Mozilla Prism

One of Google Chrome‘s unique (until now) features was an ability to take any web page and turn it into a desktop application. Mozilla have responded with a new Firefox plug-in called Prism which does pretty much the same thing.

The advantages are more screen real-estate (no bars across the top as in a browser) and that the “application” is separate from other web processes. So if one page locks up or crashes, it only brings itself down and not all the other pages you might have open at the same time.

Thing is, isn’t this just the same as opening a new (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari…) window via a URL shortcut then opting to display it with no toolbars? Or full-screen? I honestly don’t see anything actually new. Especially given that Firefox 3.5 promises and Chrome already delivers discrete memory use in each tab, so that if one fails it doesn’t down the whole browser.

As for differences between the two, Mozilla have the edge – Chrome is still not available for Linux whereas Prism is, although they don’t make it clear on the standalone application download link.

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Desktop web apps

                          

So Google has a new web browser out called “Google Chrome“. It’s very much in beta (I think the current release is 0.2) and the interwebnet world is going apeshit about it. I’ve only had an hour or so to play with it as I wait for my bus and… I dunno. It’s got a lot going for it on paper, and there are some features I like but I’ll have to play with it more before I decide if I really like it. It also needs a few more features or plug-ins such as Firefox‘s No-Script.

Oh, and I managed to get it to crash completely which is supposed to be impossible as each tab has its own process. By all means check this one out – open two Gears-enabled sites in two separate tabs and grant the first permission to use Gears. As it’s updating the files, start the same process on the second. Chrome stops responding, or at least it does on my laptop.

Incidentally, as it’s updating the files Chrome very nicely tells you that “Gears is installed and enabled on this computer. You can disable it from the Safari menu.” I guess they’ve not told Gears itself about the new browser, so it thinks it’s Safari! Both browsers are sat on the same codebase (excuse my incorrect terminology) so it’s understandable that Safari is a best guess.

Also, I can’t get the spell-checker to work. I’ve checked all the language settings and they’re fine, but I never get any indication of mis-spelled words in my dialogue boxes.

As I said, it’s a work in progress and it seems like a good idea. Different enough to be worthwhile and something I will continue to toy with. In the meantime, though, Firefox3 is still very much entrenched as my default browser.

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Google Chrome