some web sites and for some uses, but like all technology stuff, it comes down to personal preference. If you haven’t tried them, I would suggest giving them a try and see for yourself if they’re helpful. Then you can throw the term around at your next party and impress all your friends.

I’m glad you stopped by! I’ll try to write something useful again soon. We’ll see.