This seems more like a "google gears" implementation than an Adobe Air killer... Air & Silverlight are great because they allows dev'ers to build one codebase to that can run on all 3 platforms (win, mac, linux).

TJ

TJ

The big question is: will there be support for extensions?

2-7offsuit

While Prism is cool and all, I think you're misunderstanding its purpose. It has nothing to do with web application development, it's simply providing a more desktop-application-like interface for web applications.

Prism can take any web page that Firefox can render, and give it the Prism window treatment

A few notable quotes from their site:

"Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we're not building a proprietary platform to replace the web."

"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."

Now, what might be really nice would be if they could make local file system interaction with web apps more seamless. Being able to drag and drop files onto Gmail attachments, or similar functionality, would be a huge improvement for web apps.

trygve

Seems nice, but I also wonder about extensions - I opened gmail with prism, but was unhappy when I tried to archive a message with 'e' and nothing happened.

tmanAg08

I'm with TMANAG08 - I can't live without my gmail macros!

jamesreplenish

@TJ: I couldn't disagree more. Prism __does__ allow you to write one codebase for all platforms. Furthermore, Silverlight does __not__ (quite): you've obviously never tried to create a reasonably usable application in Silverlight. It's buggy on non-Windows platforms, and it's not receiving the attention it needs to ever be anything but a Windows-preferred solution. Prism and AIR aim to treat all platforms equally (can the world have two Switzerlands?).

The real beauty about Prism and AIR are that you can actually write one codebase to work in both! Webkit is part of AIR. When following actual and defacto standards, the latest Webkit and Gecko engines work remarkably similar (is that such a surprise?). It's straightforward to create a web app that targets standards and ignores IE -- or opens AIR as a plug-in when it detects IE. This is being actively pursued.

Being able to open a web app as if it were a desktop app will really spark a revolution in application development. Well, let me adjust that remark. It's because it's not revolutionary that will make it so widely accepted amongst users. And because it's not a whole new platform manes that we developers can be productive immediately.

If you've tried Safari 3 or Firefox 3, you also know that speed is no longer an issue. I expect that drag-and-drop to/from the rest of the OS and other issues will be addressed in short order, too. The speed of development in this area has never been at such a dizzying pace.

unscriptable

im not quite sure this is that cool yet. Seems like a glorified shortcut or a bookmark on your desktop. What makes AIR and silverlight so unique is the ability to design user-friendly, visually stimulating applications. Right now, I can't really see any difference between using prism to check my email or firefox.

I'm happy to see the mozilla team working on something that definitely has potential, but I'm not seeing it right now.

mw2006