Comments on: Mozilla Prism: Am I missing something?

By: Camilo Martin

Camilo Martin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:28:49 +0000

Well I see a functionality in this, unrelated to the actual UI:

Say you have to develop a dynamic and well-looking application for a company, and you’re more of a web-developer than programmer. This solves the thing; make a good web application designed to work in Firefox, use all modern features FF supports, and make it into a standalone executable!

Yes, I’m proposing something much less resource-efficient than, say, Java. But you don’t even need to tell that to anyone! :D

I remember making an application in Visual Basic that was basically a bar-less browser pointing to a web app. Did anyone notice? NO :D

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:52:20 +0000

I think Prism will only become really useful when you can double-click files on your computer and have them open up in a Prism web app. Until then, I don’t think it has much practical value to me. But, as I said, maybe I’m not the intended user.

By: antistress

antistress — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:08:56 +0000

By: antistress

antistress — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:00:06 +0000

i’m glad to see your post since i’ve posted the contrary ;-) ( http://libre-et-ouvert.blogspot.com/2007/10/prism-du-vent.html )

Everybody says that tabs system is an improvement but i’m not sure of that.
Tabs are often an improvement : for people running a desktop with poor functionnalities.
But since today desktops have great functionnalities, tabs system may not be an improvement.

Here are some thoughts, from an user point of view :

- Tabs system is confusing for new users : desktops already have a system to switch between instances (i.e. applications buttons in GNOME). Created a concurrent system doing the same thing is confusing.
– Most tabs system functionnalities are in modern desktops (i.e. in GNOME 2.20 you can rearrange applications buttons)
– Desktop functionnalities are often better than tabs system (i.e. with compiz fusion the scale effect allows you to choose between your windows in a graphical way (like Expose on Mac) ; you can distribute instances through spaces in GNOME)

+ Sometimes tabs system is better (you can load a page in background)

Besides, from a developper point of view (which i’m not), tabs system allow you to control the way instances are managed on different OS. But functionnalities have to answer user needs, not developper needs.

I enjoyed having tabs on my PC running Windows XP. But today i’m running Ubuntu and tabs doesn’t seem to me as efficient as windows regarding to Ubuntu/GNOME/Compiz functionnalities