Mozilla Prism

Mozilla Prism
Developer(s)Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla Foundation
Preview release
1.0b4 / May 5, 2010; 14 years ago (2010-05-05)[1]
Written inC++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript
Operating systemCross-platform
PlatformGecko
LicenseMPL, GPL, LGPL
Websiteprism.mozilla.com Official Site (Offline)

Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner) is a discontinued project which integrated web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser. As of November 2010, Prism is listed as an inactive project at the Mozilla labs website.[2]

Prism is based on a concept called a site-specific browser (SSB). An SSB is designed to work exclusively with one web application. It does not have the menus, toolbars and other parts of a traditional web browser.[3]

The software is built upon XULRunner, so it is possible to get some Mozilla Firefox extensions to work in it.[4]

The preview announcement of Prism was made in October 2007.[5]

On February 1, 2011, Mozilla Labs announced it would no longer maintain Prism, its ideas having been subsumed into a newer project called Chromeless.[6] However, the Mozilla Labs mailing list revealed that Chromeless is not in fact a replacement for Prism, and there is currently no Mozilla replacement for the out-of-the-box site-specific browser functionality of Prism, Chromeless instead being a platform for developers rather than users.[7] For a while Prism continued to be maintained under the original name of WebRunner, which then also was discontinued in September 2011.[8]

  1. ^ "Mozilla Labs - Prism". Archived from the original on 2012-05-10. Retrieved 2011-02-10.
  2. ^ "Mozilla Labs Projects". Mozillalabs.com. 2010-10-05. Archived from the original on 2011-08-06. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  3. ^ "Prism - MDN Docs". Developer.mozilla.org. 2011-04-27. Archived from the original on 2008-11-17. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  4. ^ Douglas Meyer (2008-09-29). "Blog: Brain Dump: Google Gears in Prism". Douglasjmeyer.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  5. ^ "Mozilla Labs". Labs.mozilla.com. 2007-10-24. Archived from the original on 2011-08-13. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  6. ^ "Prism is Now Chromeless". Mozilla Labs. 2007-10-24. Archived from the original on 2011-08-08. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  7. ^ "Mozilla Labs Google Group". 2011-11-01. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  8. ^ "Discontinuing WebRunner". Salsitasoft.com. 2011-09-08. Archived from the original on 2014-02-19. Retrieved 2014-02-18.