Mozilla WebRunner: a one-window, tabless browser with no URL bar

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browser Tips

Mozilla WebRunner: a one-window, tabless browser with no URL bar

by Brad Linder Oct 17th 2007

While Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera, AOL, and others keep pushing out new web browsers with all the latest and greatest features, sometimes you need something a bit simpler. You know, like a web browser that can only open one page at a time, has no tabs, no sidebars, bookmarks, add-ons, or even a URL box.

No, seriously. That's exactly what WebRunner is: the simplest web browser you've seen since... well, ever. (Well, unless you count text-based browsers like Lynx). This Mozilla project can render pretty much any page or content that you can access in Firefox. But it comes without any bells and whistles. At all.

In fact, it's probably best not to think of WebRunner as a browser at all. Rather, it's a lightweight tool for accessing web-based applications. Like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but wish you didn't have to leave it open in a browser tab all the time? No problem, just fire it up in WebRunner and think of it as a standalone application that only works when your computer's connected to the internet.

You load websites by clicking on WebRunner "bundles," which are basically zipped archive files holding configuration data, icons, and scripts. You can create your own bundles or download existing bundles for most Google services (Reader, Mail, Docs, Analytics) and a few other sites like Twitter and Facebook.

[via CyberNet]

Tags: bundles, Firefox, web-browser, WebRunner

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

khakwins98 said 10:43AM on 10-17-2007

How's the memory usage? -- I'm sure it will have less memory leaks than the full firefox but seeing as I'll still have to have firefox open for other browsing ...

A 17MB download makes me skeptical of it being efficient.

RPGFanatic said 10:44AM on 10-17-2007

Hmm, this looks great, unfortunately, it is not working for me. It installed properly and everything but all that appears in the start menu folder is the Uninstall file. Could it have something to do with Vista? (Although I can see it running on Vista in the screenshot...)

Brad Linder said 10:47AM on 10-17-2007

RPGFanatic: try downloading a bundle and clicking on it. If everything installed correctly it should open WebRunner.

nizzy1115 said 10:47AM on 10-17-2007

I think this could be great to deploy in an elementary school district where they only need to access a couple of different web sites.

Sherpa Josh said 10:59AM on 10-17-2007

When I try to install webrunner i get a message saying all the xulrunner runtime files are corrupt and it wont copy it to the program files folder. I told it to ignore the fact that they are corrupt and tried to run on the webapps from the bundle and nothing happens, i tried to download the install file again but no still no luck. Any suggestions?

Peter said 11:07AM on 10-17-2007

This would be awesome for kiosks and other locked down situations.

Mikado said 11:17AM on 10-17-2007

Does this maintain cookies and other state information independent of a traditional Firefox installation? Do multiple webapps maintain their state independent from each other? One possible application would be to have multiple webapps open to different gmail accounts, which I can not do now with separate tabs in the same Firefox window.

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