My mode of operation seems to save knowledge of specific features, products, tools, whatever, in the back of my brain until the need for them surfaces. I guess this is sort of what happened with Prism. My knowledge of Prism really started with my decision to simply not download Google Chrome. I'm not against the browser, I just feel I'm too invested in Firefox as my web browser, and as much as I would love to play around with the new browser, I simply don't have the time. So I didn't download it.
But some of the features do intrigue me, which is why when I saw the article in Lifehacker about putting Chrome's best features into Firefox, I filed that in the back of my brain for when the need surfaced. I've picked up a few good extensions out of this article, but the one that I didn't think I would really have a need for, turns out to be pretty cool, and that is the Prism for Firefox extension.
Prism is an extension that allows you to create stand alone applications from any website. I'm really browser based, I admit it. I don't mind having multiple tabs open and working out of the browser. That's why I wasn't sure this application would be one I used often. The feature in Chrome to allow tabs to run as separate processes seemed like a good and useful one though. In a way, Prism sort of replaces that function in Firefox, but you have to choose which sites you want to be made into applications.
I don't usually try these things until a need comes up, and last week the need appeared out of frustration. If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed I have absolutely no love for the course management tool, Blackboard. We use it for all of our classes, and I think it fails on both functionality and usability. Last week as I was trying to post a video link to a presentation to the discussion board of one of my classes, my browser crashed multiple times. I also had tabs open that I didn't necessarily want to lose, but because my browser crashed with Blackboard open each time, each time I restored the session it would crash again. The crash resulted in multiple postings on the discussion board even, which I found absolutely annoying.
It's not the first time I had browser crashes with Blackboard open in my browser. It's just such a problematic site that I come to expect it to happen again. That's when I remembered that extension, which I did download to my browser, but hadn't had an opportunity to try it out yet. I decided to create a new application for Blackboard using Prism thinking that in the future if it decides to crash it won't take down my whole browser.Not only has it not crashed, but it runs beautifully in the window! I'm impressed, although don't think that leaves Blackboard off the hook, it should run with no problems in Firefox too. I shouldn't have to use it in an outside environment to make it work!
Things I like about Prism:
- When I minimize, it can minimize to the system tray (yea, less task bar clutter!)
- I can create a desktop icon, start menu icon, or quick start icon (or all 3). The nice thing about the start menu icon though is that I can now open directly using search in Windows Vista. I do have a desktop icon created too.
- The window is uncluttered and simple, I see this coming in handy for doing things like screencasts!
- Links open in your browser, not your application window.
