Mozilla Tests Integrated Desktop Browser

HelloDotJPEG writes "Mozilla Labs, the organisation's experimental arm, has launched Prism for interested Windows users to try out. Prism is a piece of software which integrates web applications such as Gmail or Google Reader into the desktop. The program enables you to run multiple such sites as though they were local applications, each in their own dedicated browser window. The product isn't entirely new, but is an officially adopted and rebranded update to the Site-Specific Browser project WebRunner (not to be confused with XULRunner upon which it is built). From the site: 'Web developers don't have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we're also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.'"

Hmm

"we're also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware"

And thus it was so, that viruses became even more abundant, and 3D accelerated.

Re:Hmm

I'm no expert in history, but couldn't that be the beginning of a completely new platform that'd allow developers to securely and consentually install real apps and in-browser controls that'd run natively on the user's computer?
That'd be great! And with just a little bit of effort I'm sure it could surpass the feature-richness and security Microsoft's implementation of this process (they call it ActiveX).

Re:Hmm

I hear for his next trick he tried to get an open source mail client to talk to Exchange via MAPI

Yeah, those movie plots are always so unrealistic

Woohoo!

As always, the innovation over at Mozilla is incredible. After only months of intense development they managed to build an application that's like a browser except it's only a Gecko control in a window. No tabs, no anything.
I'm sure it would've taken years to build a similar application using .NET's Browser Control.

Re:Woohoo!

But my question is: will I have to shut down all my prism applications if I want to restart the browser engine? Or will all prism apps run as a separate instance..

Re:Woohoo!

This is indeed a great start; I'd also like to see Moz replicate (and take over) the embedded browser controls that many other Windows apps lean on IE's crutch for (Google Earth, Winamp, etc.)

Re:Woohoo!

I hit submit before I was finished with my comment. I hate it when I do that. I hit submit, and then am like, dope, I wish I could edit that.

The prism interface is a bit prettier than active desktop, and after looking at the article, rather than the summery, it looks like what its doing is pretty much creating a hyperlink to the page in your start menu or something. I hate to say it, but I really do not see anything innovative here. Am I missing something?

Re:Woohoo!

It's just a fracking container. By itself, it's not going to do anything much.

If a web developer wanted to create a web-based app specifically to run in WebRunner, they could do that. XUL works just as well in there as HTML does. That would give you a native UI, with more control over the UI appearance, and support for things like menus, or other native XUL widgets.

Remember the offline web application stuff in Firefox 3? That applies here too - web apps will the able to use local data storage, and the browser will be able to keep the entire web app cached. Using that, you only need an internet connection available for the initial setup, which would probably be as simple as clicking a link. The idea is to keep giving better functionality to web applications, and allowing those applications to better integrate with the OS.

These web apps still run in the browser's security sandbox - despite installing them on your machine, you don't need to give them read and write access to the entire filesystem, and they can't contain native code to bypass the sandbox.

So, you click a link to install the app. The required cached files are downloaded, and a shortcut is created in the Windows start menu, or the KDE / Gnome menus, or Mac OS X's Applications directory, or wherever else. From then, it just works like a normal application, including (limited) access to local resources.

Besides, this was done by one guy. It's existed for around 7 months. It's basically a much simpler way to build XulRunner based applications, which requires virtually no Mozilla-specific code, and can work with any web-app. XulRunner can obviously do far more, because it doesn't run in that security sandbox.

Neat idea

Dunno if i would ever use it. However if you were rolling out Googles web apps in an office enviroment then it might make life easier for the users. More of a desktop paradigm then a bunch of URLs.

Wow, people are sick

Who would actually WANT something like this?

2 of the main reasons to run an application locally is so that you control your own data.....and don't have to look at ads. This looks like the worst of both worlds....right on your desktop.

Re:Wow, people are sick

Nobody wants to use these. Really, nobody wants to use web based apps. They suck. They're clunky, they're slow, they put your data elsewhere. Some of them have ads. As a user, anything web based is just horrible. There are a few exceptions (some people prefer web mail because of anywhere availability, but a pure-web based app isn't needed for that. I've got a home IMAP server and can access via a web client when away, or via Thunderbird when I'm at home. best of both worlds).

That being said, as IT personnel, web based apps are great. The data is centralized (read: backed up), there are no extra apps to install, maintain, and configure on each desktop. Users can move from system to system (for example, from their main computer to a spare while one is in for maintenance) without any worry. It's a wonderful thing.

Re:Wow, people are sick

Who would actually WANT something like this?

My grandmother, or any of the users I support who are completely baffled by tabbed browsing.

My grandmother has a gmail account. In order for her to use it, I had to turn on POP for the account and set her up with Thunderbird. Then I changed the icon on the Thunderbird shortcut to an envelope and the name of the shortcut to "Mail" so she could find it. The thing is, I've showed her the web interface for gmail, and she actually likes it better than Thunderbird, but opening a browser, typing gmail.com and logging in are too much for her to handle. With this, I can give her that same shortcut on her desktop with the Envelope and the word "Mail" and it'll take her straight to the Gmail web interface, without an address bar, or forward/back/stop buttons to add confusion.

The users here are set up with IRC chatrooms for their teams. We tried moving them to Campfire for a simpler interface and better opportunities for offsite access, but they liked mIRC better. They said it was easier to use than Campfire. When I asked them how Campfire's interface could possibly be more difficult to use than mIRC, they said it wasn't the interface, it was the fact that they had to leave a web browser or tab open all the time, and then they couldn't find it on the taskbar when they wanted to check out the chat. With Prism, I could give them a shortcut on the desktop that would open a Prism window to the chatroom, where the window title would be the name of the chatroom and the icon would be unique. Plus, it wouldn't get lumped in with all the other browser windows when the taskbar filled up.

Another active desktop?

I think it was almost ten years ago when Microsoft came out with active desktop and Netscape countered with something which was really a browser window taking up the whole screen and called a desktop.

I never saw either being used. Is this the same thing?

Re:Another active desktop?

I think it was almost ten years ago when Microsoft came out with active desktop and Netscape countered with something which was really a browser window taking up the whole screen and called a desktop.

I never saw either being used. Is this the same thing?

Well, I might be wrong, but this is how I see it.

Flash, Silverlight etc. are attempts to let you write cross-platform apps that are available through the web. This is becoming the hottest area these days. But you need special tools for cross-platform development; the reason these tools are needed, is that web browsers are not exactly compatible with each other. You can't write an AJAX app and have it run perfectly in IE, FF, Opera, Safari, etc. It is tricky.

Now, Mozilla Firefox currently runs the same way on all the major operating systems. So it could be a cross-platform app environment as well, if you think about it: Develop once for Firefox, and all people need to run your software is to use Firefox (which is a free download). But that is the problem - some people prefer IE, Opera, etc. You can't force them to switch web browser.

Therefore, the solution for Mozilla is to separate web apps from the browser. That is, the platform will be Firefox, but people won't even notice it; Firefox will be like Flash. Imagine running IE and clicking on a web app, which then opens in a new window. It could be Flash, AJAX, or Firefox; you wouldn't know.

Active desktop might have been adopted if there was much of a use for it, back then. There wasn't. But meanwhile things have changed, and nowadays web apps are quite useful and it now does makes sense to integrate them into your desktop - so long as you do so in a cross-platform manner. Mozilla already has such a platform - Firefox - which runs on all platforms in the same manner. All they need to do is a little packaging.

Yeahhhhh........

Because Active Desktop caught on so well.......

Buzz-word compliance

rich internet technologies like HTML

But does it support DNS?..

Look, ma, no tabs

Let me say goodbye to positive karma: Welcome back, dear Internet Explorer 3 days...

Mozilla head #1> Umm, MS copies our tabs in their so-called browser !
Mozilla head #2> Ok, let's make a version without tabs... and while we're at it, let's remove that pesky Back button - and we'll have a fix for the memory leak too !!!

laugh all you like

This is useful for many users: it makes it much easier to migrate from desktop to web applications, and it is intrinsically easier for people to grasp "to get to your mail, click on the Mail icon" than "start the browser, go to your bookmarks, select...".

Also, if this is well executed, it provides a better level of isolation between web applications. Right now, it's pretty tricky trying to read mail for two or three GMail accounts (it would be less tricky if profiles weren't broken...), and if one web site locks up or slows down the browser, other web apps suffer as well. SSB can address those problems.

And the point of this is.....?

Am I missing something here?

How is this different to putting a URL shortcut on your desktop and having the browser window appear without an address bar?

Re:And the point of this is.....?

The difference is conceptual. When people start "blogging" many slashdotters also missed it: "Just upload your html using ftp!" Just compare how simple it is to put together an HTML page with a form and how (relatively) difficult it is to do the same thing using even Visual Basic. My prediction is that this is the beginning to something really big.

Isolation

What I would like to see is this implemented in such a way that the instances of these web-apps are separate from other XULRunner apps (e.g. if you also have Firefox running), and also isolated from one another.

The one advantage I can see here is keeping certain webpages open semi-permanently as applications (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.). But it would be annoying if a crash of one app caused the others to close, too. Also, if this is designed properly it could be an advantage from a security standpoint. If your Gmail app is running separately from your web-browsing, there are fewer chances for cross-site scripting or other such exploits.

trouble installing

each time i try to install the program i get an error saying each file is corrupt. i tried to hitting ignore and letting it install anyway but when i run prism nothing happens. tried to redownload the install but the samething happens each time. any ideas?

iPod like comments

Most comments here now remind me of the whole "no wifi, less space than a nomad, lame"-comment about the iPod when it came out. These comments are completely missing the point.

The current problem is that our desktop is built up around the idea of local applications and that is all the current desktops are designed to handle. But nowadays people are using less and less local applications and more and more web applications (whether you like it or not), and all of these run in a separate layer through the web browser. At some point, if we aren't already there, many people will not use a single local application on their computer apart from their web browser.

At that point, the whole distinction between the web browser and the operating system becomes completely irrelevant and we approach stage where windows is just a collection of device drivers (quote Netscape, mid nineties?).

Currently, the operating system does a lot of great stuff for us with regards to the local applications, and it really needs to start doing the same with regards to web applications and the first step is to make web applications first class citizens on the desktop.

Finally, complain all you want about the privacy and security issues with web applications. Well founded as they may be, they will not change the fact that people are flocking to web applications.

Active Desktop was a bit lame and MS seemed to have no real concept of where they were going with it.It was also well before the age of "web applications" as opposed to web sites. Just because there may be similarities with that old concept doesn't make this stupid.

Re:iPod like comments

People are flocking to web applications? Where are you getting this? Can I get a source? Or are you just making this up? Or did you "get a feeling" for it from the number of friends you have using gmail? Because, my experiences tell me, beyond email and flash games, people still want their software to be desktop-based and not web-based.

Another point; before we do anything you said we "need" to do, we need to improve bandwidth to the world if we want web apps to work well. Honestly, I wouldn't know why you'd want to do that, seeing as they do the same thing as a non-web app but runs slower. Sure, they're more portable, but so is Java, and we all know how well Java caught on with the public.

firefox != gecko

Prism is built on Firefox

Prism is built on Gecko. Please correct this article, it doesn't give enough credit to Gecko and unfairly gives too much credit to the Firefox team, who sometimes make bad decisions with respect to their product.

Seamonkey is way better anyway.

Started

I started using WebRunner a few weeks ago and like it. I can just leave it to run minimized and not accidentally close it when I close FireFox or accidentally surf off the tab. This seems practical in several situations, set it up to wait online for World Series tickets, keep a calendar open. Most practical would be for use as a corporate tool, I could run my corporate web based software. Since most of the uses involve typing I miss automatic spell check from FF.

I shall call them "Applications"!

That doesn't defeat the purpose of web applications AT ALL!

Wait -- this is brilliant. An application that has access to the system resources instead of simply running as a webpage? Why, we could just write our applications as lean, platform-independent C-libraries-- and and -- I GOT IT -- we could create brilliant interfaces by simply hammering in layers of C# on .NET and Mono, so it would be like... ... it would be like the application would be USING system resources, but not written specifically FOR that system. We'll call them.... ".NET APPLICATIONS". They could be even faster than AJAX! And you wouldn't even need to be on the internet to use them! Not to mention you could take advantage of existing GTK or WinForms calls in order to get the smoothest fastest interface.

Join me, Slashdot- let us develop "applications"!

But wait- what if they need to be 100% multiplatform. What if I am not smart enough to abstract my code into a library/interface model... perhaps Prizm is for me!

From the user angle, now I can run Gmail on my desktop, because running Apple Mail or Windows Mail and just using the pop server is not Web 2.0 enough for me. I need to have ultra-slow, buggy, server-locked AJAX technology to make my desktop applications seem like desktop applications even though they are not desktop applications but they're acting like them thanks to Mozilla!

Server >> Application >> Web-Interface >> Prizm > Application Web/Server

Now everything will run as slowly and inefficiently as firefox! :) :) :)

Might be useful in a corporate environment

I work in a (biggish) bank and this would fit well with our current portfolio of applications.

For our web based applications, our users are used to working with multiple browser windows opened simultaneously, each for a different part of our system (e.g. separate browser window for our credit cards system, different browser windows for our treasury system, different browser windows for our customer information system etc).

We actually forbid the use of the "back" button, and where possible we disable it (it messes up our data integrity). We also hide the address bar.

Because we also have applications developed as native windows GUI applications, Prism would probably make our web applications blend in with our GUI applications, improving the look and feel of our system.

Definitely something to check out in the future; although I doubt if it will be worth the hassle of deploying it.

How about Java web start?

This might be useful in that it frees the developer from having to decide whether build a web app or a desktop app. However, that benefit doesn't come free. Part of the advantage of web applications is that the software is always up to date. That advantage becomes harder to accommodate if the data is stored locally since the software provider must now deal with a problem it didn't have to before: backwards compatibility. The 3d support would allow some applications to become better but remember that Ajax applications are slow - very slow - and adding native support also means reduced ubiquity. Would this program allow for offline support? Google Gears in theory addresses this problem but hasn't been ported to all applications and would need to be used in combination. In short, I see this application as expanding opportunities for web applications but is far from displacing desktop applications. I view this application as closer to Java applets rather than active desktop. Java applets desktop applications to the web while Mozilla's approach brings web applications to the desktop. Java applets are slower to load in a web browser than Ajax pages while Java applications are faster to run on the desktop than Ajax applications. If our goal is to provide occasional desktop access to applications predominantly accessed from a web browser then this is a good approach. But if the goal is to make desktop applications with the benefits of web applications then as developers we're better off writing our applications in Java.,

Window Racks

I like the idea of setting a browser's window as a separate app for a given site, so that site's app can be distinguished more easily from the other (many) browsers open at a time, many of those others just "casual", while some are persistent through the day.

But a separate app seems like a lot of overhead for a narrow solution. When I have a dozen Firefox windows open now, even though only half are persistent through the day, they all share the common resources. A separate app for each of the half-dozen persistent sites/apps means a lot of redundant app resources, in an already fat app (Firefox). I like the idea of securing each app from the other by separating processes, but that could be achieved with just proper programming the single app instance.

What is a better combo of all these features is just adding "window racks" to Firefox (and properly programming cross-site separation). I want to rack up several windows into a virtual rack that opens and closes all the windows together. So I can open a multiwindow session, with different apps in them, positioning/sizing the windows in the right arrangement for those apps in that session. I want to assign a "bookmark" (or app launcher) to that rack, assign a name to the rack that's displayed on each window, and probably an icon, too. And a rule that opens any clicked link in a new browser rack. That way the GUI is "partitioned" into my sessions for easily keeping them organized, both onscreen and in my mind when starting "apps".

Really this is a feature of the window manager (like X) that should be used by all apps. Because what I really want is a window rack of multiple apps I use all at once. I want to click a button and get my email, browser and spreadsheet apps launched at once, positioned properly on the screen. I could write a wrapper script right now to do that, and maybe even a GUI tool to populate "rack" scripts, but I want extra GUI support that makes all the windows in the rack clearly associated, maybe by a colored window border, common icon, or even (togglable) connecting lines. And I want the rack to enforce IPC permissions, so I don't even have to copy/drag/paste through my whole desktop, but rather just pop fields and objects among targets in the rack. IPC authorization among only "racked" (and otherwise explicitly associated) apps would make the whole OS more secure.

Window racks give me what I want. I think Prism is a long step down the wrong road.

Google killing Thunderbird?

I saw this point raised on LWN recently, and it seems relevant to bring it up here. Any observer who connects the dots will realize that Mozilla is killing off their Thunderbird email client, intentionally, and is doing so at the behest of Google.

Let's look at the facts. Mozilla is a highly profitable [slashdot.org] organization. You would think that Mozilla could afford to spend at least a little money on hiring Thunderbird developers. Yet in reality Mozilla has done the opposite: they have completely abandoned Thunderbird [slashdot.org].

Why? Because of money.

The vast majority of Mozilla's income comes from Google. One of Google's main products is Gmail. Thunderbird competes with Gmail. So it makes sense that Google wants Thunderbird dead. Of course, they're not going to announce their intentions in a press release, but in reality that's exactly what's going on. Announcements like this one only make their plan more obvious than before.

This kind of anti-competitive behavior is exactly why most Slashdot readers hate Microsoft. Why is Google getting a free pass here?

Re:Google killing Thunderbird?

Yeah, we're trying so hard to kill Thunderbird we created a new subsidiary company to drive it, hired a top guy to run the company, and gave it $3M to get started. Pretty expensive way to "kill" it...

Doesn't work so well on the typical website.

I just tried it. (On gaiaonline.com, if you must know.) Horrid. Why?

Websites are designed to be used in a browser. Removing all the controls and stuff makes them hard to navigate, and the lack of tabs is quite a pain as well. I've seen that it has settings to add the navigation/etc back in, but then... Isn't it back to just being a browser? The biggest problem with this is that sites aren't designed for it.

In fact, I just tried it in GMail (on our domain) as well, and other than the fact that it's in a seperate process from firefox and they shouldn't crash each other, it's crap. If you click any of the links at the top, they open in browser. (I assume this will still be the case if you can 'installed' the 'app' for those as well.) None of the firefox extensions are available. Speed (of course) isn't improved.

And the worst part? Making it happen for a new site means creating a file, zipping it, and launching it separately. I could write a script that will quickly do that for me from a URL, but I shouldn't have to.

Unless I'm extensively working with a site that tends to crash the browser, I doubt I'll get much use out of this.

X Windows

As I see it, this is basically making the browser serve a role similar to an XWindows server.

GoogZilla going the Path of MSFT or Netscape?

I don't want to kick off a flame war here, but upon reading some comments, the situation looks like a repetition of the good old browser wars.

On one hand, there's Microsoft. With IE7, I hope we can all agree upon, they have fixed lots of very bad bugs it had. It's still a rather big ugly mess, but progress seems to be going in the right direction. With a bit of goodwill, one might even imagine them to produce a secure and usable browser with v8 or so. On the other hand, there's the ex-underdog Mozilla. Right after their Firefox started to take off, they managed to get quite a deal running with Google, who aren't evil. They also began "improving" CSS (moz-opacity and co., anyone?) and I think even html (not quite sure about this) in their Browser. Just like MSFT did in the browser wars. Now it seems they're attempting their shot at the web application game. They're trying to spread the use of XUL and apparently Prism will containt various "improvements" to agreed-upon standards.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it seems the ambitious Mozilla project has evolved from a great OSS project to something that's not too different from companies /. constantly (MSFT) or sometimes (GOOG) frowns upon for bad competitive behaviour. What's your guess? Does this have the potential to become part 2 of the browser wars? Will the Firefox fanbase realize what Mozilla has become and switch to something else? KHTML? Something new, based on WebKit? Something completely new? Opera? Opera made GPL? Won't anybody care about Mozilla's creeping corporateness and be led right into the Google's den or will those ties break and Mozilla become less googly again? Discuss.

Remind me again...

...why I'd want to pretend GMail was a dedicated email application running on my desktop, when I could just...run a dedicated email application on my desktop?

This isn't for the "typical website"

This is a move toward building a reasonable environment for web apps, not "typical websites". A web app wants full control of user interaction, in the same way that a client-server app or desktop app wants full control. Think of the classic problem: "I logged in to my online banking site, did some stuff, didn't log out, navigated to a few other sites, and walked away from the PC. Somebody came along and used the Back button to back into my online banking site, where I was still logged in...." What's wrong with this scenario (other than a brain-dead user)? The fact that the user could navigate away without logging out of the app or closing the window (with the effect of logging out). That's the role that Prism plays.

Does it run threads?

Does it run threads? No? Don't call us, we'll call you.

Re:I don't get it

You're doing it wrong.

"This is the dumbest thing I've heard since I started at Microsoft"