Skip to Content

Prism single-site browser goes 1.0 beta

The concept of a single-site browser or site-specific browser (SSB, either way) is simple: give me a window with one website in it, preferably a desktop application replacement like Gmail, RTM, Basecamp or Zoho, and let that window behave like a regular application with its own Dock icon, notifications, etc. If you're spending a lot of your time on a particular site, this can simplify your life quite a bit; if you're mixing up GTD with ADD (as so many of us seem to be), an SSB can help limit your distraction horizon while you're trying to maintain focus and flow.

The inspiration for many SSB offerings was the Firefox offshoot Webrunner, and the descendant of that project has now earned a 1.0 beta designation and its own website: Prism, from Mozilla Labs, gives you a power tool for creating your own SSBs at will, either via a Firefox extension or by launching the Prism config app and typing in the target URL.

Aside from having a dockable icon for each website you convert, you can also set your SSBs to launch at login, or assign mailto: links to open your web email client (similarly achievable for Gmail with the Gmail Notifier tool). If you have to keep separate sets of credentials for work & personal accounts for web services, no need to log in and out repeatedly -- just set up a Prism SSB for one of the accounts, and the passwords & cookies will stay as they need to be. In my brief testing this morning, several sites worked just as expected; the only sticking point is that the Choosy extension gets confused about whether or not Firefox is running when an SSB is open.

Safari 4 developer seeds had offered a "Save as Web Application" feature for creating SSBs, which has been stripped from the File menu in the current public beta but still looks to be part of the final release; meanwhile, you can still make WebKit-centric SSBs with the excellent and free Fluid.

What site or webapp would you put in a single-site browser?

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

[H/T to Lifehacker]



The concept of a single-site browser or site-specific browser (SSB, either way) is simple: give me a window with one website in it,...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

21 Comments

Filter by:
Michael

I just downloaded Fluid yesterday, because of this TUAW article, and I love it. I am using it for Gmail, and it allows me to keep Gmail always running and in its own space. I gave it a Gmail icon and it has a badge over it showing me how many new emails I have. Combined with Gmail’s work offline feature, it functions like a true email program completely separate from Safari.

May 11 2009 at 11:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter

This may just be me needing to see what's wrong with my debugging environment, but today I figured out why Firefox keeps locking up on me. I am developing in Flex Builder 3 and every time I run the debugger, I cannot subsequently preview in Firefox (b/c after the debug version has fired, for some reason the next time I preview, it freezes the browser). It would be nice to have my debugger start a simple SSB so it doesn't crash my whole system. (of course, this is a glitch anyway, but it's still a good idea for development purposes).

May 11 2009 at 4:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jemaleddin

Another differences: Prism is Intel only, Fluid is a universal binary.

May 11 2009 at 1:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
iam

I like fluid better. I pretty much only use it for gmail and fluid adds a number to the icon if I have unread messages. Prism doesn't.

May 11 2009 at 8:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Maddy

I just downloaded it and it's very cool. The only problem is that it needs its own Adblock Plus...

May 11 2009 at 4:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Maddy's comment
Dan S.

Repeat after me: Hosts file-based ad blocking beats the tar out of any browser plugin.

http://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+file+ad+block

May 11 2009 at 9:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dan

so, this basically mimics windows taskbar functionality

May 10 2009 at 8:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Skoalbandit

The whole concept is new to me so thanks TUAW for showing me this.

May 10 2009 at 1:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ethan estes

I like to keep online api documentation for my apps(swfsudio, zinc for example) in fluid builds. Makes it easier to keep those up in the background when writing code in textmate.

May 10 2009 at 12:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
schroef

I'm not seeing the benefit of putting a website in an own app insteed of just using Safari.

May 10 2009 at 12:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to schroef's comment
matt

I have one for you. I keep all chat apps and social network stuff in it's own space(via spaces). And I use Fluid to load up Facebooks iPhone domain. It's slim and minimal but still provides me with access to what's happening without having a full fledged browser sucking mem. And it looks nice.

May 10 2009 at 12:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rwzehr

Why not just drag a url from Sarari's address bar to the desktop, and then to the Dock? Am I missing something?

May 10 2009 at 12:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to rwzehr's comment
Michael Rose

Yes -- that would open the site as a tab in Safari (or Firefox). Having a separate process in an SSB means that you don't bog down your browser with JavaScript-intensive web apps, and that a crash in the SSB leaves your browser alone. You also can maintain a separate set of cookies/logins, etc.

Not for everyone, but there are advantages.

May 10 2009 at 12:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Ashworth

Actually, Fluid doesn't allow a separate set of cookies/passwords from Safari. If Prism allows that, it might be a significant difference.

May 10 2009 at 5:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.