Update!!
Had to add a comment to the replacement code below in order for this to work.

080404 Update!!
Yet again, code changes for new versions and what not.

Looks like Mozilla has added WebRunner to it’s Mozilla Labs line up and changed the name to Prism. From what they say, it’s going to be a cross between an open version of Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight and a localized lancher for web applications. Which, by my definition, is what utility computing is supposed to be like. Prism is currently for Windows only (they’d better hurry up with a Linux version), but it runs the same webapp files and also has added style sheet support – among other things – so you can style your webapps your way.

Anyway, I’ve been kind of discouraged by the lack of extension availability for WebRunner (and XulRunner for that matter). You’ll find in another of my posts a webapp for accessing the WebRunner extensions panel. Using this webapp, you can add new extensions (by installing or dropping them onto the panel), but at this point, adding extensions will fail because the version checking mechanism for WebRunner/XulRunner. To get around that, you need to change the extension’s compatibility information. These instructions will not work for every extension and your results will vary…

I recommend you find a smaller extension, download it and make the following changes:

1. Open the extension package (you can open it with 7-zip, ALzip, Winzip or any other archive program that works with zip files.
2. Extract and open the install.rdf with a text editor, I’d recommend Wordpad if your using windows.
3. Locate and change the following or something that looks like the following (this will vary by extension, but look for the Firefox description section – and you may find that you have to remove all references to all other Mozilla programs that the extension is compatible with for this to work):

<!--Firefox-->
<RDF:Description RDF:about="rdf:#$djS7s"
  em:id="{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}"
  em:minVersion="0.8"
  em:maxVersion="2.0.0.*" />

To:

<!--Webrunner-->
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="webrunner"
    em:id="webrunner@webapps.org"
    em:minVersion="0.1"
    em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or (again it will depend on which way the developer implemented the Firefox description):

<em:targetApplication>
  <!--Webrunner-->
  <Description>
    <em:id>webrunner@webapps.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

If you’re using Prism, change to the following:

<RDF:Description RDF:about="prism"
  em:id="prism@developer.mozilla.org"
  em:minVersion="0.1"
  em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or

<em:targetApplication>
  <Description>
    <!--Prism-->
    <em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

4. Then save the rdf file and add it back into the xpi archive.
5. You should be ready to install the extension using the Extensions.webapp

I found this parts of this bit of magic on Alex Sirota’s website along with the tip to check in the applicaiton.ini file for any XulRunner application’s ID. If you run into errors, then something is probably malformed in the rdf file so check that first. I won’t be much help in trouble shooting, and I’m not about to offer support for other peoples extensions on an unsupported application, but if you have problems, post a comment and I’ll give editing the rdf a go myself.

Over at Lifehacker they’ve posted about the standalone Mozilla based WebRunner. WebRunner is, well I’ve pretty much been over that already. The point is, you can launch a webapp from a standalone program, allowing you to do things without getting distracted by all that… extra web. I really like this concept, I now have links for Gmail, Google Reader, and all those other nifty web 2.0 apps I like.

I wanted to give this a try myself, so I’ve made a standalone Wikipedia launcher. Get it here. It’s a launcher for the Wikipedia’s English main page.

Make your own! It’s dead simple! All you do is install the WebRunner software, create an ini file for your app, create icons and zip these files together. Rename the zip file to your.webapp and your good to go!

There’s a couple of worrying things about the webapp files – from a security standpoint. The biggest of these is that you can include a js file with javascript that runs at an application level. In other words it has access to everything that the application has access to, like – oh I don’t know – the file system?! (in my best Church Lady voice – oh crap am I revealing my age!). Another is the fact that you’re using a zip format to distribute the rest of your files. Which of course can have it’s own security problems when used with other programs. You also don’t really have the ability to get at a lot of the standard Mozilla settings that WebRunner shares. So you can’t make adjustments to settings for cookies, passwords and the like.

At any rate, it’s still a relatively young application, so I’m sure they’ll get the security issues addressed, but for now, make sure you inspect those files before you run them!

Links:
WebRunner
Lifehacker post
My Wikipedia launcher

Disclaimer

Keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

Fitz, MuPDF and Apparition

Now, before you get your hopes up too far, this a reader only. It will open PDF documents in Firefox, but that’s about it. You can’t use it to print, zoom in/out, select text or any of the other things you normally do with Adobe’s Acrobat. So if I were using this (hey wait, I am using this!) I’d disable Adobe Acrobat’s open PDF in browser option, (edit>preferences – general tab, I think, hell if you dislike Acrobat that much, just uninstall it…), install MuPDF, then restart Firefox. Next install (if you don’t already have it installed) PDF Download, and your choice of PDF viewing software (I recommend Sumatra or Foxit Reader). Now you can use MuPDF to open PDFs in Firefox or use PDF Download to download it to your hard drive, OR use PDF Download to open the document in your favorite alternate PDF viewer.

With Firefox the process is s a little more simple in that you can make the changes from your about:config file:

“If you want to view the HTML source of a web page using an external text editor instead of the built-in source viewer in Firefox, use about:config to set view_source.editor.external to true, and then set view_source.editor.path to e.g. C:\Windows\Notepad.exe or whatever is your preferred text editor.”

If you use the excellent Firefox extension Web Developer then you’ve also got a way to add several other programs for specific purposes. For instance, if you wanted to use Top Style Lite for checking out CSS and the afore mentioned Programmer’s Notepad for PHP and ASP, but not HTML or JS files.