How Have You Used Prism?
Posted on December 20, 2007
8 Comments
Remember Mozilla Prism? I mentioned it a couple of months ago and since then I’ve been using it pretty seriously. As I tend to use a lot of web apps, I was curious to see how Prism would fit into my habits. I was also curious to see if it is worth messing with.
The answers? It changed my habits and yep — worth messing with.
First the quick review:
Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
Get it? It’s all about the notion of “site specific browsing”. No tabs, no nav. bars. Just launch the web app in the prism “framework” and focus on the application.
Personally, I’ve found it has introduced some changes in how I work. Email and Project/time tracking for work is web based and I use a couple web based chats as well along with some other sites at home (Google Analytics, for instance). Before I started with Prism I would fire up a browser in the morning and keep it open all day long as I kept some sites always in tabs and closed/opened others — fretting about memory usage all the time!
Now I keep a set of Prism shortcuts for most of those apps on my desktop. Want to check my email? Pop up the appropriate shortcut. The Google Talk gadget works wonderfully in Prism (using http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout), as does meebo. I can now close my browser without worrying about losing chats.
On my Vista machine, I run a little sidebar gadget (Wp-Corp Mail Checker) that monitors my email accounts. With a non-web based email monitor there is no need to keep email apps open in a browser all day watching for mail. When the gadget dings, I then just launch the appropriate Prism shortcut, attend to the mail and then close it.
Not only do I no longer need to keep one browser open all day, but when I’m in a prism’d web site, I find myself a bit more focused. My link bar links aren’t there to aid my distraction. I usually have the address bar off as well. No tabs and no extensions.
Oh sure, tabs are a huge boon to the web browser for ease of use and convenience — and even productivity in general. But I think we can concede that there are times when the ability to quickly pop up a bunch of sites into tabs can lead to distractions… Not unlike only running IE6 I suppose… no tabs, single-purposed! LoL, bad analogy.
In the future, I hope to see the ability to “prism” a site built directly into Firefox without the need to install a separate application. Based on the announcement article, that’s where they’re headed.
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.
Coming to an extension soon, I hope.
Anyone else using Prism? If so, how are you using it and what are your thoughts?
Tags: browsers, google-talk, meebo, mozilla, Prism, WebRunner
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8 Responses to “How Have You Used Prism?”
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A Prism for:
Google Apps inbox (2 domains)
Google Calendar
Google Reader
Remember the Milk (until I can add an addon to the Prism to integrate with Gmail)
I agree with the points you make–this is good stuff.
I use Prism for Meebo, Google Reader, Calendar and Gmail (which is setup to check e-mail from several accounts of mine). I even use it to login to my blog.
Prism has saved me from keeping so many tabs open. I only open a shortcut whenever I need it and close it when I’m done.
As you said, it helps me stay focused when I need to be without distractions other browsers seem to add.
Hi Marsh and Alisha - thanks for sharing.
Since you both mention Gmail, I have a question for you two: Since the “new” Gmail changes I sometimes lose the ability to tab into the message field and type when running it in Prism.
If I close Prism and re-open, all is fine.
Have you guys noticed anything like this?
I’m not sure if it’s the same problem you’re talking about, but I did have a problem only when rich formatting was enabled. I had to disable it. I don’t use it anyway, so I’m not missing anything.
I hope that fixes it for you.
Handy - saw this post a while back, but it has only recently come out for mac - just tried it out tonight and will try Gcalendar to see what its like. Pretty slick - curious to see if it will survive the test of time.
Hey Brock - thanks, I wasn’t aware a Mac version was out. I wonder if the windows version was updated — doesn’t seem like that had updated for quite a while.
Keep us posted on what you think of prism, I’m definitely curious as to how folks are using it.
Alisha - Next time I run into the problem I’ll toggle Plan Text to Rich Formatting. I bet that’s it though. Thanks!