Quick Look: Creating and Using Site Specific Browsers
The advent of the cloud over the past few years has meant that a lot of the tasks that we were used to doing on our Mac have now moved to the web. This brings with it a host of issues, from data ownership to reliability of services (see recent Sidekick fiasco) and whether the web can deliver a Mac-like experience.
Putting all that aside, however, a more mundane problem is managing all of those sites and getting to them quickly and easily. Individual apps conveniently come with their own icon on your dock, web apps do not, forcing you to dig through the myriad of open tabs in your browser to find the app you need.If you’ve truly made the jump to cloud computing there is, thankfully, a better way: site specific browsers (SSBs). The basic idea is simple: Create a separate web browser, complete with its own icon on the dock, to browse to a single site. We’ve covered an excellent example of a site specific browser here on TAB in the past, Mailplane, which is used to access Gmail’s online interface.
The beauty of an SSB is not only do you get the bonus of neatly having your own icon for a single web application, but it also allows that site to integrate with OS X more completely. For example you can have things like address book access and dock badges, all things that Mailplane does for Gmail.
That’s great if you use Gmail, but what about all the other great web-based applications out there? Although there are not specific SSBs for things like Twitter, Google Calendar, Remember The Milk and other web services, there are two different programs that will let you take any web site and turn it into a site specific browser: Fluid and Prism. The major difference between the two is that Fluid uses Webkit to power its SSBs, while Prism uses the Gecko browser base that runs Firefox.
Aside from these underlying technologies, the two programs offer remarkably similar functionality. Simply enter a web address, choose an icon (or just use the site favicon), and voila, a new program based on that site will be created for you. What’s more, each browser can accept various scripts to add functionality like a dock icon and even Growl notifications. You can even make an SSB your default email or RSS program.
In many ways SSBs may represent the future of computing. Just look at Google’s upcoming Chrome OS, where the browser is the operating system. In such a situation it makes no sense to continue using the outdated system of web pages and browser bookmarks. When a website is a program unto itself you can argue that it deserves to be treated as one at the operating system level.
Tweet This (22)
David Klein on October 28th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I love Fluid! I use it for Google Reader. I used to use it for GMail but Mailplane has taken over for that.
Simplenote is also a great opportunity for Fluid especially with the custom stylesheet:
http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/fluid-style-for-simplenote
c.mac on October 28th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I use a Fluid based SSB for Yahoo mail, but honestly I’ve never really felt it was it’s own application. While the badge showing the number of new emails is a nice touch, other than that it simply feels like an awkward Safari page.
I really wish that more “cloud” companies would do like Evernote and create their own native apps for Mac and iPhone. Call me a Cloud-skeptic, but I like having a native app that is customized for the site and integrates with the OS in ways that even a SSB does not. Sure I could access GMail and Evernote thorugh their websites, but I’d much rather use native apps to access that data (Mail.app works great with IMAP capable email).
Ben on October 28th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Personally I don’t really get the point. I’m not sure why I would pay $25 for Mailplane, for example, when the only additional functionality over accessing GMail in Safari is an active dock icon. It would be much more effective for OS makers (Apple/ MSFT) to provide APIs so websites can update the dock/ taskbar icons. Fewer applications, less complexity.
Tom on October 28th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Wasn’t Safari supposed to be offering this “web page as an app” type functionality? I wonder what happened to that…
Veit on October 28th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I have used Fluid for all kinds of Google services and did not find any advantage at all over keeping these services in separate browser tabs. In fact, much more clutter on my desktop. So I reverted back to using Google browser-based and am happy with it.
Mika on November 10th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Same here. I used Fluid for some sites with specific settings but in the end there was no real advantage. With OmniWeb and their concept of tabbed windows and workspaces I have one app for all!