Site-Specific Browsers: Turn Websites Into Desktop Applications

For a web application, It is always a good idea to provide access to it from other platforms like mobile or desktop programs.

As web designers/developers, desktop applications are harder to create considering they have a totally different environment.

In order to fill this gap, we can make use of site-specific browsers which enable us to lock a website inside an application-looking browser that can interact with the system tray/dock & display notifications.

Some usage examples for site-specific browsers:

• displaying new orders, support tickets for an e-commerce website
• showing system tray alerts when a new visitor visits your website
• or even locking your whole application inside a site-specific browser and offering it as a desktop application.

To sum up, they simply help us convert a website into a desktop application. Here are free & mature tools for creating site-specific browsers:

Mozilla Prism (Win-Mac)

Prism is a very easy-to-customize tool that supports Windows & Mac.

Applications created can be:

• minimized to system tray/dock & a navigation can be added there
• set to display status messages & popups in the system tray/dock

Prism apps. will be running seperately from the browser & will stay alive even if the browser isn't.

P.S. You can also read a more detailed post about Prism at WRD.

Fluid (Mac)

Fluid enables you to create Cocoa desktop applications with:

• dock icon
• standard menu bar
• growl notifications
• Userscripting (Greasemonkey)
• & more..

Bubbles (Win)

An application platform for creating site-specific browsers which supports:

• system tray icon & context menu
• notifications
• drap'n drop of local files
• & more..

Mango (Win)

Mango can create a website-to-application instantly with features like:

• custom tray & context menu
• minimize to tray
• always on top
• kiosk mode
• fixed width/height
• & more..

All application settings are kept in a XML file which can be used for further customization.

Other Site-Specific Browser Methods:

• Curl offers EmbeddedBrowserGraphic to accomplish this functionality.
• Using Adobe AIR, it is possible to create site-specific browsers (a simple example).
• Site-specific browsers with WebKit.

Further Resources:

There are also other ways of creating desktop applications with web scripting technologies like:

• Wapache: Apache server & IE bundled to create portable dynamic apps.
• Appcelerator Titanium: create desktop apps. with HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as Flash and Silverlight (see WRD post).
• Roadsend PHP: a platform for converting PHP apps into EXE files. (see WRD post)