Mar

5

Fluid – Turning WebApps into Desktop Apps

Filed Under Computers, Mac on March 5, 2008 at 7:45 pm

I tend to avoid web apps because I don't like having my apps stuck in a tab in a web browser. This makes it hard to command+tab to the app and impossible to assign that app to a particular space. I don't use GMail but if I did I'm pretty sure I'd be using Mailplane to access it. Fluid is not as advanced as Mailplane but it does allow most webapps to be liberated from your browser.

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You enter a URL and a name and specify an icon and a location and Fluid will create a custom application for your webapp. It does this using WebKit so each of these apps is really just a dedicated browser window but without the address bar and menubars and with its own dock icon. This lets you command+tab to the web app and also assign the web app to a particular space.

Fluid is not perfect. When a webapp tried to leave the domain it starts in Fluid interprets that as a call to an external URL and opens the page in your default browser. This is great when you're using Fluid to access web mail because when you click a link in your mail you end up in your browser just like you would with a regular desktop mail client. However, when I tried to set up Flickr as a Fluid App it wouldn't work because Flickr redirects to yahoo to deal with your login.

Despite this one flaw I still live Fluid and have a few custom applications set up with it.

Comments

3 Responses to “Fluid – Turning WebApps into Desktop Apps”

  1. Sean O'Dwyer on March 7th, 2008 1:07 pm

    I think your dislike of web apps will soon be irrelevant if Adobe AIR does exactly what it says on the tin – your thoughts

  2. Bart B on March 7th, 2008 2:59 pm

    AIR is looking promising. So far I only use one AIR app (Twhirl) but I love it. It’s one of the apps I have running all the time.

  3. NosillaCast @ podfeet.com on March 10th, 2008 5:35 am

    [...] flies solo on Chit Chat Across the Pond and tells us about the nice upgrade to SoundSource and how Fluid lets you make web [...]

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