Spiderman’s Web

The Hookup: Let’s Learn Linux

For Your Information: It seems that my schedule has been at bit booked lately (coughbandcampcough), so please expect to see a post (or two) by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks for Understanding,

T-Hawk

Your Friendly Neighborhood Editor

Prism has been around for quite some time now, even before Firefox 3. The Mozilla Team developed Prism, originally Webrunner, in mid-2007 with the intent to create a simple web browser. No tabs, new pages, address bar, or extensions. Nothing. Prism was created to integrate a user’s desktop with the web. Sure you can just link an html page on your desktop, which will open up your browser and go directly to the page. But the purpose of Prism is to make web applications seem less like a web app is limited to a web browser and make it seem like any another application on your desktop. The whole point of Prism is to have simple web portal to view your email, calender, a blog you like (cough, Spiderman’s Web, cough), or any other website. Here’s what the Mozilla team has to say:

“Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls–like back and forward buttons and a location bar–that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself.”

Prism is pretty simple to use in Firefox 3. All you need is the extension found here. Once downloaded you can convert any page into a desktop app. Just go to Tools then Convert Website to Application. After clicking that, you’ll get a nice little box asking what you want it to be called, where you would like to create shortcuts, if you would like the option of a back button, location bar, and navigation functions, and what icon you would like to have. Presto, you’ve got a web app. The nice thing is that you don’t need to uninstall anything through the Control Panel, just drag the icon into the Recycle Bin (hmm, sounds a bit like uninstalling something on a Mac).

The only thing that I don’t like about it is that you can’t use any of your Firefox extensions. For example, I love my Adblock extension, it makes all sites look a whole lot nicer. Now, when I, let’s say, go on Facebook, I’ve got those annoying ads all over the place. Not very pretty. Another thing that I don’t like about Prism is its icon support. Most of the time, you can use the favicon of the website your using. But sometimes favicons are really pixel-ized and look horrible on your desktop. You can use an .ico file for a picture instead of the favicon, but that’s it. I was looking around the web and there are virtually no easy and quick ways to convert jpgs, gifs, or pngs to .ico files (maybe you guys can help me out). As you might have been able to tell, those are mostly visual problems that I have and probably won’t affect you.

Though the Prism extension is only for Firefox 3, you can download the stand alone version from here (direct download). With the stand alone version, your not going to have that nice integrated “Convert to Application” tool like in the extension, but it’s basically all the same. I’ll admit that I’ve had some more problems with the standalone version more than the extension (but that’s probably because the extension is a newer than the standalone). At the moment, Prism is only for Windows users, but that could change in the near future. It works on most major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux). As with all Mozilla projects, it’s open source.

The Hookup:
Mozilla Labs Official Blog Post (this was written for the standalone version, but most of it is still very similar to the download)
Download for Firefox 3
Article on Download Squad
Prism on Ubuntu from Lifehacker

Time sure has flown by since Gusty was released. Ubuntu’s latest update, Hardy Heron, is set to release on Thursday, April 24, 2008. For those who can’t wait, you probably already know that the beta was released two days ago. I’m not going to jump on the Beta bandwagon just yet, but I’m excited for the official release in April (yeah, I’m pretty sick of Vista). In this next release of Ubuntu, we’ll be seeing the new and updated version of the GNOME desktop environment along with an updated Linux Kernel (no surprises there since GNOME is always updated a month before Ubuntu). Firefox 3 Beta 4 is pre-installed along with its beautiful new GNOME theme with GTK2 form buttons and common dialogs. If Mozilla releases Firefox 3 before April 24, we’ll probably see that in the official release. Besides Firefox, Hardy Heron will also include:

• Xorg 7.3 (a Screen Resolution utility)
• Transmission (GTK BitTorrent client replacing the GNOME BitTorrent client)
• Vinagre (VNC Client)
• Brasero (CD/DVD burning client)
• Inkscape (PDF editor)
• ufw (Firewall)
• And Much More!

Now, these are programs that are included in the Beta, so some new programs may be added while some may not be included in the final release. Overall, it looks like Hardy Heron won’t have too many differences from Gusty Gibbon. Although, it will have a lot of performance upgrades along with some new programs which will better incorporate the GNOME desktop interface. Hardy Heron will also be Ubuntu’s next LTS (long term support) OS, meaning that it will continue to have security and performance updates for the next 3 years (5 years for the server edition). The last LTS was 6.06 Drapper Drake, which, if you haven’t figured out Ubuntu’s numbering system, was released in 2006. I’ve got to say, I bought a brand new 160GB laptop hard drive for my computer which I am looking forward to installing Ubuntu 8.04 on.

Here’s the official countdown to Heron:

The Hookup: Ubuntu 8.04 Download & Info