How to Make Any Website a Desktop Application

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

I’ve got a few different tabs open in my Firefox window pretty much all the time. Gmail, Google Reader, Wordpress, a forum I’m on constantly, and even a couple of other sites all live in open tabs, because I access them constantly.

Since they’re in my Firefox window, however, they’re subject to a bunch of annoyances. Firefox will crash, and I’ll lose all my work; I’ll lose the Gmail tab in the midst of the 43 I have open (which might explain the crashing part, come to think of it…). For an application you keep open, rather than a website you visit, occupying a tab in a Web browser just isn’t the best way to manage it.

That’s why I’ve learned to make constant use of two fantastic programs: Prism (for Windows) and Fluid (for Mac).

They’re called SSBs – Site Specific Browsers – and they both do exactly the same thing, which is fantastically simple – they break a single website into its own browser and window, and make it appear and function just like a desktop app.

SSBs work like this: you install the program (again, Fluid for Mac and Prism for Windows) onto your desktop, and then pick a website. The SSB then creates a desktop application for you that simply launches that website in its own window, where it looks, feels and functions just like a desktop app.

You can repeat the process as many times as you want, with as many different websites as you want. Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Basecamp and Remember the Milk are all popular choices, but the sky is truly the limit with what you can do.

Both Prism and Fluid let you install scripts, basic add-ons that you might have in your browser to make a web app even better, right into the app. You’ll lose little of what your browser offers, and gain a whole lot.

The reasons for having it are several: one, SSBs create an app-like feeling that better replicates what you’d get from a desktop application, rather than a Web app that you can accidentally close or lose to a crash (in my decidedly unscientific studies, Fluid and Prism were both far less prone to crash and data loss than Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer). Two, SSBs make it easier to find what you’re looking for – it’s a separate app that you can find via a taskbar, or a menubar, or whatever app-changing shortcut you use.

The real benefit, as I see it, is that it separates the constants from the browsing. Any page that’s not going to stay open forever goes into Firefox, but I need things like Gmail and Basecamp open all the time. Using SSBs means I don’t have to re-open and re-login every time Firefox runs slow or crashes, and I can switch between apps and work alongside the browser, rather than within it – which gets cumbersome in a hurry.

The benefits of a SSB are hard to understand until you actually try it, so go try it. Prism and Fluid are both free, both stupidly simple to set up, and both worth your while. For starters? Try your email. Using Gmail and Fluid has kept me from my endless switching (Mail.app, Postbox, Thunderbird, and Entourage got the boot), and has made getting to, monitoring, and managing my email a lot easier. And that’s just one example.

Go download Fluid or Prism, and set up an app. What do you think?