Mozilla Prism - Zimbra Desktop Alternative?

AdrianR · Post by **AdrianR** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 1:33 pm

Mozilla just released a very nice tool to help bring web based applications to the desktop.
Mozilla Labs Blog Ã‚Â» Blog Archive Ã‚Â» Prism
[QUOTE]Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.[/QUOTE]
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 · Post by **Klug** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:47 am

[quote user="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.[/QUOTE]

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 · Post by **brained** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:56 pm

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 · Post by **JoshuaPrismon** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:44 am

[quote user="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?).[/QUOTE]
Multithreaded for different tabs - yes (which I believe it already does). For the same page, no, because the JavaScript guys don't like threading.

1230zaf · Post by **1230zaf** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:25 am

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 · Post by **jeffreyheinen** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 5:36 pm

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.

1230zaf · Post by **1230zaf** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:16 am

[quote user="jeffreyheinen"]It might be interesting to see if it there can be a limited bundling of the two programs in one fashion or another.[/QUOTE]
Yes, it would be very neat if the next version of Zimbra Desktop came with an installation of Prism to launch it

drdre · Post by **drdre** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 8:30 am

Prism is much nice than the present version of zimbra desktop

its smooth..

mmorse · Post by **mmorse** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am

Bug 15935 - XULRunner bundling

tobru · Post by **tobru** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:20 am

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...