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Mozilla Prism 1.0 Beta


mozilla prismMozilla Prism 1.0 Beta has been released yesterday. The developers at Mozilla Labs have raised the version of Mozilla Prism to 1.0 beta. The launch was celebrated with a shiny new website. Mozilla Prism can be used to move web applications to the computer desktop. It basically displays a selected web service like any other desktop application. The update to Prism 1.0 beta adds several new features and improvements including new Api functionality, application specific settings, the ability to clear private data on demand and automatic application updates when Prism gets updated, full OS X 10.4 support plus support for SSL exceptions.

Mozilla Prism (via Download Squad) can be downloaded and installed as a portable standalone application or as a Firefox web browser extension. Running the standalone application will open a configuration menu where the user enters the url of the web service that should be run on the computer desktop. Additional settings can be configured including shortcut creation, selection of a icon and the elements that should be displayed in the Prism interface (with our without navigation bar, status messages or navigation keys).

gmail prism

The service will automatically start after the configuration finishes. It can later be launched from the shortcut location that has been defined during configuration.

gmail desktop

The interface looks like a minimized version of the Firefox web browser without all toolbars and elements. This is a distraction free way of providing web services on the computer desktop. The main benefit besides being able to launch web applications by clicking on a shortcut is that users can do less harm in comparison to the normal web browser interface where they can change settings or navigate to different pages.

A bookmarklet is available to create Prism applications on the fly. There are also official and user created application bundles available for various web services.

Several options – including proxy support and font selection – are only available if the “show status messages and progress” option is enabled during setup.




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Categories: Browsing, The Web, firefox


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8 Responses to “Mozilla Prism 1.0 Beta”

  1. Amr says:

    So, I guess this is Mozilla version of the functionality that appeared in Google Chrome. Good thing they are catching up.

  2. rruben says:

    @Amr
    I believe they were busy developing this way before Chrome came out. Google was just a little faster releasing it to the public.

  3. Transcontinental says:

    “the ability to clear private data on demand” … that indeed is what is mentioned by the authors of Prism, but I have been unable to find how, where. I’ve tried Prism for Firefox 1.0b1, there is no data cleanup anywhere available. I like to know how cookies, history, and cache are handled, should it be on a per-app basis;, nothing of the sort as to what I’ve seen not.

  4. Asaad says:

    it doesn’t work with authenticated proxy!!!!! WTF

  5. Ben Vu says:

    yeah loading later to check it out … a bit confused about how the application version of the website handles presenting EV SSL visual cues, such as the neon green navi bar?

    anyone see that?

    thanks

    BenVu

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