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Mozilla introduces a new way to work
Author: Phil CogarPublished: 1st November 2007
A new approach to old functions may prove more efficient in Mozilla's Prism.
The basic idea of Prism is that it’s a “distraction free browser” – essentially, it strips away the entire UI of a browser and leaves the user with only the page they are using. How Prism differs from other DFB efforts, such as Adobe’s AIR project or Microsoft’s Silverlight is that Prism isn’t a proprietary platform. It conforms to all of the current standards in web protocol and simply integrates the webpage into the desktop.
Prism offers many benefits over a standard browser. One of the largest advantages is that web apps are all separate from one another. This means that if one application locks up or crashes, others aren’t affected. Another guideline for the project is a UI that is as minimal as possible. While most browsers have a UI shrink feature (usually assigned to F11), the backend of the browser remains the same. All that happens is the web content is maximized to take up the full screen. Prism is based on the WYSIWYG principle – there are no hidden processes or features going on in the background.
The attraction becomes evident when you think about companies or organizations who work mainly through web-based processes. Your work email would be one instance, and everything you do within that instance is contained. A "live meeting," possibly with a chat interface or whiteboard function, is another instance. A webFTP that allows you to upload your data to the company servers would be yet another, and if any one of these instances is to fail the others would continue unaffected. Additionally, if a link is clicked in any instance, it will open in your default browser as a standard page and allow you to bookmark it or manipulate it just like any other page.
Each instance has its own location in the dock or toolbar. This location can then display its own notifications – your work email has its own icon that will prompt a notification bubble upon new mail, and a web meeting instance has a separate icon that will prompt a notification upon a received message, or when you are addressed directly.
While this program applies to a niche market, it’s a market that is growing rapidly as organizations rely more heavily on the web to conduct live meetings and other specific functions.
Have thoughts about this new approach to browsing? Share them in the forums.
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Comments (27)Stats: 0.035 seconds
ok drama over.
I think this is a great tool for Presentations that involve the web, but for general use nothing beats firefox and its extensibility
agreed, though IE7 has come a long way from 6, it isn't there yet
I guess it really isn't aimed at the home user anyway but it doesn't even appear to have tabs so its kinda weird, it just means having loads of instances of the app open surely?
Actually, I had the new outlook in my mind when writing that. Microsoft made the clever decision to use the word rendering engine to display html emails. Lazy b******'s
But as far as I can make out, all it is is a separate Firefox window with no buttons or menus for each individual website that you happen to use often. How is this different to an IE6 window with menus and toolbars disabled?
Running Leopard? :p
:O
Drama!
Beside there is no address bar... I don't want to make scripts to make it go on every web site I want...
This is a joke...
For instance, I use it to run GMail as a "Desktop" application. You could do the same with Google Docs/Maps.
It's ALSO meant for running, say, corporate intranets, where you don't want/need extra toolbars/plugins/addons/extensions messing around with the security of the data internally (The last thing you want is the Google Toolbar submitting your private intranet links to Google for PageRank analysis).
This would be great for a POS system, say, or a library computer, where "Fullscreening" a browser won't do (Multiple sessions/screens), and also for when you're developing a potentially problematic site (Writing AJAX, with the risk of an infinite loop in there? Run it in prism and you can kill just that app, leaving all the others running just fine).
The "Add/Remove Programs" in every version of Windows from 2000 uses exactly the same thing. It's a HTML Application, run using Microsoft's version of this, MSHTA.
It's a great idea, but really not all that necessary for most people.
Here's to hoping it's memory usage is better in the versions to come, it has quite a potential IMO.
No joy in Lunix either...
EDIT: After looking, it seems a little pointless - currently, we create web apps then tell the clients to simply open their web browser, point it to an address, login. That opens a new browser window sans nav buttons, sans 'location bar'. Result - a new chromeless window w/o them having to install anything.
This would be perfect (as already stated) for corporate intranet sites, where they don't wish the user to access anything else but the corporate internal site.
overall nice, but still a concept that needs work.
by just turning the GUI off, a savvy employee or one who's been told what to do can re-enable it and cause problems, prism has nothing to re-enable