An initiative in the Mozilla Labs called Prism seeks to put web applications on the desktop, running in their own application windows and behaving more like a rich client application than when run in the browser chrome. It's an interesting idea from a user experience perspective and we'll be keeping a close eye on this project. Prism was initially available for Windows only but has now been released for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms as well. The Mozilla Labs web site describes Prism like this:
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.A bit further down the page, they add:
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.
It's an interesting notion and one that has a number of aspects that resonate with the capabilities available today in Curl - from both a development and deployment perspective.
There's some interesting conversation around the announcement already. In an article in the New York Times, Adobe's Mike Chambers, the project manager for AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is quoted (from his personal blog) as taking some umbrage at the way Mozilla is positioning their effort relative to Adobe's (as well as Microsoft's Silverlight).
"The thing I found odd was Mozilla appears to be building something very similar to Adobe AIR (which is fine and cool), but somehow it is inherently good when Mozilla does it, and inherently evil when Adobe does it," Chambers responded. "AIR is built on top of Web standards and can run existing Web applications and content. It runs on Windows and Mac (and soon Linux), and it also provides additional desktop functionality.
"Is the main difference ... that AIR is being primarily developed by a company, and that Prism is being developed by Mozilla?"ZDnet's Ryan Stewart, who is also an evangelist for Adobe AIR, also has concerns about the way Mozilla is positioning their effort. This should prove to be an interesting conversation to watch develop. Ultimately, all of these efforts have a long way to go before they'll be ready for serious use in the enterprise.