Filed under: Cool tools, Internet Tools, Open Source, Beta Beat
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]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
matt said 12:21PM on 5-10-2009
I am struggling to see how this is any different from Fluid. Other than the fact Fluid rocks and Prism is hiding behind a "Beta" label.
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Michael Rose said 12:37PM on 5-10-2009
Fluid is using the WebKit frameworks (Safari-like); Prism uses Gecko (Firefox-like). There are some sites that prefer Firefox over Safari, sad to say.
matt said 12:41PM on 5-10-2009
I was already aware of that they used different engines. I find that to be completely trivial. As far as setting them apart from one another I think that's grasping at straws.
Michael Rose said 12:52PM on 5-10-2009
OK, we'll have to just disagree about that. I have at least three sites I use every day (including the CMS for TUAW itself) which behave dramatically differently in Safari and in Firefox; hence, as much as I love Fluid, I can't use it for SSBs for these sites.
As noted in the bottom of the post, Fluid is still working great and is definitely worth a try; technically Prism came first, so there's no reason they can't coexist.
matt said 1:01PM on 5-10-2009
I definitely believe they can and should co-exist. But I don't believe the engine they use is really all that important.
You said it yourself. You use Prism for a site that behaves differently in Safari & Firefox. This has no bearing on which engines are better. Only that TUAW has decided to forgo a consistent experience across engines. And that forces you to pick one engine over another.
This is an unfair comparison. As the deck is stacked.
Your example says more about TUAWs CMS and the other sites you sue more than it says anything about Prism or Firefox. :)
But Yeah...we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Jon said 1:20PM on 5-10-2009
They engines completely different. I do most of my web development testing in Firefox, but often when I test in Safari, the site looks completely different. Firefox supports features and syntax not supported on Safari, and vice versa, so I have to find features that are supported on both.
As most web developers try to make their sites look the same on all browsers, there should not be a difference between Prism and Fluid except on poorly-coded sites.
matt said 1:27PM on 5-10-2009
Jon, you are %100 correct in my opinion. Engines should not matter if the sites designers understand the reality of the web-world we live in.
There are in inconsistencies across engines. But they can and should be acknowledged and rectified.
As far "which is better". Seeing as I find the engine debate a non-issue. I must bring up a larger issue IMO. Prism is based on XULRunner. It's not native to OS X and is more resource intensive. This coupled with Fluids current feature-set makes it a more attractive application.
rwzehr said 12:23PM on 5-10-2009
Why not just drag a url from Sarari's address bar to the desktop, and then to the Dock? Am I missing something?
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Michael Rose said 12:38PM on 5-10-2009
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.
Kevin Ashworth said 5:29PM on 5-10-2009
Actually, Fluid doesn't allow a separate set of cookies/passwords from Safari. If Prism allows that, it might be a significant difference.
schroef said 12:24PM on 5-10-2009
I'm not seeing the benefit of putting a website in an own app insteed of just using Safari.
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matt said 12:28PM on 5-10-2009
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.
ethan estes said 12:47PM on 5-10-2009
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.
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Skoalbandit said 1:51PM on 5-10-2009
The whole concept is new to me so thanks TUAW for showing me this.
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dan said 9:07PM on 5-10-2009
so, this basically mimics windows taskbar functionality
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Maddy said 4:46AM on 5-11-2009
I just downloaded it and it's very cool. The only problem is that it needs its own Adblock Plus...
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Dan S. said 9:58AM on 5-11-2009
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
iam said 9:02AM on 5-11-2009
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.
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Jemaleddin said 1:45PM on 5-11-2009
Another differences: Prism is Intel only, Fluid is a universal binary.
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Peter said 4:13PM on 5-11-2009
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).
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