FOSSwire

The web isn’t just about static web sites anymore. Web applications, like Google Docs, Gmail and many others, are extremely popular.

But confining an important application inside a browser window means that web applications feel like second-class citizens and can get lost amongst the browsing that you are doing.

Site-specific browsers (SSBs) are designed to solve this problem. The idea, as the name suggests, is to create a browser specifically for each of these applications. The web app then exists in its own window and has its own space on your desktop.

Prism is Mozilla’s site-specific browser offering. Prism is based on Firefox, sharing the Gecko rendering engine, meaning it should have excellent compatibility with even the fussiest of applications. Like Firefox, it runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X natively.

There is both a Firefox extension and a standalone application available which allow you to create SSBs. With the standalone application, you simply launch it, enter the URL of the application you want to use (for example, Google Calendar would be https://www.google.com/calendar), set a few other settings and click OK.

And that’s it! You now have a site-specific browser for that app. It can exist alongside every other desktop application on your machine and feel like a real application, rather than just something that has to hide away in a browser tab.

The Firefox extension works in a very similar way, but makes it even easier. It adds an option to Tools > Convert Website to Application, so you can simply browse to the website in question, issue that command and create an SSB.

If you like working with applications in the cloud, but prefer to not have to live entirely in your web browser, site-specific browsers and Prism might be interesting to play with.

Konqueror as a web browser still unfortunately lags quite a way behind Firefox in terms of compatibility. For that reason, many KDE users stick with Firefox, despite the poorer integration between the desktop environment and the browser.

I have just come across a theme for Firefox 3.0 designed to make Firefox fit in better on a KDE 4.0 desktop (although it can be used on any system you like!). It makes use of the Oxygen icon set and various visual tweaks to make things a little cleaner alongside KDE 4 applications.

It is worth noting that the theme is only in alpha stage at the current time, so it might cause things to break. If problems occur, you should switch back to the default theme in Tools > Addons.

I had difficulty installing the theme from Mozilla's official Addons site, so we'll go about the process on the developer's site instead.

Navigate to http://ramonantonio.net/kde-firefox/ and click the Add to Firefox button.

You'll get a warning about Firefox preventing the website from installing software.

Click Allow, and then click on the Add to Firefox button once again. You'll get a standard add-on download window. Once you click Install and restart Firefox, the theme will be applied!

As I've already mentioned, this theme is in an early stage of development. Also, because we're installing from the site manually, not through Mozilla Add-ons, I recommend you check back with the developer's site frequently for new versions of the theme.

All in all, though, this theme is a promising solution to bridge the user experience gap between Firefox 3.0 and KDE 4.

A couple of days ago, I took a look at KGet, which is KDE's resident download manager.

As you'd expect, KGet features heavy integration within Konqueror, the KDE web browser. However, many KDE users prefer to browse with Firefox for greater compatibility, meaning full integration between their browser and KGet isn't possible by default.

Today, I'm going to show you how you can integrate the two programs using third-party Firefox extension FlashGot.

Installation

First of all, head over to the FlashGot website. On the left hand side of the page, click Download and then Install Now on the new page to download and install the Firefox extension.

Choose to Install Now.

Once the extension is installed, you'll be asked to restart Firefox. Do so, and now FlashGot should be installed.

Configuration

The first step once FlashGot is inside your browser is to make sure that KGet is selected as the default download manager to use.

Right-click in any blank area of a Firefox window, and go to FlashGot Options. On this list will be all the supported download managers that FlashGot has detected are installed on your system. Choose KGet from the list, and it becomes your default download manager.

Downloading

There are now several different ways you can force FlashGot to invoke KGet to perform a download.

For any download that springs an open/save dialogue, like the one below, FlashGot will include an option on that dialogue box that allows you to perform the download with KGet (or any other download manager).

Alternatively, you can right-click any link on a web page and choose FlashGot link from the menu to download the link with KGet.

Finally, there are also several other functions of FlashGot (including downloading all the links on a single page) that you can use to perform downloads with KGet, or any other external download manager of your choice. I won't go through them all here, you can read more on the FlashGot site.

FlashGot is an excellent solution for KDE users that want to enjoy the extra functionality and integration of the KGet download manager, but that use Firefox as their primary browser.