Mozilla released Firefox 3 Beta 1 yesterday, the first release of the Firefox browser to support offline applications natively. The release notes specify the new features under the heading "Improved Platform for Developers". The other item in the release notes that I thought was interesting was allowing web applications to handle certain protocols. Here's the longer description: "Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox)."

Mozilla has released an early preview of their Prism project for Mac and Linux developers. Launching the Prism application opens up a new blank browser window, with a dialog to create a shortcut to the application. You enter in a URL and a name for the "application", and then select whether or not you want shortcuts created on your desktop, taskbar etc... Prism then sets up the application for you.

I noticed a bunch of things that were very different from Adobe AIR. First of all, currently you can only run one Prism application at a time - because it actually runs the Prism application, and then opens up the URL in that window. (For example, I setup two Prism "applications", one for GMail and one for Yahoo Mail, but I can only run one of them at a time. When you run one on the Mac, the Menu item says "Prism"). In contrast, you can run as many Adobe AIR applications at one time as you like - and they run as their own applications - the menu items are the application name, and they each have their own icon in the dock or taskbar.

Secondly, once you delete the shortcuts that Prism creates, there's no way to run the "applications". In contrast, Adobe AIR adds the applications to your Program Files (Win) or Applications (Mac) directory, so even if you delete shortcuts to those applications, you can still run the applications themselves.

Mozilla is thinking about adding in adding functionality that is currently available in Adobe AIR, such as: "allowing web applications to register to handle particular content types; drag-and-drop support for uploading files to web applications; support for running applications offline (local storage, offline/online event notifications, caching of application components, etc.)." Those would be welcome additions - especially the ability to work offline (which is already available in Adobe AIR). If the application is a true desktop application, people are going to expect desktop like functionality, and that means drag and drop support, application specific content types and offline functionality.

Its great to see Mozilla looking to move web applications to the desktop - this is something I've been pushing for for a long time - from around the time that I started the Mozilla Calendar Project. However, I think they need to do a few things to improve on this initial release. Number one, obviously, would be to allow as many Prism "applications" to launch at a single time. (Not sure if this is related to separating out the profiles for each, but it might be.) Secondly would be to install the "applications" into an Applications folder. If they're applications, they should be put in the same place as other applications. Then I would start to incorporate all the features that they talk about above - drag and drop support, offline storage, etc... At that point, I think they'd have something pretty compelling for developers to build on. For now, I think AIR is probably the best option for hybrid web / desktop applications.

(Via Ryan Stewart)

Yesterday Mozilla launched a new project, called Prism, on their Labs page. Prism allows web developers to build web applications that run as desktop apps - they get their own icon in the dock, they get their own menu, and they launch in a version of Firefox that has no browser chrome (forward, back buttons).

Initially this sounds a lot like AIR, although there are a few differences. First of all, Prism currently has no mechanism to work offline, though they are working on including it. Count on it using functionality from or similar to Google Gears, given the close relationship between Google and Mozilla. Secondly, it won't have access to read local data natively (at least it isn't mentioned explicitly). This is something I think is a major advantage to AIR - the ability to get to the local file system means you don't have to upload files to the server and then download them back to the client again - you can access them directly.

However, some similarities certainly exist, and its nice to see people acknowledging the same problems - its good validation for what AIR does. First of all, there's no browser chrome in either an AIR application or Prism, so the back button and bookmarks and other browser characteristics disappear. These don't make much sense in applications (though its interesting to note that the eBay AIR application actually added those elements in based on user feedback). Secondly, there's some benefit to being on the taskbar or dock, both to users and to websites. For users, its easier to launch the application, and that's also good for sites making those applications - if its easier to get to, people are more likely to use it.

Mike Chambers has a great blog post on the tone that the Mozilla people take with respect to Prism. I agree with him completely - it does sound like what Adobe is doing is evil, and what they're doing is great, even though AIR can do exactly what they're doing (and more). Sounds like we (Adobe) need to do some more education on the fact that AIR can run HTML / Ajax apps without having any Flash integration at all. In fact, there's nothing in AIR that requires you to write Flash or Flex code - you can write an AIR application in only HTML and JavaScript. (In fact, one of the first AIR applications was GMail on AIR.)

The advantage that Mozilla has for Prism is that they can integrate it into Firefox, and hit about 30% of the web community immediately. They're relationship with Google means that the technology will likely be implemented by Google applications, like GMail, which gives it immediate credibility and a ton of installations. The advantage to using Adobe AIR is that Adobe has a great track record of getting software installed on a lot of computers - the latest version of the Flash Player is installed on 98% of machines, and we can use that knowledge to get AIR installed on as many computers as possible, and as quickly as possible. While not the only consideration to be made, developers must consider how many people can use their applications without having to install additional software programs. I think currently that's an advantage for Adobe, but time will tell how well Mozilla does at getting Prism installed.

There's lots of good news here for developers though. Google Gears (if that's what Prism uses) and AIR use the same SQLite database, and work has been done to standardize the APIs. Adobe donated the Tamarin runtime to Mozilla, so coding should be similar for Flex AIR applications and Prism applications. Perhaps most importantly, there's choice in the market, and competition always keeps people motivated to work hard and improve things.