Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism.

Introduction

Web-based applications—ranging from office suites to communications tools to wikis—have become immensely popular in the last two or three years. Of course, getting to those applications means launching a browser, navigating to a URL, and logging in.

What if you could start those web applications in the same way that you would an application that is installed on your computer? That’s where Prism comes in.

Prism enables you to create desktop shortcuts that open web applications in their own windows—just like you would OpenOffice.org Calc or The GIMP. And you don’t have to worry about all the distractions that exist in a browser window.

What is Prism Anyway?

Prism is a project from Mozilla Labs and is, obviously, based on the Firefox web browser. Prism was originally called Webrunner, and was a tad difficult to use. You had to run it from the command line with a URL. Not the most user-friendly way of accessing your favorite web applications! Now, Prism has a graphical user interface (albeit a simple one) and makes it easy to bring web applications to your desktop.

Since it’s based on Mozilla, Prism will work with just about any web application out there. Keep in mind, however, that some web applications require Flash or Java. If you have Flash and Java installed, then Prism will use them.

Prism makes it easy to bring web applications to your desktop

I’ve found that Prism is especially well suited for use with the following types of web applications:

• Web-based email;
• Online productivity tools like word processors or spreadsheets;
• Task management tools;
• Wikis.

Of course, those are personal preferences based on the way I use the web. You really need to try Prism out with as many web applications as you can to find out what works best for you.

Why Use Prism?

So, why use Prism instead of bookmarking sites in a web browser, or putting links on your desktop? A few reasons. First, Prism loads a web application faster than just about any web browser. My main computer is a ThinkPad T41 notebook, with a 1.6 GHz processor and 1 GB of memory. I compared the start times of various web applications launched in Prism against the launch times of several web browsers, including Firefox and Opera. In every instance, Prism loaded faster by several seconds.