Posts Tagged ‘prism’

What is Mozilla Prism? On the most basic level the Gecko engine which powers Mozilla Firefox. However, it is not a web browser (no in the traditional sense). I took me a while to appreciate what Prism does. It allows a simple interface into a website allowing it to run along side other applications. It brings Web Applications (such as your online banking, streaming video sites, or social networking) to the desktop in a new way. You get an icon on your desktop, for example your favorite social networking site. When this icon is clicked you get a window containing that site, without navigation buttons, address bars, and other trappings of a browser.

Configuration of Prism is relatively simple. Once you run it you are asked to input a URL, Name, and choose if you want navigation and status options to be displayed. In the Windows version, you have the additional choices of adding to the Start Menu, Quick Launch, or even display in the notification area (Options I wish where available in the Linux version).

I have set up Hulu.com, FaceBook.com, my bank’s online banking, and ABC News, as web applications with a panel launcher in XFCE. I had to create a symlink inside the Prism folder to my browser plugins for flash and java to work.