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]

Back in March I made a plea for a native Gmail application on the iPhone. As it turned out, Google was working on a new version of the Gmail Mobile site that takes advantage of HTML5 features like database storage to provide caching functionality on the iPhone and Android phones. The demo was compelling; a super-fast Gmail experience that includes long-awaited features like full label support, the ability to apply changes to multiple messages at once, and a floating action bar (dubbed the "floaty bar") that allows you to archive, delete, mark read/unread, add or remove a star, or mark messages as spam without having to scroll to the top or bottom of the thread you are viewing to do so.

The demo was certainly exciting, but though I was hoping would be released soon, I was fearing we were still a year away from seeing this new version of Gmail Mobile. Boy, was I wrong.

This sexy new web version of Gmail Mobile was released yesterday, and as a heavy Gmail user I have only one word for it: Glorious! Okay, I'm a blogger, so we know I never only have one word for something. But if you've been using the built in Mail app on your iPhone to avoid the clunky web version, it's time to try Google Mobile again.

While it's a huge, massive improvement on the previous version, the new Google Mobile is not without areas that could use improvement. For one, it is very slow to load. For me, I'm willing to put up with this since once it does load everything is significantly faster than it was. But it would certainly be nice to see an improvement in this regard, and that's something that was hinted at on the Official Gmail blog post announcing this new version. Another small annoyance is that the buttons are smaller than standard iPhone buttons, and there are more of them. It's manageable, but does require a bit of extra care and attention.

All in all, a very solid improvement, and one that makes working with email on the iPhone significantly more pleasant for Gmail users.

[Update] Check the bottom of the post for a video from Mobile World Congress showing Gmail with offline support running on an iPhone.

The iPhone needs a native Gmail application. There, I've said it. Every time I bring this up with iPhone users, I get one of the following questions:

• What's wrong with the built-in Mail app?
• What's wrong with the Gmail iPhone-optimized web interface?
• How dare you criticize the iPhone!

Okay, that last one isn't a question, but you can tell that some people are thinking it.

Let's tackle the questions:

What's wrong with the built-in iPhone Mail app?

I have to admit that Mail on the iPhone is the best email client I've ever used on a mobile device. But that's really not saying much, since virtually ever app that I regularly use on the iPhone is better than the equivalent Windows Mobile or Blackberry versions I have used with previous devices. The main thing that I find to be missing in Mail on the iPhone is message threading. Gmail is the gold standard when it comes to keeping messages grouped by thread, and Mail.app on the Mac comes a close second, in my opinion. For me, this is a must-have feature, and it drives me crazy that it is missing from Mail on the iPhone.

One other frustration with the iPhone Mail client (admittedly one that native Gmail would not fix) is how many taps it takes to move between mail accounts. It sure would be nice for Apple to include an integrated Inbox that works the same way it does on Mail.app for the Mac.

My search for the perfect software task management solution has been going on for a long time, and I think I've finally found the answer: Remember the Milk for iPhone (iTunes link). I've tried almost all of the big names in task managers: iGTD, Things, OmniFocus, and even Leopard's built-in todo functionality. None of them have met my needs.

For me, a task list needs to be ubiquitously available, and very quick and easy to interact with. For me, that means I need a native iPhone app, which immediately eliminates iGTD and Leopard's To Do list, since there is no iPhone equivalent. That leaves me with Things, OmniFocus, and RTM, all of which now have native iPhone apps.

One of my requirements is that my tasks synchronize to a web server, so that I don't need to have my laptop turned on to synchronize my tasks to my iPhone. This eliminated Things as a contender for me, since it currently only supports direct synchronizing over the same wireless network. OmniFocus had therefore been my de-facto task management tool due to its ability to synchronize both the Mac and iPhone versions to either MobileMe, or your own web server using WebDAV. The main problem I've had with OmniFocus on the iPhone is how incredibly slow it is to start up and synchronize. A recent update attempted to address this issue by allowing new tasks to be added while the synchronization was occurring, but it's still just not quick enough.

Apple has rejected another app from the app store because it considers it too similar to one of Apple's own apps, and thus would cause "user confusion."

The app is a front-end for Gmail, called MailWrangler, and allows users to check many Gmail accounts at once (unlike MobileSafari). It offers a similar interface as Gmail's iPhone-optimized web interface, which shows conversation threads in context, and allows for starring conversations (unlike Mail). The app developer says it works much like MailPlane on the desktop.

Nevertheless, Apple rejected the app because of the similarity, in Apple's view, and also due to other issues related to editing account information.

This app's rejection follows that of Podcaster for allegedly similar reasons. As we mentioned in the Talkcast two weeks ago, this could be related to the user backlash from I Am Rich. Whether it's too permissive or too strict, Apple will always have unhappy people when it issues rejections like this.

[Via WebMonkey.]

• Full support for Gmail 2
• mailplane:// URLs for accessing and searching your Gmail database
• A free OmniFocus clipping plugin for creating new tasks containing links to conversations in Mailplane
• Better photo attachment customization
• Assign different notification sounds and colors to specific Gmail accounts
• The ability to post Google Spreadsheet forms
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book
• A "Do Not Disturb" mode
• and a few dozen more improvements!