That’s right. Now they’re FLYING.
Link for those that keep up with this stuff.
My 2 cents: It looks and feels better a LOT more than beta 2. Looks like the final version 3 is going to be awesome.
Tag Archive for 'firefox'
This post is like a month overdue. Bear with me, because it’s still relevant.
I had started to hate Firefox 2 (on the Mac) a few months back. It was getting bloated and very unstable with multiple tabs open. While I still use it for web development (Web Developer, FireBug with YSlow, Aardvark, etc…), I made the switch to Camino after a friend gave me a tour of the shortcut keys it had.
Sidenote: Yes… Opera… I’ve probably used you every time a new version came out, but for some reason, I can never stay with you. Maybe it’s because you’re so perfect, so far from the competition… 
Camino is definitely a lot more fast, robust, and responsive, and so it has become my browser of choice. Who knows if Opera or Safari will ever take its place… Of course, very recently, I’ve started to use the Firefox 3 Beta 2 exclusively, with Safari and Camino running in the background (another post all on its own as to why I do this).
Enter Prism (formerly known as WebRunner)
To be honest, I have web apps that I have “running” constantly. In other words, I have webpages open in tabs, or access them frequently over the course of the day. I have these sites be the shortcuts on the bookmark bar in Safari. That way, I can quickly access them with command + number. Command + 1 = Gmail. Command + 2 = Google Reader. Command + 3 Facebook… so on and so forth.
I was very excited to hear about WebRunner, and went and tried it out. Now called Prism, it basically does these things:
Separate process: When the webapp goes down or locks up, I don’t want anything else affected. Thankfully, Firefox does have session restore, but that is beside the point. When I open many tabs and have several webapps running in a browser, things get slow and unstable after a day or two.
Minimal UI: A generic browser UI is not needed for webapps. If any UI is present, make it specific to the webapp I am using.
Basic desktop integration: Create shortcuts to start the webapp, add ability to show specialized icons in the tray or dock and ability to display notifications.
Platform with extensions: I don’t want to download a full browser runtime for each webapp. I do want to be able to add some custom code/features that are not directly supported in the webapp. I should be able to install one runtime and then get packages or extensions for each webapp. Think Firefox extensions or Greasemonkey scripts. These extensions should be able to tweak the SSB UI as well.
Open external links in real browser: If I click a link in the webapp that opens a new site, don’t change my webapp browser window. Open all external links in my default/real browser.
In summary, it’s a very streamlined (I mean streamlined) browser, meant to do one thing: serve up a web application. Currently, what’s bothering me is that I’m only able to run a single instance of Prism, and only a single web app at a time.
For now, I’m just going to have it open to Gmail all the time. This way, I can command+tab into my email client. Gone are the days of opening a browser and typing command + 1 or typing gmail.com in Quicksilver. Wee!
What’s the Point?
I hear you. What’s all of this hype for? So I get a crappier browser that does less. However, I feel like bridging that gap between the web apps, only accessible by typing out an address or clicking/shortcut keying into a browser window, and desktop apps, accessible by command + tab or running the application by double clicking on an icon (or single-click on the Dock), is going to be very important in the future. This takes a web application and gives it it’s own container (its own separate process), which makes it behave a lot more like a desktop application.
I don’t know why this is happening recently (I think it started yesterday), but FireFox 3 Beta 2 seems to choke up with HTTPS.
Looking at Bugzilla (Which, by the way, is inaccessible using my version of beta…), there seems to be a few issues with HTTPS. But nothing in particular to what I was looking at.
After trying updating within the program itself (which failed), and looking for a manual update, it seems like I still have the most recent version of the beta. But then, all of a sudden, the https started to work again. Even though it was the same exact version.
I’m beginning to think all of this was in my mind.
How the heck am I going to know how the blog is doing…
Trying to connect to https://, fails. I went to google.com/analytics, and the login box doesn’t appear.
Blah.
You know what, I think it has to do with the browser. The same thing happened with panel.dreamhost.com. I’m unsure as to why the heck something like this would happen, but I’ll be on the lookout.
Robots are awesome. Giant Robots are awesomer.
Seriously, though. Are we supposed to be afraid of the huge building destroying robot? What does the city signify, IE users? And what’s the deal with the UFO’s in the background?
Am I reading too much into it? Highly likely. But it’s much more snappier. MUCH more snappier. John Resig thinks so.
And snazzier too… one example is when Firefox asks you if it should remember your password. No longer is it a separate dialog box which would disrupt the flow between pages, but instead it’s a much more muted slidedown-style dialog row of text. I don’t know what you call it, but it’s awesome. I’m pretty sure this was done before in IE (Insistent IE ActiveX warnings and others), but it’s a welcomed changed here.
And something with the text… is it anti-aliased? It just feels more softer than usual. I guess I should consult the changelogs.