I was recently asked if I could write a Windows GUI program. I replied that it’d be tricky since I don’t have experience making Windows GUIs. This got me thinking: “boy, I really wish I could use JavaScript and HTML for this“.
You know, there are a lot of people who would love to use web technologies to make desktop-type applications (things like being able to save files locally and not requiring a server). There are several efforts in this direction. Sadly, they are largely immature. Let me comment quickly on a few of them:
XULRunner
XULRunner is a runtime that lets you make applications using XUL (so you code the GUI using XML), SVG, XSLT and you can use the Gecko HTML rendering engine. I tried it last year to make an OpenDocument Viewer, but that didn’t go well. The technology is interesting, but it has some major bugs.
Mozilla Prism
Mozilla calls it a “Site-Specific Browser”. Imagine a browser that has no location bar, no navigation buttons, no tabs, no menus, no nothing. When you start it, it always goes to the same web page. If that page is Gmail, you can pretend that Gmail is a desktop app.
Personally I find Prism boring, but I introduce it because I’ll talk about it later.
Google Gears
Google Gears is very cool. It is a web browser plugin that lets you store files locally (HTML, JS, images) and gives you a local SQL database. For example, there is a Gears version of Google Docs, so you can go on an airplane and use Google Docs just as if it were a desktop app. The only thing is that it’s inside a web browser, so it doesn’t feel like a desktop app.
Adobe AIR
From my point of view (and limited knowledge) this looks like the most advanced platform. It gives you a local store and database like Google Gears, you program in ECMAScript, and it gives you an HTML rendering engine like XULRunner or Prism. Indeed, it seems to have many features that none of the others have.
The problem with Adobe AIR? Well, it’s not open source, and I would really like to only use open source tools. But from what I can see, Adobe AIR appears to be just better. 
Google Gears + Mozilla Prism?
This takes me to the real point that I wanted to make in this post: What if we combine Google Gears and Mozilla Prism? Gears gives us a local store for files and a database. Prism puts it all inside a single window with its own little icon. The result? Something that feels a lot more like a desktop application and is a more even match against Adobe AIR.
Now, there’s much more to Adobe AIR than just Gears + Prism. AIR provides PDF rendering, Flash output, zip file support, clipboard access, digitally signed applications, etc. But perhaps marrying Gears and Prism might be a step toward competing with AIR.
