Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism. Scott Nesbitt at Freesoftware Magazine tells you what Prism can do to boost you experience of the web on your desktop -and more importantly, how to do it. Read the full story at FSM. Editor's Note: This story looks at Prism from the point of view of a Gnome user on Linux, but Prism can be used on Mac OS and Windows as well. Check out the Prism project page for information on other platforms.
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Member since:2007-03-17
If the application is completely hosted on line, then you are correct. However, if the application needs access to the internet and to the local disk, then this is a good way to do it.
The articles on Prism seem to be ignoring its ability (through XPCOM) to start any local application or to read and write local files. At this point many people are probably saying: "OMG! A browser with rwx privileges! This is what we keep trying to stop!"
Of course there are the possibilities of security issues here, but then there are such possibilities with any application that has internet access. The key is for the developer to limit internet connectivity of the application to specific purposes - ergo the stripping away of menu bars and the like so that the users can't inadvertently share their local data with the world.
I personally have been using Mozilla's XUL for this purpose (as a handy, web-enabled widget set), but in certain ways XUL is clunky and if Prism allows one to use pure HTML/CSS/Javascript, it may have an advantage.
Edited 2008-07-14 17:47 UTC
Member since:
2008-06-25
Since i spent most of my time in Firefox, a link to webapp is actually one more click away than from my bookmarks.
The benefit is 1-2 second start up time huh? Big difference, really! And if Firefox got some problems, e.g. a flash app consumes 100% cpu time, then prism probably will be affected too.