Well this isn’t Firefox, as such.. it is a new application they are developing at Mozilla Labs called Prism.
Why build Prism? Because internet applications are changing the way we work, I use web based email more than traditional client email… I use online documents as much as desktop documents (excluding source code, data, etc), most of my desktop documents are stored on a server that could be in another country for all I know. So Mozilla are exploring a different type of web interface that is optimised towards the application, not the location and history of the internet journey.
What is it? Well playing around with it, it seems to be a web browser without navigation buttons and some other traditional components - like a menu. It does have a menu, but it is very simplistic. For those that have been following this for a while (and it seems it has been for a while), it used to be webrunner, which seems to be based on XULrunner - I’ve only really started looking at it, but xulrunner is the executable that appears in my task manager. Sorry, it seems more likely that webrunner was a xul application that was run by the XULrunner. Which I suspect is why xulrunner is appearing in my taskmanager and not prism.
What does it do? It seems to be a basic web browser… it doesn’t seem to have off-line functionality? You can create shortcuts to your favourite websites (this is like creating a bookmark) except they will run independently of a webbrowser.
What will it do in the future? It is going to be updated soon to grab the favicon of the web application you load and store that on the desktop for you - or you can add your own icon art. It will also allow you to change the CSS of a web application to provide the look and feel you prefer, not that boring blue and white that Google put on everything!
What could it do?
It would be good if it provided offline interaction with websites, this doesn’t mean checking your email, or reading your RSS feeds… but it might mean being able to write messages that are sent when you are online, or adding RSS feeds to your reader. You might be traveling on the train and see one that you’d like to read… or think of something you should send someone! ok, it doesn’t sound very likely, but I’m sure it would be useful once in someones life.
New application windows are opened when you follow some links, it would be good if it could work out that you want this new application saved and not save the one that you loaded - this might be a bug?
It looks like they are going to integrate the tool with Firefox, so you can add any web page as an application from Firefox (I can’t do this at the moment, though it is probably an extension I could add). This would be cool.
You can currently download a windows version of the application, mac and linux will be coming soon - or you can build them! And you can learn a lot more about the application in Alex Faaborg’s blog, but this is more about where the technology is going… not really where the technology is now.
