Fluidium - open-source platform for developing Rich Internet Applications in OSX

Platform specific / Site Specific Browsers are going to be immensely useful. I'm a little sad to see this fall of the main page with so few votes/comments... Having developed two medium to large desktop applications using XULRunner, I can say that there is massive room for improvement here.

Using Todd's Fluid.app SSB generator, I was able to create a menu item that displayed an appropriate window with the letsfreckle.com timer as a small popup bound to a hotkey. The more you think about that, the more powerful it should sound. Can I do that in XULRunner? Sure (maybe... it has Windows SysTray at least). Fluid.app took a half hour, XULRunner would have taken all day. Google Chrome is supposed to have something similar, but not for Mac, which supports the platform specific strategy. I don't need one framework that works everywhere, as long as each platform specific framework has the same general API exposed.

So, rock on Todd, I'll be using Fluidium soon.

The thought of writing desktop apps using web technologies is weird but appealing. I've struggled with XULRunner, which I found to be powerful but difficult to use and lacking on documentation.

I've tried Adobe Air which is nice, but has too much sandboxing and restrictions. (no ability to shell out to another program, for example)

What I really would like is a simple webkit-based client that exposes its api to a higher-level language like Python.

I actually started building one based on the Chromium Embedded Framework but temporarily put it on the shelf.

The title is misleading. Shouldn't it be "open-source platform for developing Rich Desktop Applications in OSX"? The fact that it's Max OSX only seems to contradict the internet aspect.

This seems to be a part of the alarming trend of calling any development framework or platform, an RIA platform.

Yeah, it's something I wanted to see as an open-source app. Adobe Air looks good in theory but it's closed source.

Too bad this one is OSX-centered, hopefully we'll see a Chrome-based Rich Internet Application.