Mozilla Prism - Zimbra Desktop Alternative?

[AdrianR]

Mozilla just released a very nice tool to help bring web based applications to the desktop.

Mozilla Labs Blog » Blog Archive » Prism

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.

Naturally, the first application I tested was Zimbra. I'm toying with the idea of migrating some of my end users who refuse to use the zimbra web app, simply because it's a webmail instance. There's a stigma that's associated with webmail and the assumption that it's not as powerful as Outlook.

I tested Zimbra Desktop, but in my evaluation, it's not ready for my users yet. Prism, however was very fast and uncluttered. It allowed me to make use of Alt-Tab and it had the appearance of a stand alone application.

[Klug]

Originally Posted by AdrianR

I tested Zimbra Desktop, but in my evaluation, it's not ready for my users yet. Prism, however was very fast and uncluttered. It allowed me to make use of Alt-Tab and it had the appearance of a stand alone application.

Running Zimbra under Prism won't be very different from running Zimbra inside a single tab window of Firefox (ie: a webmail inside a browser).

zDesktop is a full local application, with sync, offline mode, etc...

I don't think they can compare 8)

[brained]

Just tried Prism myself and I like it. Think Firefox with no navigation toolbar, no bookmarks toolbar, no status bar. That's it.

Zimbra Desktop is a totally different product - you could use Prism to access Zimbra Desktop for a more "desktop like" experience.

The only big advantage I can see is it does run as it's own process so it's a way of getting the Zimbra web client and your other web pages (streaming video?) separated and running on different processor cores (Please Mozilla can we have Multi-threaded Firefox?).

[JoshuaPrismon]

Originally Posted by brained

Just tried Prism myself and I like it. Think Firefox with no navigation toolbar, no bookmarks toolbar, no status bar. That's it.

Zimbra Desktop is a totally different product - you could use Prism to access Zimbra Desktop for a more "desktop like" experience.

The only big advantage I can see is it does run as it's own process so it's a way of getting the Zimbra web client and your other web pages (streaming video?) separated and running on different processor cores (Please Mozilla can we have Multi-threaded Firefox?).

Multithreaded for different tabs - yes (which I believe it already does). For the same page, no, because the JavaScript guys don't like threading.

[zaf]

Zimbra Desktop + Prism makes a nice desktop app. It removes the clutter of all the navigation bars and buttons that aren't needed, and separates the processes so a crashing Firefox won't bring down your email client.

[jeffreyheinen]

So, I have been running prism sense it came out for the mac. I do like it, it feels faster. There are a few rendering oddities, but It is because it is based on a newer rendering engine, correct?

To bring it back around, zdesktop in prism makes it very close to it's own stand-alone application. It might be interesting to see if it there can be a limited bundling of the two programs in one fashion or another.

[zaf]

Originally Posted by jeffreyheinen

It might be interesting to see if it there can be a limited bundling of the two programs in one fashion or another.

Yes, it would be very neat if the next version of Zimbra Desktop came with an installation of Prism to launch it

[drdre]

Prism is much nice than the present version of zimbra desktop

its smooth..

[mmorse]

Bug 15935 - XULRunner bundling

[tobru]

It would be nice if Zimbra recognises Prism as a supported browser.

When you chose "Advanced" on the login screen, it displays a warning message that this browser is not supported... I'm using Prism since december and I hadn't any problem since then with the advanced Zimbra client...