Good things come in small packages and that holds true for one of my new favorite apps, Fluid. Fluid allows you to turn your favorite website into its own site specific browser window. I know what you’re thinking, “what’s the big deal, I open websites in new windows/tabs all the time?” Here’s the big deal.
The more windows you have open in one browser, the slower it moves. Moreover, its a HUGE bummer when one website causes your browser to crash because that means all of your windows/tabs have closed. Fluid allows you to treat your favorite websites as individual browsers. So, if one website crashes, your site specific Fluid windows remain open. As you can imagine, this is especially great if you happen to be utilizing a site like Zoho Docs or Google Docs.
Generally speaking, I didn’t experience crashes with Safari or Firefox all that often, so my initial movement to viewing gmail through to Fluid was met with indifference, but it was something I wanted to check out. Upon making the change, I immediately noticed a difference in speed. Gmail loaded noticeably faster and took far less time when dealing with my requests of switching between labels and checking new messages, etc. Speed aside, what I’ve also come to appreciate is the feeling that now my web-based email feels like a desktop application because it has it own icon for the dock, and I don’t need to keep logging back in every time I happen to close Safari.
Fluid is absolutely perfect for all those amazing web 2.0 applications that really pull the resources of a browser, so if you are huge into working “in the clouds,” you will find it very beneficial to create a browser for each of those 2.0 websites you are utilizing. Personally, I feel that creating a browser for each of your favorite websites is slight overkill (unless you are referring to those 2.0 sites), but really its a matter of preference.
Fluid is a very small application (3.4MB) that only runs on a Mac (it’s FREE). Simply download the file from http://fluidapp.com and copy it into your applications folder. From there launch the application. You’ll be prompted with a window in which all you need to do is enter some information about favorite website. Namely, the address of the site and the name you want to refer to it as. Once you’ve done that, click create, and viola! you’ve created your own site specific browser! Now, if you want, you can drag the icon from your applications folder to your dock to make a shortcut to create that desktop application feel.
