Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are gaining credibility as a buzzword in the interweb playground right now and there’s a new kid in class.
Prism (formerly, Webrunner) lets users “split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop”. In this web-as-platform era, it might initially sound counter intuitive to break out of the browser but many online applications are increasingly seeing new life as desktop apps. And, squaring up against Adobe AIR, this prototype from Mozilla is definitely one to watch. I’m not suggesting they are the same (the prototype Prism simply looks like an elaborate bookmarking thingy right now) but they do both all present a significant step in a certain direction – particularly when you consider the possibilities that Prism coupled with Google gears might offer within Mozilla (a.k.a. Firefox 3?).
Joel Spolsky wrote an interesting article suggesting that “as bandwidth increases, a compelling SDK should emerge that will provide developers with a standard interface for online apps”. While his case is one for a Javascript development framework or SDK for online apps and he doesn’t mention AIR, Gears or Prism, it seems to me that these desktop runtimes are the beginning of a new wave in the world of Javascript based web applications, hefty frameworks and their migration to desktop apps…