Submitted by Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism. Scott Nesbitt at Freesoftware Magazine tells you what Prism can do to boost you experience of the web on your desktop -and more importantly, how to do it. Read the full story at FSM. Editor’s Note: This story looks at Prism from the point of view of a Gnome user on Linux, but Prism can be used on Mac OS and Windows as well. Check out the Prism project page for information on other platforms.
From the article: On top of that, you don’t get all of the clutter that you find in a web browser. No tool or menu bars, or anything else to distract you.
Oh you poor lads and lasses who get distracted by something as benign as a menu bar! How on earth can you bear working with a computer when you always have to fight off those dastardly toolbars that pretend they are there to help, but actually are pursuing their own evil agenda which includes taking over your brain?
As a warning to all of you who are constantly attacked by the overwhelming League of Evil (Tool | Menu)bars, beware: Google Docs, that was also pictured in the article, also has its own “menu” bar – cleverly disguised, though.
Another warning: also beware of the title bars, they seem perfectly unobtrusive right now but you never know when (or if) they start acting up and distracting you from your tasks and hampering your productivity!
This is slightly off topic but is anyone else getting RSS items a good 12 hours before the news items are actually published to the website, causing OSNews to tell you no such item exists until you get a duplicate RSS news item 12 hours later?
Yes, it is really annoying.
As annoying as the broken UTF–8 support on this site.
I believe in this case that would be my fault. The noob is still figuring out the quirks of the management system. Sorry to have caused confusion.
Looks like a solution for a nonexisting problem.
Right now nothing stops me from adding any link or favorites to my startmenu or whatever I use to open applications. On Windows I even just need to drag them there.
And if the browser widgets are such a terrible problem, an option to not load/show them included in the browser would be more elegant than installing another app/extension.
Having a command like: “startbrowser http://www.webapp.com –no-widgets” would be more convincing, the only problem would probably be that it wouldn’t justify a shiny website or calling it a project, though…
You’ve just developed an incredible business app. It use all the latest technologies, it fast, productivity wise. You believe it’s the perfect application for them. Plus you want it to be a success and make money for you living.
But using all the new technologies make it impossible to support non-standard browser (IE). Your choice, you’re using less stuff an make your application not as good as it can be, or you ditch IE support.
If you choose the later, you will face a hard to explain problem. Your customer(s) may be reluctant to switch to Firefox (or safari/opera/etc). Solution? You have a wonderful client application built for your product. Result: a closed deal.
This may sound ridiculous(especially for tech guys), but many customer will be more open to install/chose a client application that comes with a product, that to use a “different” solution. Maybe it’s because one way you force them to change their way of working, and the other you’re adding some tools. Others make business decision on THE browser they must use, but any other application are fine. I’m no psychologist, but as a developer/business owner I face this situation more than once. Prism is a nice solution to bring web base solution in enterprise without the burden of IE and clueless decision maker.
Since i spent most of my time in Firefox, a link to webapp is actually one more click away than from my bookmarks.
The benefit is 1-2 second start up time huh? Big difference, really! And if Firefox got some problems, e.g. a flash app consumes 100% cpu time, then prism probably will be affected too.
If the application is completely hosted on line, then you are correct. However, if the application needs access to the internet and to the local disk, then this is a good way to do it.
The articles on Prism seem to be ignoring its ability (through XPCOM) to start any local application or to read and write local files. At this point many people are probably saying: “OMG! A browser with rwx privileges! This is what we keep trying to stop!”
Of course there are the possibilities of security issues here, but then there are such possibilities with any application that has internet access. The key is for the developer to limit internet connectivity of the application to specific purposes – ergo the stripping away of menu bars and the like so that the users can’t inadvertently share their local data with the world.
I personally have been using Mozilla’s XUL for this purpose (as a handy, web-enabled widget set), but in certain ways XUL is clunky and if Prism allows one to use pure HTML/CSS/Javascript, it may have an advantage.
Edited 2008-07-14 17:47 UTC
On multiple screen computers, it’s convenient to have my google calendar as a separate application. So I can close, restart browser or if it hangs, it does not affect my calendar.
TBH, I don’t find this very interesting. WebKit support in Plasma is more interesting – and I don’t really see any use for a webbrowser on my desktop… No, the way Trolltech actually integrated the web into applications, allowing you to use C++, HTML, CSS and Javascript in one application – THATS bringing the web to the desktop…
http://www.fire-proxy.com/index.php?article_id=687474703a2f2f74726f…
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/category/labs/internet/webkit/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-creating-rich-interne…
While Prism seems to be a nice and simple solution I am much more interested in Gears for future use. Seems like the Gears team tries to find sensible solutions to many of the current issues with web apps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hapkRYxCU_8
Edited 2008-07-15 01:12 UTC