Monday, May 24, 2010

Prism - My Own Custom Browser App (Well, Almost)

I have been researching some ideas to create a simple no-frills (actually no controls) browser window with out reinventing the wheel.  I want to basically open a URL in a window and have what ever appears at the URL to be rendered in a window with none of your typical browser controls and simply rely on the site's navigation to get around.  It so happens to also coincide with some issues I have encountered at work since I work on Flex applications that have no use for the native browser navigation buttons.

I seem to have found a solution in a Firefox development called Prism which can be installed either as a plugin to Firefox or as a standalone application.  Prism allows you to convert a URL into a standalone application on your desktop.  Essentially what it does is that it takes the URL and wraps it in a package that allows you to view the URL in a "no-distractions" browser upon a click of a shortcut.  This is becoming more recently desired since more and more web applications are now having a more "self-contained" look about them and no longer require back/forward buttons or a URL field to navigate around them.  In fact, the use of the native browser navigation often causes problems for web developers since this can lead to security issues regarding form scripting.

I was hoping there would be a command line creation script to create the packages Prism needs to run the URL but I suppose its nothing a scripter like me can not figure out.  In the meanwhile I have setup some webmail sites my mail browser can not connect to at work and left them as stand alone apps on my desktop.  I have also setup my work test server as well as a Prism app.

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