Mozilla's Prism: a First Look at a New Firefox Add-on

12.05.2009
Mozilla Labs has unveiled the beta of a new application called that takes the Internet off your browser and plants it onto your desktop. Prism is both a useful and a desktop app -- the latter for those who

Prism 1.0 works in a similar fashion to the "create applications shortcuts" option in the . It culls data from the Web site of your choice and converts it into a desktop application. The app functions separately from the originating Web site, so when Firefox (inevitably) crashes, the desktop app is not affected.

The presents a few improvements and benefits to using desktop apps rather than solely relying on a Web page:

As the first bullet mentions, not all Web sites are Prism-enabled, but Mozilla claims there are "tens of thousands" already playing well with Prism, and hopes for more to come. The mainstays you'll be using -- Gmail, Facebook, other favorites -- are Prism-enabled.

presents two options: You can grab the Firefox extension or the standalone desktop app. The Firefox extension downloads via the Firebox browser just like all extensions. All you need is to reset the browser after the app is finished and a new option appears in your Tools menu: "Convert Website to Application."

From there, you can rename the shortcut, move it to your desktop or your Windows start-up bar, and even change its representative icon (most of the automatic icons are low-res).