ThansCorner

Firefox has been our browser for quite some time now, touted all along as safer and more efficient. Everyone knows, though, that firefox has memory leaks and, when using many of the web applications out there (gmail, meebo, facebook, etc.), firefox can slow down to a crawl.

Mozilla’s WebRunner is a streamlined version of the mozilla browser, designed to handle one web app within a window, without all the menus, bookmarks, and complications of a full browser. Profiles of the form <app_name>.webapp can be downloaded for different apps and placed on the desktop. The idea is that users open these apps much like one would a program on the computer itself.

There are a number of bundles out there for various web 2.0 applications. If one hasn’t been made yet, it’s pretty simple to do it yourself.

• Open a new text document in notepad.
• Modify the following code to fit the settings you want.  ‘id’ must be some unique id allowing WebRunner to keep track of multiple profiles.

• [Parameters]
  id=www.thanscorner.info
  uri=http://www.meebo.com
  status=yes
  location=no
  sidebar=no
  navigation=no

• Save the file as ‘webapp.ini’
• Right-click on the file, select ‘Send To’ -> ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’.  This will create a file called ‘webapp.zip’
• Rename ‘webapp.zip’ to ‘<app_name>.webapp’
• This file is now a shortcut to a streamlined version of that app.

Here is a bundle I made for the instant messaging app Meebo.

• Meebo.webapp

WebRunner is a project still under development.  With future additions such as support for work offline, spellcheck, extensions, and more customizable options on the way, this may be a nice solution for those apps otherwise sucking up memory all the time.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under News, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.