Monday, June 8, 2009

Prism - Mozilla Labs

Prism is a new project by Mozilla labs which is capable of separating web applications from the browser and running Web Apps as separate desktop applications. In other words a Web App can be run as a desktop application and not run from within a browser. Also in some cases Prism can be used even to run Web applications offline. With Prism applications run separately from the browser, so they stay up even if the browser doesn't.

Prism is a web 2.0 application, come as a standalone application as well as a FireFox extension. It is not a new platform, but the web platform integrated with desktop experience. Therefore Web developers don't have to target Prism separately, as any application that can run in a modern standard web browser can run in it and it supports technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS.

Main Features of Prism
  • Access web apps from system taskbar
  • Tray icon and dock menus
  • Run applications as startup apps
  • Associate applications with browser links
  • Minimize to tray
  • Popup alerts

Both flavors of Prism can be downloaded from Mozilla Labs here.