Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner) is a discontinued project which integrated

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

s with the

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser. As of November 2010, Prism is listed as an inactive project at the Mozilla labs website. Prism is based on a concept called a

site-specific browser A site-specific browser (SSB) is a software application that is dedicated to accessing pages from a single source (site) on a computer network such as the Internet or a private intranet. SSBs typically simplify the more complex functions of a web ...

(SSB). An SSB is designed to work exclusively with one

. It doesn't have the menus, toolbars and other accoutrements of a traditional

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

. The software is built upon

XULRunner XULRunner is a discontinued, packaged version of the Mozilla platform to enable standalone desktop application development using XUL, developed by Mozilla. It replaced the ''Gecko Runtime Environment'', a stalled project with a similar purpose. T ...

, so it is possible to get some

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

extensions to work in it. The preview announcement of Prism was made in October 2007. On February 1, 2011,

Mozilla Labs Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

announced it would no longer maintain Prism, its ideas having been subsumed into a newer project called Chromeless. However, the Mozilla Labs mailing list revealed that Chromeless is not in fact a replacement for Prism, and there is currently no Mozilla replacement for the out-of-the-box site-specific browser functionality of Prism, Chromeless instead being a platform for developers rather than users. For a while Prism continued to be maintained under the original name of WebRunner, which then also was discontinued in September 2011.

References

External links

*
Prism Project at Mozilla Development CenterPrism extension for Firefox 3.0Prism - MozillaWikiprism.mozillalabs.com/
via Internet Archive Free application software Cross-platform free software Free software programmed in C++

Prism Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...

Site-specific browsing 2007 software Discontinued software {{web-software-stub

See also

References

External links