One of the latest apps to be forged by the Mozilla team is Prism.  It is an effort to move web applications out of your browser and turn them into (essentially) self-contained applications.

Prism (formerly, Webrunner) is a prototype application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.

Mozilla Labs Blog » Featured Projects

It does this by creating a browser instance that is dedicated to one purpose only.  Be it Facebook, GMail, Hotmail or Twitter.  Setting it up an "App" is a breeze.  It is as easy as entering a URL (web address), a title, browser features to include and where you want links installed.

Click below to view the rest of the post including screen caps of creating Prism Apps.

For the example we will set up a prism for GMail.

URL: gmail.google.com
Name: GMail

Create Desktop, Start Menu and Quick Launch menu entries

Quick Launch –>

Now that you have the settings all together all that’s left is to click OK to have all of your links installed.

The Start Menu entries end up in All Programs > Web Apps

On your desktop you will find the following icon:

If you double click you will open a window and will typically be brought to the initial login page of the site you have configured.

All that is left now is to login and start using your email, or what-have-you. 

And as mentioned in the project entry, one of the best features of these mini-apps is that if by chance your web browser crashes, you will still have your email or facebook session running just fine.

The finished product:

Until next time… Cheers

Tags: facebook, gmail, mozilla, prism, twitter, web 2.0, webapp
Categories: Internet, Software

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 22:46 and is filed under Internet, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.