Mozilla Labs just released a new feature called Prism. The most interesting aspect of this announcement is that Mozilla is attempting to formally “upgrade” the web application development process from what it was since the web was born. While their new technology introduces no new significant features to web development, it strongly encourages web 2.0 style development by completely removing the navigation links and address bar.
Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
On the surface, it seems like a browser without a location bar. The main thing is that it allows web application the hooks that regular applications have such as being direct links in the application menu. But even that is replicated with modern operating systems by using shortcut links. It is superior to just visiting a regular website using a browser in a two ways:
- If an application or Firefox crashes, it doesn’t crash the other instances. Each application runs as its own standalone instance with its own link in the task bar.
- Customizations or extensions per application are now possible. For example, you might see an extension specifically for Facebook or YouTube that works in the application environment without cluttering up your Firefox install.
Mozilla has greater ambitions for this project, as it is indicated that this is the first in a series of “experiments” on web-desktop integration:
…we’re also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.
They state that they have no intentions of doing these things using proprietary technologies as proposed in Adobe’s AIR or Microsoft’s Silverlight.
In short, by keeping this a separate piece from Firefox, it frees them from cluttering up their browser. By keeping it separate, they can cater to the needs of desktop applications as eventually (in the long term), whole sites might be applications you would need to open with this tool before you could use the off-line features (Firefox just gets you to the site).
At least, that’s my take on this.