I know I said that the next Prism related post I would be doing was one on manually installing an addon, but it’s taking me more time to get to than I had hoped. However, I do have another use for Prism that I’d like to share right now. I’ve been using Prism as a tool for creating TV show specific browsers for video sites. Veoh specifically, but I’m pretty sure you can do this for other video sharing sites as well.

Basically what I’ve done is used Prism to create a new webapp that points to the search URL of Veoh with a single program as the search term. For instance, right now I’m following the anime Toradora.

To create the webapp, I’ve chosen to place a link on my desktop, used the search link above, and enabled the navigation keys for Prism:

Alt+Back Arrow = Back in History
Alt+Forward Arrow = Forward in History
Alt+Home = Home Page for webappX
etc.

Veoh Search Link:

http://www.veoh.com/search/videos/q/your+search+here

Prism automatically pulls the site’s favicon as the desktop icon (has anyone else experienced problems with Prism not correctly installing the icon from pre-bundled webapps?).

Other places where this could be useful (other than setting up your own custom television station on your desktop with play-on-demand access)? The instructors for the courses I’m taking right now at ECU via the web often put class lectures on both YouTube and ECU’s own servers (depending on the class and the web-savvy-ness of the instructor). This would be a perfect way to distribute these movies to students, simply by placing the right URL into Prism and bundling the webapp, you can create a feed specific video channel for student consumption.

Other thoughts on this process:

• The ability to uninstall webapps would be useful. Manual uninstalls, while not difficult, are a pain.
• An addon or webapp script for Prism to load into the sidebar with links or buttons corresponding to pre-configured feeds/pages to change the currently viewed page so that you can “change channels.”
• Along those same lines, an addon with FF3′s built-in feed reader which would load into the sidebar would be a nifty means of navigating a number of pre-configured links… yes that would be nifty indeed…

UPDATE AGAIN! 080611
I’ve made a new post on this subject cause it’s easier to update by adding new posts instead of updating this one. Enjoy!

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.

Looks like I’m getting a lot of traffic looking for a Bloglines webapp. So, why not:
Bloglines.webapp

While I’m at it, here are a couple of other webapps I’ve cobbled together, I’ll appologize in advance for the low quality of the icons on all of these…
Google Page Creator Webapp
Google Webmaster Tools Webapp

At this point I should probably include a warning, so – 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!