Prism, the experimental project that Mozilla rolled out a year and a half ago with the purpose of bridging “the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur”, has reached version 1.0 Beta. Prism 10. Beta has been released by the Mozilla Foundation alongside its very own standalone site and an updated API (application programming interface) that will allow developers to add Prism features to their web apps.

“We are pleased to announce the release of the beta version of Prism 1.0. It’s the culmination of more than a year of real-world use by companies like Yahoo! Zimbra, DesignLinks International and many others. Tens of thousands of end users have installed Prism-enabled sites. Based on their feedback, as well as the experience of website creators, we’ve added new features to bring the user experience of web apps even closer to that of their desktop counterparts. We are particularly excited by these features because they’ve been informed by the many real-world applications currently using Prism,” commented Matthew Gertner.

The new features that Matthew Gertner mentioned above are as follows:
- New API functionality: Prism-enabled sites can provide more of a desktop like experience.
- Change the fonts, proxy settings, and play with other application-specific settings.
- Clear private data on demand.
- When new versions of Prism are releases, applications are automatically updated to the latest Prism release.
- Support for tray icons.
- Support for submenus for dock and system tray menus.
- Full Mac OS X 10.4 support.
- Mac OS X specific enhancements.
- SSL exceptions support.

You can get additional info about Prism by visiting the official web page that was released alongside Prism 1.0 Beta – click here.