Mozilla Prism is offered as a Firefox extension and standalone application. It can basically turn a website into an application so that the website is untied from the web browser.

There are a few advantages but also disadvantages of using Prism to run websites in their own application window instead of running them in the web browser.

Advantages include increasing the stability of the system as the single application window is no longer affected and affecting the web browser window. The other is unaffected from crashes or other problems.

The application window is also inheriting all the benefits of programs including the ability to run them at system startup or minimizing them in the system tray.

Prism is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux computer systems. The extension’s add-on page has not been updated as of now and the last version of Prism that is offered there for download is not compatible with Firefox 3.6 yet. It will take less than 24 hours for the page to be updated with the latest version that is compatible with Firefox 3.6

Prism can be downloaded from the Mozilla website or the Prism project page.

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).

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

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.