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Popular as Web-based applications are becoming, the fact remains that most of them are tightly tied to the browser. In order to run Google Docs, for instance, you have to access it through a browser like Firefox or IE7. Mozilla Labs is working on Prism, a project it says could make Web apps run with the same ease and efficiency on the desktop as those natively installed on one's hard drive.
Web-based applications are fantastic, except for that whole "running in the browser" thing. Looking to free your browser-based apps from your Web browsing? Take a look at Mozilla Prism.
Mozilla is updating its Firefox Web browser with new technology that is targeted at making the open source browser more stable. The Firefox 3.6.4 release also includes fixes for four critical security vulnerabilities.
Mozilla vice president of products Jay Sullivan says that unlike Google, the open source outfit has no intention of bundling Firefox with Adobe Flash —– or with a plug-in that runs native code inside the browser. Mozilla, Sullivan says, believes that the future of online applications lies with web standards, including HTML5.
Prism , Single-serving Browser for Web Application from Mozilla
Mozilla Labs recently released the 1.0 beta of Prism. Prism is a XULRunner-based browser designed to run Web applications. It is not a standalone web browser, It will run your web applications like gmail, googledocs smoothly.
They are four applications designed to serve different purposes: A web browser, a music player and organizer, another that does the same for video, and a word processor for screenwriters. Yet they share one thing in common: All were built with a Mozilla-based toolkit, either the Gecko Runtime Environment or its successor, XULRunner. Both toolkits use the same codebase which runs Firefox.
One of the features that attract geeks and power users to Firefox is add-ons. these simple browser extensions allow you to customize pretty much everything about the browser, from the page being displayed to the browser itself. Extensions are powerful stuff, but Mozilla is working on a project that could see add-ons as we know them disappear.
The writing is on the wall. While Mozilla and its Firefox browser appear to be a very solid institution in the browser market, it is the weakest link with an extremely attractive portion of the browser user base as well. Could Mozilla be squeezed out of the market?
