Open source site-specific browser [closed]

Question

Here is what I want to do, very simply:

I want to put a URL into a Mozilla Prism (or some alternative), then be provided with an icon on my desktop that when I click it a window opens and the page is displayed. The process for this instance of Prism should be completely independent of any other Prism "applications" that are running.

Prism looks like it does this exactly, but I'm running Fedora 12 x86_64 and I can't get it to work, so I'm wondering if there are any alternatives to Prism.

According to wikipedia, this type of appication is called a site-specific browser.

Find

just because something isn't working on a linux distro, doesn't mean its not open source... – Delindadelineate

Where in my question did I make that statement? The purpose of having an open source alternative is that there's a possibility that I don't have have to do this workflow: Search google for Foo, Find the correct version, For the correct OS, For the correct architecture, Download it, Extract it, Build it, Configure it, Run it. If my distro provides it all I have to do is search for it and click install, then use it. In the case of Prism, there is no 64-bit linux build available and Mozilla's XUL/XPCOM stack is an awful mess, the Prism documentation is nearly non-existent. – Find

Answer 1

Mozilla Prism became Chromeless, and WebRunner. both discontinued

Chromeless is Mozilla's new projects, as seen here

WebRunner is (was, apparently) here

Cedilla

Hmmm... this is very interesting. As soon as I can get this working on Fedora I'll give you the checkmark. Can't wait to move off of chromium. – Find

I haven't tried this on Fedora yet, but I like where this is going. – Find

Answer 2

I've found Google Chrome does a really nice job of creating stand alone web applications. The term is Site-Specific Browser. Now Chrome is not Open Source, but it is available on many platforms and it is based on Chromium, which is Open Source. There arent' any packages of Chromium available for Fedora 13 at the moment, but it looks simple enough to build on Ubuntu, so I'll give that a try one of these days.

Anyway, I'm giving up on Mozilla Prism, I spent probably 10 hours trying to get it work on Fedora 13 64-bit.

Find

Interesting! Do keep us updated if and when you make any progress. – Batwing

Documentation: support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95710 And for Mac, there is this helper app (download link in first paragraph): lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/240/… – Conviction

Answer 3

I would recommend sticking with Prism and trying to get it to work on your distro, maybe post a question on SO's sister site, Serverfault.com, or Superuser.com. I'm not an expert in the field but I think apart from Microsoft's Hypertext Applications concept (Is that even alive anymore?) there's not that many alternatives around.

Batwing

After some research, it looks like this is the best solution. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but that's the reality. Thanks for your response. – Find

Answer 4

I experimented with Prism before under Windows, and have recently resurrected it under Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS, using XFCE4 as my desktop.

One of the things I've been playing with is TiddlyWiki, a personal notebook. TiddlyWiki is implemented in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and is contained in a single file. The problem is, recent changes in the browser security model have broken it, by placing restrictions on what might be done with things opened from file:// URLs. Under current versions of Chrome, Firefox (my preferred browser), and Midori, Tiddly complains it is unable to save changes, and requires a Java applet as a plugin helper to do the saves. (Oddly, under current SeaMonkey, it works: the browser pops up a dialog box about possible unsafe access and asks for permission, but once given, it works as expected.)

Because I don't need tabs for the usage, and don't need the overhead of a full browser, Prism looked like an appropriate solution, since the version of Gecko it implements dates from before the security model changes. I grabbed the last 0.9 version as a tar.gz file, and extracted it to /opt/Prism. I put the empty.html file that you get in a TiddlyWiki download, and put that in /opt/TiddlyWiki. I then ran prism from the /opt/Prism directory. It loaded, and pit up a dialog box asking for configuration. I pointed it at the TiddlyWiki empty.html file. It created an icon on my desktop. Double-clicking the icon brought up TiddlyWiki in a Prism window, and everything works as expected.

I'm not sure why Tracy had the issue installing under Linux Mint. Things Just Worked here under Ubuntu. The parsing error looks like an issue I've seen with the odd broken Firefox extension. As a matter of eliminating variables, I installed Prism in its own directory carefully separated from extant Mozilla stuff (since I have Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird installed, and both release and beta versions of Firefox.

Alas, the Firefox add-on isn't a replacement. What it does is generate a config file for the website you point it at which can be used with Prism. It's a convenience, but it's easy enough to generate the resulting .webapp file manually.

Silversmith

Answer 5

Here is the link to the Chromium browser (an alternative to Prism): commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/index.html

For shortcuts, use: --app= to get the browser displaying in app mode.

Catinacation

Answer 6

Had the same issue. Google Chrome has a simple enough included feature:

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95710

Truda

Answer 7

Prism is now webrunner, which has also been discontinued! Patrick's suggestion is the best way I know of - using the google menu as outlined here

Devoice

Answer 8

There are currently not many good options.

Chromeless, Webrunner and Prism are all discontinued.

Chromium's "Create Application Shortcuts" is almost there, but these windows do no run in an isolated sandbox like a true SSB such as Fluid on OS X does. This is a key feature for a common use case for SSBs it to be able to, e.g. have one logged into a business twitter account while your regular browser is logged into your personal account.

Garniture