Last time I spoke a bit about the three probably largest RIA technologies: Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and Sun JavaFX.
This time, we're going to take a short introductionary look at Mozilla Labs Prism.

As described at the Mozillas Developer Center, Prism is a "simple XULRunner-based browser that hosts web applications without the normal web browser user interface". So, what exactly does that mean? Prism allows you to run web applications (built using XUL) from the desktop, without the need to fire up your regular browser.

XUL is a markup language, used to describe applications made for Prism (or any other XULRunner) and works very much like MXML or XAML. Together with XUL, JavaScript is used to write the application logic, and CSS is used to style the applications. There's a lot Prism has in common with other RIA technologies and I think it's good that we have several options to choose from, even though considering the actual choosing can be a tricky part.

What could speak for Prism is the possibility that applications using XUL could be launched either from the desktop or from within a browser (such as Firefox 3) supporting it. With the Firefox market share growin, more and more users will be able to run these applications.

Marco Casario made a good presentation where you can find more on the different RIA technologies.

As with the prevoius mentioned RIA technologies, I think it's worth keeping an eye on Prism. And, they have a pretty icon.

Tags: mozilla, prism, xul, firefox