Mozilla’s Prism hits 1.0, gets new goodies

Mozilla’s “Web application as a desktop application” service Prism has hit version 1.0 (download Prism). On Friday, the company released it with its own standalone site, and an updated API that lets developers tack on Prism-specific features to their Web applications.

This version also comes with a few niceties like tray icon notifications, application-specific settings, and automatic updates. As with Prism for Firefox, you’re also now able to clear private data like user names and passwords, along with any browsing history. What’s neat in Prism’s case is that it’s just for that application, and not all the sites you’ve visited in other Prism instances.

It’s safe to assume Prism will eventually make its way as a built-in feature of the next Firefox release. Competitor Chrome already has a feature that lets you do this on any site; however it does not offer things like taskbar and badge notifications.

As a refresher, here’s how its Firefox version works. The video for the standalone desktop app can be found here.

[From Mozilla’s Prism hits 1.0, gets new goodies]

Mozilla introduces new Weave online service

Mozilla Labs launched a new online service called Weave yesterday. The idea behind Weave is that all your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords and are synced to your Mozilla account via Firefox.

As Mozilla Labs GM Chris Beard describes in this post, the goals of Weave are to:

• provide a basic set of optional Mozilla-hosted online services
• ensure that it is easy for people to set up their own services with freely available open standards-based tools
• provide users with the ability to fully control and customize their online experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)
• leverage existing open standards and propose new ones as needed
• build a extensible architecture like Firefox

While it’s interesting to see Mozilla moving into services, I am not sure if this matters yet.

Personas for Firefox

Personas for Firefox is a extension that adds lightweight theming to your browser.

Personas is a prototype that builds upon the ideas that:

• themes today are too hard to find, install and use
• graphic designers should be able to style the browser without having to code
• browsers can be more than just desktop software, they can include online components
• people just want their computer to be a little more fun and personal

This version improves upon a prototype that was discussed and tested earlier this year.

Get Personas for Firefox

Install Now for Firefox 2.0.0.* – 3.0b2pre, Windows/Mac/Linux
Compatible with the default themes that ship with Firefox