Mozilla has announced a new application that has been placed in Labs called Prism. Prism takes WebRunner and let's it integrate nicely into the target operating system.
Thismeans that you can take any web site that you currently visit a lot, and place it in its own process, and you can launch it like any other application. It sits on your desktop for you to run. A modest goal.
Iactually do this on my Mac by wrapping a Webkit component with some native sauce, and you can then even add extra features on top such as special quick keys, and menu items, etc. Many people do this of course and there are apps out there like Mail Plane.
Whatwill be interesting to see is how features will be added to do more with the desktop. Adobe AIR allows you to talk to OS services in many ways, and some of us want even more native support. Mike Chambers of Adobe puts his view on some of Mozilla's comments in the post too.
Downloadthe Prism prototype for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.
Whatdo you think?