The more I come to rely on web-applications the more I think site tailored browsers are a good idea. The idea is best explained with an example; I have GMail open in a Firefox tab for most of the day. It is all too easy to inadvertently close that tab when it is lost amongst 30 others. I also have to swap to the tab every now and then to check if I have email (I can’t use the GMail notifier because I am running hosted Google on my own domain.) Starting a new email means clicking on the tab and hitting compose. I could open it in its own Firefox window but then it is part of the Firefox window list and gets closed when I close Firefox. It doesn’t have a distinct icon in the dock/taskbar either. The list goes on. At the end of it though you realise that what you are frustrated with are all the things having separate desktop apps solve.
But I still want to use the web-app and not a desktop app.
So imagine if you will a customised instance of Firefox that on start loads up my GMail URL, provides a distinct dock icon as well as a “new mail” indicator and right-click “new message” functionality. It runs separatley from my other Firefox instances too.
It need not get too complicated. It shouldn’t end up being a bloated desktop app and it shouldn’t be hard to use it on multiple computers. Really it is just a single-tabbed Firefox instance wrapped around the web-app.
This isn’t my idea though. Matt Brindley is making a living from selling site-specific browsers. He hasn’t done a GMail one yet but I’ll bet there are plenty of people willing to shell out a few bucks for one.
