The Desktop Lives: Mozilla Talks Up Prism
A Mozilla Labs blog post yesterday announced Prism, an application that takes web apps to the desktop. Prism isn't a proprietary platform, but rather gives any web application that runs in a standards-compliant browser its own window and icons on the desktop. Right now, that's all Prism does. It doesn't add any offline functionality or give apps things like file system access, but Mozilla seems to hint about developments in that direction in the Labs announcement.
Earlier this year, when we wrote about plans for offline apps in Firefox 3, Robert O'Callahan from Mozilla told us that applications would need to be reengineered to be taken offline with Firefox 3. That's not the case with Prism, which can take apps to the desktop as long as they run in the browser (though, as we mentioned, Prism doesn't actually take web apps offline, just puts them in their own desktop window).
The Mozilla Labs crew said that they're working on an extension for Firefox that will add Prism to the browser and make taking web apps to the desktop a one-click affair.
Except for the minor convenience of running oft-used web apps in their own dedicated window and making them accessible via a desktop icon, Prism isn't really all that exciting in its current form. It doesn't offer much of a benefit over bookmarks and your current browser window. However, the implications for the future are big. "This is a pretty huge deal," writes Ryan Stewart, "and it shows a trend that I’ve been preaching/tracking all along; that the desktop isn’t dead at all and that a hybrid approach is a successful way to go."
There is prototype of Prism for available on the Mozilla labs blog post, as well as links to the source code.
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I don't see much of a difference between this and WebRunner.
Posted by: Noah Everett | October 26, 2007 9:10 AM
I'm not sure that there is much of one right now. From the Adobe Labs post:
"The first of these experiments is based on Webrunner, which we’ve moved into the Mozilla Labs code repository and renamed to Prism."
Posted by: Josh Catone | October 26, 2007 10:07 AM
Prism is WebRunner AFAICT, but it is much improved. I used WebRunner for Zimbra, and it had problems -- but at least it didn't crash when Firefox did, which is important because as a web developer I crash Firefox all the time. After upgrading to Prism, all the problems I had were fixed.
Posted by: Sam | October 26, 2007 10:43 AM
I wrote up a different spin on this story over at my blog, from a more "anti Browser" perspective...
http://www.kyle-brady.com/2007/10/26/the-continued-mozilla-syndrome/
--Kyle
Posted by: Kyle Brady | October 27, 2007 3:46 PM
Browser is the platform.
Whether on desktop or outside (except for mini widgets like clocks, weather, and other bits) the rest should be on the browser (which is the platform).
Being on the desktop does not mean the apps have to get away from browser app architecture. For example, HTA that IE propogates. (even SWF stuff for that matter)
Posted by: Joseph Pally | October 30, 2007 6:21 PM