TechLifeBlogged

The folks over at Mozilla have a cool little app called WebRunner. Basically it is a stripped down version of Firefox that lets you run single applications. For example, when you install WebRunner you will automatically get shortcuts to add to your desktop (if you want) to run Gmail, Google Groups, Google Docs and Google Calendar. When you double-click on the gmail icon a window will open with just that application. No chrome or menu bar, just gmail in its own window. Clicking on the Google Docs icon would bring up that app in a separate window.

 

This is nice for those times when your have to have your web based email and docs open but you don’t need the distraction of the rest of the Internet keeping you from your work. Plus the memory footprint is kept to a minimum because it isn’t the ‘full’ browser and all of its extensions.

These Google apps are customized to look and work the way they do via webapp profiles. A webapp profile is a simple, INI-style text file that specifies some parameters about a webapp. The profile can be used to launch the webapp in WebRunner. By default these profiles are stored in C:\Program Files\WebRunner.

You don’t have to use a profile. If for example, you want to open up Yahoo! Mail or your corporate web mail or any on-line application that you wish to run stand alone you can create your own desktop shortcut for it.

Lets take Twitter for example. Sure there are lots of other apps that you can use with Twitter but it makes a nice example. Right-click on your desktop and create a new shortcut. The target in this case would be:

“C:\Program Files\WebRunner\webrunner.exe” -uri http://twitter.com/home

Anytime you create one of these shortcuts the important part is “C:\Program Files\WebRunner\webrunner.exe” -uri And make sure you have that -uri bit or it won’t work right.

Read more and down load webrunner here: http://wiki.mozilla.org/WebRunner

One Caveat

You should always be using Gmail or Gdocs via the secure HTTPS connection. If you decide to use any of the included applications such as Gmail you’ll want to go to C:\Program Files\WebRunner and edit the associated profile (for Gmail this is gmail.webapp) and change the uri= line to https to connect securely. You should never be using these applications in the clear.