Jani - Mozilla Prism: A fancy name for a technology as old as the browser

Mozilla Prism: A fancy name for a technology as old as the browser

Monday, October 29, 2007 8:27:28 PM

Mozilla recently introduced Prism, which takes Widgetize to a whole new level.

Opera's Widgetize will turn your blog or RSS feed into a widget with some custom skins and stuff.
What Prism does is, it takes any website and turns that into a self-contained little browser.

While having GMail or such as a "stand-alone" application might sound nice, doesn't this remind you of something? Browsing without tabs.

You don't need a stand-alone application for this either. You could just use Opera to achieve a very very similar experience.

Browsing without tabs?

The idea is nice: To be able to put any website or web application as a link on your desktop, start menu or whatever, and then being able to open it in a new window with minimal GUI elements.

Sounds good, but is it really anything new? No.

As long as I can remember, I've been able to save links to my desktop/whatever and by clicking them, opening them in the browser. Back in the day when I didn't use Opera or Firefox, I would get them in new windows. This is what Prism does.

Sure, you don't get all the user interface elements like the buttons and the address bar, but if you really wanted, you could just configure your normal browser to not display them, like I will show later.

Looking to the future

While the current iteration of the Prism application isn't anything spectacular, they are working on various things like 3D accelerated canvas... which is also in the works for the Opera browser.

According to Mozilla Labs, it might get integrated in Firefox in the future, which would be a good idea: That is what it should've been from the start - A browser feature that let's you create shortcuts on your PC which open pages in a GUI-less browser window.

Mark Finkle writes in his post about Prism that the spreadsheets from Google were opening in the default browser, apparently instead of the Prism-client. Would this be a problem, if Prism was actually just the browser and not a stand-alone application?

He also mentions that Prism lets you apply different CSS styles to the websites. Isn't this possible in Firefox? Well, I don't know to be honest, but it is in Opera.

Another kind of funny thing I noticed is that they're now displaying tooltips for elements with the title attribute set. Isn't that quite basic browser behavior nowadays?

Going Prism with Opera

Like I mentioned, you don't need a separate application other than your browser to do this.

You can easily just make an another installation of Opera in a new location on your computer and configure it so that there's no GUI. You will get something very much like Prism, but with all the features Opera has, including UserJS and other customization options. Mouse gestures, anyone?

Getting Prism with Opera on Windows:

Download and/or start Opera installer
Choose Separate Install and pick some new location for the installation
Important: tick "Only use a single profile for all users." in the installation directory screen
You can now proceed with the installation.

Now you have a new clean installation of Opera. Now is the time to configure the options like keyboard shortcuts etc. to suit your tastes. Next, we'll just simply hide every UI element.

Open Tools->Appearance, go to the toolbars tab and untick all boxes:
Appearance box

You can also go to the Panels tab and untick "Show panel toggle at edge of window" to get rid of the few pixel wide Panel toggle.

It's also possible to get rid of the File-menu if you want: Go to Tools->Preferences, Advanced Tab. Choose Shortcuts, and from Keyboard setup choose Opera standard and click edit. Type F11 alt to the search box on top of the dialog and you should see something like "Platform Unix, F11 alt" doing "Enable Menubar | Disable Menubar". Doubleclick the box with Platform Unix... and remove everything except F11 alt. Click OK and then OK again to exit the menu. Now you can hide the File-menu with Alt+F11 (thanks for the tip, fearphage)

And some final finishing touches to make it easier to create shortcuts to websites:

Go to your Windows directory. Usually c:\windows
Create a new shortcut with file->new->shortcut
Make the shortcut point to Opera.exe in your Opera-Prism directory and call the shortcut something like opera-prism

Opening a page in your new Opera-Prism is now as simple as going to Start menu, choosing Run and typing in: opera-prism www.mypages.com

Now you can also create shortcuts to anywhere you like to websites by just creating a new shortcut and when it asks for the application's path, you can just type in opera-prism www.thegreatsite.com. Simple, eh?

Gmail in Opera-Prism
Gmail

In closing

While Prism as it is now doesn't seem very interesting or such, it might get a lot better as an idea when it gets integrated into Firefox. With my Opera-Prism, you still need to do some manual work (adding the shortcut) to make a link to a webapp. With browser integration, it's just a matter of clicking a button. Also, if they integrate something like Google Gears in it, or if it just works with Google Gears, then it could prove to be an interesting concept.

Another thing which would be interesting to see is Ajax/JavaScript state persistance. If you have a heavy JS based app, the Prism browser could try keeping the state as the same as it was when you previously opened the page. Opera already does this when you click a link from a page and then return to it with the back button.

Simple and efficient spam prevention techniquesCommon Zend_Filter_Input problems

Comments

Anonymous # Tuesday, October 30, 2007 11:00:47 AM

tom writes: I think this misses the point. I see Prism as a way to "package-up" a URL of a web application I have, and distribute it over our corporate computer network so users have a single icon to click on and access the Content Management System. It opens as a separate process, and we can control pretty much the whole experience. This is not to do with opening in a window-less mode, it is so much more. Trying to spin it as anything less is a touch disingenuous to say the least.

Janizomg # Tuesday, October 30, 2007 5:03:54 PM

So how does giving a link which opens a site in Prism differ from giving a link which opens a site in any other application? It doesn't.

Sure, having Prism might give some customization possibilities, but I can't see what it gives that you can't get by customizing, say, Opera.

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:44:12 AM

You know, that's exactly what bugs me about platforms such as Adobe AIR. So you've got a Web application that's distributed over the Web as one archive (something Opera supports out-of-the-box), and once it's saved locally it has access to the file system (something Firefox, IE and, I think, Safari support out-of-the-box). Oh, and it opens in what is essentially a chrome-less browser window... something already supported in every browser via window.open(). How innovative. *Drips with sarcasm.* Frankly, I'd like to see more browsers implementing widgets and/or HTML5 instead of reinventing square wheels.

Janizomg # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 8:25:43 AM

At least AIR gives you some things that you don't have in your browser's Flash plugin

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:55:45 AM

Originally posted by "zomg":

At least AIR gives you some things that you don't have in your browser's Flash plugin

I can't remember any of them right now. Funny, considering I was pretty excited when Adobe AIR was first presented to the public.

Mathieu 'p01' HENRIp01 # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:31:28 AM

Worth creating an opera6.ini for the "Prism" mode, you might want to forbid other tabs, open URLs in a chromed windows, ... and change your shortcut to:

opera /Settings opera-prism.ini URL_OF_THE_SITE

anonymous user: What can a Prism'ed site do more than the same site open in a regular window/tab ? AFAIK, nothing. Therefore it's just a convenient/different way to use a site.

Anonymous # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:26:13 AM

tom writes: What I want is a single .app/.exe which I can give to my users that they place in a folder and double-click on. It launches our Content Managent System (web app) and our CMS only. It doesn't have extra tabs, bookmarks, Tools menu, File, Edit, History menus, etc. It's as if it was a self-contained application. It's not about passing around a link, getting users across a company of 20-odd thousand to modify an .ini file, having the company purchase 20-odd thousand licenses for Opera. I think, or at least I hope, the aims are to have a distributable application that opens a single URL as if it were a native application.

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:34:13 PM

Originally posted by "tom":

I think, or at least I hope, the aims are to have a distributable application that opens a single URL as if it were a native application.

So you think distributing a 25MB application is more convenient than passing around a Firefox chrome/Opera .ini file? Let's see what the Prism developers think:

Ideally you shouldn’t even have to download Prism, it should just be built into your browser.

It seems, indeed, that what they envisage is a kind of "widgetized" Web applications. That's all good and well. I like widgets. But why do the same to applications? Think about it.

Originally posted by "tom":

It doesn't have extra tabs, bookmarks, Tools menu, File, Edit, History menus, etc. It's as if it was a self-contained application.

That's the real issue, isn't it? A lot of people (I know a few myself) get very confused when they see more than one window open on the desktop at the same time. I suppose toolbars and menus confuse them just as much. But in this case, you could just instruct your users to press F11. No offense, but trying to dumb down computers more and more doesn't lead to anything good.

In conclusion: I think integrating the Web and the desktop is a good thing. But this should be done for the right reasons.

Janizomg # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:44:29 PM

My example is perhaps a bit more of a hassle to install than a stand-alone application like Prism as it was just a quick demo that you can do the very same with Opera without any extra stuff, but it's not a big job to create a nice installer for the ini-based approach p01 suggested.

It is possible to make it behave like you mentioned, opening only your CMS. I believe Prism can open other things too, so if you want to be very strict about it, even that might fail you.

purchase 20-odd thousand licenses for Opera

Opera is free

Mathieu 'p01' HENRIp01 # Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:42:23 PM

anonymous user:

What I want is a single .app/.exe which I can give to my users that they place in a folder and double-click on. It launches our Content Managent System (web app) and our CMS only. It doesn't have extra tabs, bookmarks, Tools menu, File, Edit, History menus, etc. It's as if it was a self-contained application.

Your users already have the "application renderer" a.k.a. a web browser. All they need is a shortcut to open your CMS and have it behave/look like a standalone application. The solution described in this article gives EXACTLY that.

It's not about passing around a link, getting users across a company of 20-odd thousand to modify an .ini file, having the company purchase 20-odd thousand licenses for Opera.

There's no need for the users to modify any .ini file at all. Said .ini file needed for Opera-Prism will be on the 20-odd thousand people company's intranet, or installed remotely by the sys-admins.

And as zomg said, Opera is free.

Anonymous # Friday, November 2, 2007 2:06:45 AM

jon writes: I like the idea of prism for a couple of reasons. Deploying an existing webapp as a standalone for users who request it, or commonly used apps is cheap and requires one codebase. The reasons why I do not like the idea of opening an existing chromeless browser window. I tend to open up a lot of tabs during the day and every so often I find the browser crashes or I need to restart to regain performance/memory. Surely, I am not alone in this. This would also kill any 'standalone' chromeless windows open. This is not ideal. Sure these are software bugs, but they exist today. Having a seperate process PER application would resolve this issue. At the minute prism does not have this per application. Also, what about the brand. A chromeless window will still have the browser logo and name in the taskbar. What interests me is the direction this could take. If they added a way to add extensions for minimise to the system tray,display tooltips, popup bubbles (like the gtalk desktop app/nod32),etc when the app isn't in focus then imo it would be a pretty good platform with very cheap adoption.

Janizomg # Wednesday, November 7, 2007 7:43:26 PM

I haven't tested the opera-prism version, but installing it separately at least grants you one separate browser instance. Not sure what would it do when opening more than one "application" at the same time, though.

If you think about the branding thing, having something like Prism would make sense. If it would also grant more control over the systray, tooltips and other things you mention, it would definitely add to the usefulness of the concept.

Anonymous # Friday, November 16, 2007 7:02:03 PM

not clueless writes: @claudeb if even one thing, AIR has file system access. You can create applications that don't even touch the web. Built-in SQLite as well. A small weekend project I did before was an FLV video player with playlist ability. You can play files either on your local system or from the web. It's power is in that it works very well at letting an application work on your desktop, and synchronize with the web when needed. Oh, and it carries a certain level of OS integration so you can actually be a little more interactive with the OS. What's the JavaScript call to make my browser bounce an icon in the dock? Oh right, there is none. The AIR API at least provides that.

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Saturday, November 17, 2007 7:57:52 AM

Originally posted by "not clueless":

if even one thing, AIR has file system access. You can create applications that don't even touch the web.

Oh, so I can click on a link and find all my personal files deleted? Sounds like Internet Explorer 3.0 all over again. It's not like I don't have backups, but still...

Originally posted by "not clueless":

It's power is in that it works very well at letting an application work on your desktop, and synchronize with the web when needed.

An Opera widget can store data locally. SQLite support would be even nicer, of course. But unrestricted file access? For something delivered over the Web? No thanks.

Mathieu 'p01' HENRIp01 # Wednesday, November 21, 2007 6:03:58 PM

claudeb: If an AIR application can delete your personal files, blame Adobe's security model or lack thereof not the whole file system access idea.

Of course SQLite would be nice too

Anonymous # Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:42:55 PM

bfellow writes: Prism "technology" has been around FOREVER. There is absolutely nothing new here. AIR at least extends HTML, JavaScript, Flex, and Flash to the desktop. @claudeb any App with file access can do damage. If you are afraid of this, you might as well clear your hard drive, burn your computer, and hide in a hole.

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Thursday, January 17, 2008 4:25:56 AM

bfellow: yes, any app that I install myself, willingly. But here we're talking a "click a link, lose your files" scenario. It's not the same thing.

Janizomg # Thursday, January 17, 2008 4:50:45 AM

They'd need a similar model as with Google Gears DB stuff. It needs to ask the user before granting access to the filesystem, and preferably also what kind of access, ie. read, create, edit, delete or such.

Anonymous # Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:15:25 AM

Anonymous writes: Your blog failed to take my comment

Anonymous # Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:15:54 AM

Anonymous writes: Gave a server error

Anonymous # Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:16:26 AM

Anonymous writes: It takes these ones though.

Anonymous # Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:16:37 AM

Anonymous writes: :-/

Anonymous # Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:11:52 AM

MC writes: I'm sure that there is probably someway to open a site in a chomeless Browser (in safe-mode without extensions). The problem lies in trying to launch such an 'applet' when Firefox is already running and open a new page. I also assuming that XUL has file-writing and reading privileges already or that it will have soon.

Felix Pleşoianuclaudeb # Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:25:01 AM

Originally posted by MC:

I also assuming that XUL has file-writing and reading privileges already or that it will have soon.

It does. TiddlyWiki, for example, relies on it. But the browser asks 3-5 times in a row before allowing a Web page to write files on your disk.

Anonymous # Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:19:58 AM

Anonymous. writes: I agree that having a dedicated Prism window for something like GMail is pointless, and that Prism in its current state is not very useful. In defense of Mozilla, though, why mock (at least that's how this post comes across as) an idea that's clearly implied (by its placement in Mozilla Labs) to not be ready for general use? I believe Prism may be better suited as a platform for other types of webapps--for example, the Google Talk Widget (http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout). Having a Google Talk window in a process and window separate from the standard browser one makes more sense--the gadget should run as a chat client, not as a new tab or a new window in the browser. (Why not just get the Google Talk chat client? The gadget has more features than the client.)

Anonymous # Wednesday, September 3, 2008 12:26:49 PM

Jayden writes: I use prism the whole point is that stand alone web apps don't need to browsed for, there there immediately on your desktop. Another thing i noticed is that its very fast it takes away all the crap and just gives you what you need. Grooveshark is an amazing thing to do this with. it lets you stream music online, and well it has a very good interface, it integrates perfectly with prism because you don't need the forward and back buttons...because everything is there. If you not convinced then just try it and see how fast it speeds things up. J.W.

Anonymous # Friday, December 12, 2008 8:16:34 PM

Anonymous writes: Sometimes, when you write a webapp, it makes sense to put it in a window without any external controls to the app itself. To have an app that does POST calls to a database not have chrome to even turn on makes sense when the people using them may click the back button and have to completely start over. If I wanted them to go back, then I can put a back button in the app that implements going back without losing session data or anything else for that matter.

Anonymous # Friday, March 6, 2009 6:03:25 PM

Anonymous writes: I came across this page looking for a way to do exactly what is described. I found an easier way than making a new installation. All you need is a new profile http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/opera-profile-creator

Anonymous # Sunday, October 31, 2010 2:32:06 PM

Bram writes: It may be a showcase, but your solution is crap. I used Opera 10 (which stores preferences in AppData\Roaming) and face several problems: * local htm and html links open in the showcase browser, not in the default browser * how to uninstall the showcase browser, without installing the other opera browser? * when using the showcase, links are opened in another tab but the tab isn't visible: a good site-specific browser opens in the default browers * editing preferences is impossible because for Opera 10x these are stored in the profile folder It's a pity opera doesn't support this out-of-the-box, like Chrome does. It's very useful for Gmail, Google Calendar, Facebook, Map application, bank applications,...

Anonymous # Tuesday, July 5, 2011 2:36:20 PM

Анонімний writes: Different people in all countries get the business loans from various banks, just because it is comfortable.

Anonymous # Sunday, September 11, 2011 4:50:17 AM

Анонімний writes: Following my own monitoring, thousands of persons on our planet get the mortgage loans from good banks. Thence, there is a good possibility to receive a car loan in any country.

Write a comment

Blog search

Me

CodeUtopia blog

Zend Framework components as separate zips fro ...
Did you ever want to use just a single component from Zend Framework, but couldn’t figure out which files you needed? Well, here’s a solution: Zend Framework packageizer script! Just pick the class you want, and you’ll get it and all its dependencies in a nice zip file for you ...
Making a PDF generator class using Zend_Pdf
There are some expensive libraries that you can use to generate PDF files… but why bother with them, when there are good free alternatives like Zend_Pdf? In three steps, you can generate a fancy report: Create a PDF template Insert data to template with Zend_Pdf Profit $$$ Since this is ...
Let’s Rickroll MTV Europe Music Awards 2008!
Okay so this is totally off the usual topics I guess, but this is too awesome to let it fail! Rick Astley has somehow managed to get into MTV Europe’s Music Awards 2008 gala in the category Best Act Ever. I suspect /b/ had something to do with this, but… I urge everyone to vote for R ...
Windows Remote Desktop + Live FolderShare = Ul ...
I’m a frequent user of Windows’ remote desktop feature. It’s a stellar remote control solution: It’s incredibly fast, almost like sitting on the remote PC, and has features like bringing over the clipboard and even sounds from the controlled computer. Much better than VNC ...
Sharing authentication over multiple sites / S ...
At The Group, we’re developing some web applications that needed to use the same user database. The applications were originally being developed with separate login for each, but I decided it would be better to share the login code across them. I investigated some ways to achieve sharing a ...