I just came across this post on Ajaxian. Pretty neat, but kind of useless. In my opinion, i can do the same thing by just saving a shortcut to a website on the desktop. There isn’t much stuff that are brand new or too excited here. Just like that mentioned on the post, comparing to Adobe AIR, it just lacks on the ability to talk to the OS natively. To be, it is nothing but a Firefox that’s compact and compiled to run only one site.
Mozilla has announced a new application that has been placed in Labs called Prism. Prism takes WebRunner and let’s it integrate nicely into the target operating system.This means that you can take any web site that you currently visit a lot, and place it in its own process, and you can launch it like any other application. It sits on your desktop for you to run. A modest goal.
I actually do this on my Mac by wrapping a Webkit component with some native sauce, and you can then even add extra features on top such as special quick keys, and menu items, etc. Many people do this of course and there are apps out there like Mail Plane.
What will be interesting to see is how features will be added to do more with the desktop. Adobe AIR allows you to talk to OS services in many ways, and some of us want even more native support. Mike Chambers of Adobe puts his view on some of Mozilla’s comments in the post too.
Hey there,
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I have to disagree with you here, though. I think Prism is going to be awesome. I have found myself wanting such a thing for a long time: I want to think of Gmail, Facebook, and hopefully some day, if it ever gets a clue, my bank, as applications. Tabs were a revelation when they appeared, but now I find myself dealign with 20, 30 tabs. And if I crash FF (as it will, unfortunately often, with that many tabs), everything that I was working on goes down with it.
The other thing is, I just can’t deny a certain thrill at the concept of being enabled to _really_ compete with desktop apps, just by knowing how to script and do web design stuff. All those C and Java folks can eat their hearts out
Hmm… I don’t know if i should disagree your comment our not
Prism itself is pretty neat to keep a website running on its own process. In your situation, i don’t see how much better it is to have 20, 30 application opened than 20, 30 tabs opened besides the fact that you don’t loose the visit session. In fact, if FF crashes and you try to reopen the application (or closed un-intentionally), it does attempt to “Restore Session”. The “restore session” alone is something that I’m always thrilled about FF.
Absolutely agreed. That’s why Gmail released IMAP accessibility. With Adobe AIR, a lot of what you are hoping to have is already shaping up. For example, if you run google analytics campaigns, you can now use Google Analytics AIR Beata to manage as a stand alone desktop application. There’s also the neat Wordpress blog editor made in AIR. As long as the service itself provides good API access, creating a separated desktop application for it doesn’t become rocket science anymore.
I guess Prism does solve the problem of saving a website like a desktop application when the website itself does not offer any API or complete API access (which i can understand if it is a banking service), and that’s why it’s hard to disagree to your comment.
On the other hand, the trend of going from web service only in web browser to actually compete with desktop app is still in the early stage i believe. It’s gotta a long way to go both for AIR and Prism (i hate to mention the rocket sciences like pure C, Java, etc…).