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Mozilla Tests Integrated Desktop Browser
HelloDotJPEG writes "Mozilla Labs, the organisation's experimental arm, has launched Prism for interested Windows users to try out. Prism is a piece of software which integrates web applications such as Gmail or Google Reader into the desktop. The program enables you to run multiple such sites as though they were local applications, each in their own dedicated browser window. The product isn't entirely new, but is an officially adopted and rebranded update to the Site-Specific Browser project WebRunner (not to be confused with XULRunner upon which it is built). From the site: 'Web developers don't have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we're also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.'"
But my question is: will I have to shut down all my prism applications if I want to restart the browser engine? Or will all prism apps run as a separate instance..
The difference is conceptual. When people start "blogging" many slashdotters also missed it: "Just upload your html using ftp!" Just compare how simple it is to put together an HTML page with a form and how (relatively) difficult it is to do the same thing using even Visual Basic. My prediction is that this is the beginning to something really big.
Football Odds
I never saw either being used. Is this the same thing? Well, I might be wrong, but this is how I see it.
Flash, Silverlight etc. are attempts to let you write cross-platform apps that are available through the web. This is becoming the hottest area these days. But you need special tools for cross-platform development; the reason these tools are needed, is that web browsers are not exactly compatible with each other. You can't write an AJAX app and have it run perfectly in IE, FF, Opera, Safari, etc. It is tricky.
Now, Mozilla Firefox currently runs the same way on all the major operating systems. So it could be a cross-platform app environment as well, if you think about it: Develop once for Firefox, and all people need to run your software is to use Firefox (which is a free download). But that is the problem - some people prefer IE, Opera, etc. You can't force them to switch web browser.
Therefore, the solution for Mozilla is to separate web apps from the browser. That is, the platform will be Firefox, but people won't even notice it; Firefox will be like Flash. Imagine running IE and clicking on a web app, which then opens in a new window. It could be Flash, AJAX, or Firefox; you wouldn't know.
Active desktop might have been adopted if there was much of a use for it, back then. There wasn't. But meanwhile things have changed, and nowadays web apps are quite useful and it now does makes sense to integrate them into your desktop - so long as you do so in a cross-platform manner. Mozilla already has such a platform - Firefox - which runs on all platforms in the same manner. All they need to do is a little packaging.
My grandmother, or any of the users I support who are completely baffled by tabbed browsing.
My grandmother has a gmail account. In order for her to use it, I had to turn on POP for the account and set her up with Thunderbird. Then I changed the icon on the Thunderbird shortcut to an envelope and the name of the shortcut to "Mail" so she could find it. The thing is, I've showed her the web interface for gmail, and she actually likes it better than Thunderbird, but opening a browser, typing gmail.com and logging in are too much for her to handle. With this, I can give her that same shortcut on her desktop with the Envelope and the word "Mail" and it'll take her straight to the Gmail web interface, without an address bar, or forward/back/stop buttons to add confusion.
The users here are set up with IRC chatrooms for their teams. We tried moving them to Campfire for a simpler interface and better opportunities for offsite access, but they liked mIRC better. They said it was easier to use than Campfire. When I asked them how Campfire's interface could possibly be more difficult to use than mIRC, they said it wasn't the interface, it was the fact that they had to leave a web browser or tab open all the time, and then they couldn't find it on the taskbar when they wanted to check out the chat. With Prism, I could give them a shortcut on the desktop that would open a Prism window to the chatroom, where the window title would be the name of the chatroom and the icon would be unique. Plus, it wouldn't get lumped in with all the other browser windows when the taskbar filled up.
It's just a fracking container. By itself, it's not going to do anything much.
If a web developer wanted to create a web-based app specifically to run in WebRunner, they could do that. XUL works just as well in there as HTML does. That would give you a native UI, with more control over the UI appearance, and support for things like menus, or other native XUL widgets.
Remember the offline web application stuff in Firefox 3? That applies here too - web apps will the able to use local data storage, and the browser will be able to keep the entire web app cached. Using that, you only need an internet connection available for the initial setup, which would probably be as simple as clicking a link. The idea is to keep giving better functionality to web applications, and allowing those applications to better integrate with the OS.
These web apps still run in the browser's security sandbox - despite installing them on your machine, you don't need to give them read and write access to the entire filesystem, and they can't contain native code to bypass the sandbox.
So, you click a link to install the app. The required cached files are downloaded, and a shortcut is created in the Windows start menu, or the KDE / Gnome menus, or Mac OS X's Applications directory, or wherever else. From then, it just works like a normal application, including (limited) access to local resources.
Besides, this was done by one guy. It's existed for around 7 months. It's basically a much simpler way to build XulRunner based applications, which requires virtually no Mozilla-specific code, and can work with any web-app. XulRunner can obviously do far more, because it doesn't run in that security sandbox.
Yeah, we're trying so hard to kill Thunderbird we created a new subsidiary company to drive it, hired a top guy to run the company, and gave it $3M to get started. Pretty expensive way to "kill" it...