Mozilla Labs

Prism is an open source cross-platform prototype of functionality that lets users split web applications out of the browser and run them directly on the desktop.

Today we’re releasing a major update to Prism that includes the first prototype of browser integration along with new desktop integration capabilities and simpler installation.

As previously announced, Prism is part of a series of Mozilla Labs experiments into bridging the divide in the user experience between web and desktop apps and exploring new usability models as the line between those kinds of apps continues to blur.

Philosophy

We believe that the Web is a powerful platform for innovation, and our goal with Prism is to drive the development of enhancements to that platform that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the Web. To that end, Prism is not a new platform or product but rather a vehicle for Mozilla Labs to experiment with new technologies to extend the capabilities of the Open Web. Web developers shouldn’t have to lift a finger to desktop-enable their web applications (although they can specify settings to enhance the experience), while users have the choice to use their favorite web apps in their browser, on their desktop of choice, or in both places.

Major New Features and Updates

Today we’re releasing a major update to Prism that includes new desktop integration capabilities and simpler installation. With this update, you can now get Prism simply by installing a small extension to Firefox 3. With the new Prism extension for Firefox 3, users can now split web applications directly out of Firefox without needing to install and manage a separate Prism application. Just install the extension, browse to a web app, then select Tools > Convert Website to Application.

Other new or improved features include:

• Pick an icon to represent a web app on the desktop: Prism can use the web app favicon or the user can pick a custom image to represent the web app.
• Run each web app in its own profile: Prism now places each web app into its own process/profile so they don’t interfere with each other, which also makes it possible to install a web app twice and use it simultaneously with two different user accounts.
• Badge the dock icon: Initial support for adding a badge to the desktop icon has been added. Currently, this can be done through a custom webapp.js file. We’re working on creating and reusing web standards to expose this to content without requiring custom scripts.

Roadmap

While Prism still supports .webapp and site-specific webapp.js files as a way to install, customize and launch Prism, we’re working towards removing the need for those files in favor of leveraging and extending existing web conventions for exposing site configuration, like <link> and <meta> tags.

See bug 420878 and bug 420661 for some of those discussions.

Mark Finkle also has a post with more information.

Get Prism for Firefox

Install Prism for Firefox v0.2 for Firefox 3.0b3pre or greater, Windows/Mac/Linux.
The standalone version of Prism v0.9 is also available for Windows (installer, archive), Mac and Linux.

Warning: This is an early prototype. Use at your own risk.

Getting Involved

Prism is just the first of many experiments we plan to conduct around improving the usability of web applications. It’s open source, like everything we do, and we’re interested in hearing from and working with anyone interested in developing these concepts further.

• Discuss, debate, and add to the design in the forum.
• Learn more about it on the wiki.
• Report bugs in Bugzilla.
• Get the source code and extend it or fix bugs.

The project lead for Prism is Mark Finkle. Contributors include Cesar Oliveira, Matt Gertner, Fredrik Larsson, Wladimir Palant, Sylvain Pasche, Alex Faaborg, and Myk Melez.

Extend Firefox 2 has wrapped up and we’re super excited to announce the winners! We received well over 100 entries, representing hundreds of hours of hard work from people around the world.

A big thanks to all who participated! And special thanks to our panel of judges, including Garrett Camp (StumbleUpon), Brendan Eich (Mozilla), Jesse James Garrett (Adaptive Path), Tariq Krim (NetVibes), and Joshua Schachter (del.ico.us) and our sponsors, including ActiveState, O’Reilly, and VMware.

Although many of these extensions are in their early stages of experimental development, we’re blown away by what their authors were able to achieve within the time constraints of the contest, and we’re really looking forward to where they take their extensions from here. It was hard to pick our winners from among the many excellent entries, but we’ve now selected three Grand Prize winners who will each receive an Ultimate Firefox Developer Kit, including:

• travel and accommodation to a Mozilla Developer Day of the winner’s choice anywhere in the world;
• development gear, including a brand new 15″ Macbook Pro with VMware Fusion and ActiveState Komodo;
• One-Year Unlimited Access subscription to O’Reilly’s Safari Library;
• a Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, mugs, and more.

And, twelve Runner-Up Prize winners who will each receive a Firefox Pack, including:

• a Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, and more;
• ActiveState Komodo, mug, and t-shirt;
• a $200 Gift Certificate for O’Reilly Books.

Congratulations to our awesome fifteen! And thanks again to all who contributed add-ons and ideas. Stay tuned for details of Extend Firefox 3, which will kick off within the next month.

Grand Prize Winners

1. Minimap Sidebar Extension by Tony Farndon (UK)
   Tired of managing multiple tabs while searching for directions? Well Minimap Sidebar Extension has your solution! By integrating maps into your current Firefox window, Minimap allows you to search for and save directions on the fly.
   • Create and save a sidebar map using the addresses or address links you find on web pages (highlight then drag and drop), or by manually adding locations.
   • View traffic Info, drag and drop or manually add KML file links, local search, directions, and view satellite imagery.
   • Easily access microformatted addresses when the Operator extension is installed.

   

2. SamePlace by Massimiliano Mirra (Italy)
   Looking for a way to manage all of your instant messenger conversations? Why not look to the browser? SamePlace is an extensible, multi-network instant messenger. It allows you to keep all of your conversations in one place - much of our time online is spent in the browser, so what better place to keep an eye on our contacts than the sidebar?
   • Chat with your contacts from GMail, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, and AIM.
   • Share what you find quickly by dragging web page snippets (photos, animated emoticons, text selections, etc) into chats.
   • Play board games, sketch, give presentations, and more with support for shared applications.

   

3. Shareaholic by Jay Meattle (USA)
   Found something awesome online and can’t wait to pass it on? Tired of copying and pasting endless URLs? Shareaholic allows you to bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.
   • Submit any web page to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, magnolia, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr and twitter.
   • E-mail pages directly to your friends.
   • Quickly out how many times a web page has been dugg or saved to del.icio.us.

   
   

Runners Up

1. All in One Sidebar
   - Ingo Wennemaring
2. Boox
   - Nicolas Martin
3. del.icio.us IncSearch
   - Hirokazu Onozato
4. Fast Dial
   - Sergey Suhoruchkin
5. FireGestures
   - Taiga Gomibuchi
6. FootieFox
   - Boris Ruf
7. qtl
   - Gilad Kutiel
8. Shrinkify
   - Mark Muday
9. Table2Clipboard
   - Davide Ficano
10. TwitterFox
    - Kazuho Okui
11. Update Scanner
    - Pete Burgers
12. URL Fixer
    - Christopher Finke

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and stay tuned for Extend Firefox 3, launching in early March.

Resources:
 - Extend Firefox Web Site
 - Extend Firefox Discussion Forum

As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.

One important area for exploration is the blending of the desktop and the Web through deeper integration of the browser with online services.

We’re now launching a new project within Mozilla Labs to formally explore this integration. This project will be known as Weave and it will focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.

Just like Mozilla enables massive innovation by making Firefox open on many levels, we will aim to do the same with Weave by developing an open extensible framework for services integration.

Organizing Principles

We’ve set out some basic organizing principles to help frame the approach that we’re going to explore. We will:

• provide a basic set of optional Mozilla-hosted online services
• ensure that it is easy for people to set up their own services with freely available open standards-based tools
• provide users with the ability to fully control and customize their online experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)
• leverage existing open standards and propose new ones as needed
• build a extensible architecture like Firefox

Overview of the Idea

1. browser metadata is pushed into the cloud (e.g. bookmarks, history, customizations, etc.)
2. this metadata is transparently reflected everywhere an individual gets online
3. we provide a basic framework for easily sharing and delegating access to this metadata to friends, family and third-parties
4. we build tools and APIs to extend this framework and to provide new user experiences

Use Cases

We’ve also developed some initial use cases that we’ll be exploring with Weave. To be clear, it’s not Mozilla’s intent to provide robust applications for, say, travel planning. We intend to provide the infrastructure and an consistent model for how a user can open up their browser metadata to friends and third-party applications. These use cases are just examples of the types of things we would like to explore, and have others build applications on top of.

Initial Roadmap

Weave 0.1 (December 21, 2007)
• basic framework and server-side in place for testing and experimentation
• authentication with a single online service provider (e.g. labs.mozilla.com)
• bookmark and history synchronization to the server from multiple clients
• default encryption of all user data with a placeholder algorithm



Weave 0.2 (Early 2008)

• initial Web service APIs for developers to build on
• user controls and ability to delegate (and revoke) access rights to specific bits of browser metadata
• UI to enable sharing on applicable interfaces

Get Weave

• Install Weave v0.1 for Firefox 3.0b2pre or greater, Windows/Mac/Linux
  Warning: This is an early prototype. Use at your own risk.

How to Get Involved

We’ll be rolling out prototypes of various components of the framework, gathering feedback and hosting a series of discussions and sessions on the Mozilla Labs site to plan, design, and further develop Weave.

• Discuss, debate and add to the design in the Weave forum.
• Join us in #labs on irc.mozilla.org.

Personas for Firefox is a extension that adds lightweight theming to your browser.

Personas is a prototype that builds upon the ideas that:

• themes today are too hard to find, install and use
• graphic designers should be able to style the browser without having to code
• browsers can be more than just desktop software, they can include online components
• people just want their computer to be a little more fun and personal

This version improves upon a prototype that was discussed and tested earlier this year.

We’ve just started talking about the possible benefits of taking advantage of an online component to deliver a better browser experience. There is certainly more to explore in this regard; Personas is but a simple example.

In this version, the Persona selector is dynamically loaded and populated from a JSON feed and all designs are loaded via URLs to remote resources. All changes to the browser chrome are applied instantly, with no need to restart.

We’ll shortly be releasing an API that will allow developers and designers to submit Personas that are based on Web content, including support for anything that can load in a content window such as HTML, CSS, PNG, JPG, Javascript, SVG and Canvas.

Features

• You can select a Persona from the dynamic menus and see results instantly without having to discover, select, download or install a separate bit of software or code.
• Personas can be added, removed or updated by their designers at any time, without requiring a software update.

Get Personas for Firefox

• Install Now for Firefox 2.0.0.* - 3.0b2pre, Windows/Mac/Linux
  Compatible with the default themes that ship with Firefox

How to Get Involved

• Discuss, debate and add to the design in the Personas forum.
• Report bugs using Bugzilla.
• Get the source code and fix a known bug or suggest a patch.
• Translate and localize for your language and locale.

Prism Prototype Now Available on Mac and Linux

By: Mozilla Labs

On: November 2nd, 2007 Posted In: Mozilla Labs

We’re happy to announce the Prism prototype is now available for Mac and Linux! We’re also releasing an updated version for Windows that resolves some of the issues users have encountered.

Download the Prism prototype for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.

Prism now provides a cross-platform way to integrate the web platform with the desktop environment, and developers don’t have to lift a finger to desktop-enable their web applications, while users have the choice to use their favorite web apps in their browser, on their desktop of choice, or in both places.

Incidentally, we’re working on a simple way to open a web application in Prism directly from Firefox (no separate Prism download required), and here are some more ideas folks have suggested to us for improving desktop-web integration:

• allowing web applications to register to handle particular content types;
• drag-and-drop support for uploading files to web applications;
• support for running applications offline (local storage, offline/online event notifications, caching of application components, etc.).

We’d like to see these sorts of features standardized as part of the web platform so they become available to Prism, Firefox and other web-enabled applications. The WHATWG is already standardizing content type handling and offline support in its HTML5 spec, and offline support is already available in Prism and development versions of Firefox 3!

We’d love to hear more ideas for improving Prism and desktop-web integration, so keep the feedback coming! Tell us which web apps you’ve been using in Prism and how it changes the way you use those apps. Report problems you’ve encountered or features you’d like to see in future versions. You can even check out the code and contribute changes!

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Prism

By: Mozilla Labs

On: October 24th, 2007 Posted In: Mozilla Labs

Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls–like back and forward buttons and a location bar–that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself.

Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.

Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we’re not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. We think the web is a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation, so our goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.

The first of these experiments is based on Webrunner, which we’ve moved into the Mozilla Labs code repository and renamed to Prism.

Prism

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.

Prism lets users add their favorite web apps to their desktop environment:

When invoked, these applications run in their own window:

They are accessible with Control-Tab, Command-Tab, and Exposé, just like desktop apps. And users can still access these same applications from any web browser when they are away from their own computers.

The Best of Both Worlds

Prism isn’t a new platform, it’s simply the web platform integrated into the desktop experience. Web developers don’t have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and <canvas> and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, 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.

The User Experience

We’re also thinking about how to better integrate Prism with Firefox, enabling one-click “make this a desktop app” functionality that preserves a user’s preferences, saved passwords, cookies, add-ons, and customizations. Ideally you shouldn’t even have to download Prism, it should just be built into your browser.

We’re working on an extension for Firefox that provides some of this functionality. For more information about the user experience we hope to achieve in Prism, see Alex Faaborg’s blog post. For some of the technical details and new features found in Prism, see Mark Finkle’s blog post.

Getting Started with Prism

We have an early prototype for this working today on Windows, with work continuing on Mac and Linux (for which we should have builds available soon).

To try out the prototype, download and install it: Download Prism for Windows.

Then start Prism. It will display an Install Web Application dialog.

Enter the URL of the application you want to use in Prism (e.g. mail.google.com), a name for the application (e.g. Gmail), and pick where you’d like to create shortcuts to the application.

Then press the OK button. Prism will create shortcuts to the application in the locations you specified and then start the application.

How to Get Involved

Prism is just the first of many experiments we hope to conduct around improving the usability of web applications. It’s open source, like everything we do, and we’re interested in hearing from and working with anyone interested in further developing this concept.

• Discuss, debate and add to the design in the forum. Report bugs in Bugzilla.
• Get the source code, extend it, fix bugs and/or submit patches.

  The project lead for Prism is Mark Finkle and contributors include Cesar Oliveira, Wladimir Palant, Sylvain Pasche, Alex Faaborg, and Myk Melez.

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