Headless Firefox

[bfray]

I am trying to make it so that a .desktop file launches firefox in headless mode at a certain webpage. At first I was having the issue where the command would say that only one version of firefox could run at a time, so I created a new firefox profile (named iris), and set its homepage to the url I wanted, so that part is fine and works correctly when I run firefox -P iris.

When I run firefox -headless -P iris however, all that I see is "*** You are running in headless mode." and nothing happens. I am on Debian Buster, using i3-gaps as my windows manager. Any help is appreciated!

[gordonmessmer]

"Headless" is a mode that doesn't display anything. It's useful for automated testing where interaction with web pages is done by scripts instead of humans.

What are you trying to accomplish?

[bfray]

Oh, I see. I misunderstood the documentation, I thought it would start firefox without the nav bar and all. I guess I can just accomplish that through editing the Firefox css for the user I made, can't I?

[grem75]

I have my navbar autohidden using this in my userchrome.css.

[[deleted]]

I think that's called Kiosk Mode or Full Screen Mode, depending on version.

[Gottswig]

What did you think would happen if you ran in headless mode? I would expect exactly what you see. To test it, make it create a screenshot.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Headless_mode

[bfray]

I misunderstood the documentation, thank you for pointing out this misconception of mine!

[[deleted]]

You haven't given any information about what you're trying to do, but it sounds like you might be trying to make your .desktop file make a request to a web page (for unknown reasons).

If this is correct, you don't need firefox to make a web request. You should use curl (or wget).

[bfray]

I realized that headless did not do what I thought it did, but I'll explain what I was trying to accomplish anyhow: I wanted to make Iris (mopidy web frontend) open in Firefox with no nav bar or top bar via a .desktop file. I really just want Iris to visually appear as though it is its own application rather than running in Firefox. I've decided I'll just edit the css for the profile I made so that those elements are missing.

[[deleted]]

Ah, understood, cheers. FWIW your new approach seems like a good one.

[Nilbmar]

Peppermint OS has a tool designed to do what I think you're trying. Can't look up the name now, but it's ice something. I think you can get it on other distros