Getting Prism firefox 3 extension working on Ubuntu

8 November 2008, 01:16

I like prism. The idea of having a separate minimalist browser window for some web applications and have it more crash resistant is very neat. I’ve been using it for gmail since almost a year and I like it!

When I upgraded my ubuntu, I was now using firefox 3 and I have read somewhere that prism was now an extension (prism refractor) and not a standalone application anymore (actually it’s both). Anyways, I wanted to switch to the shiny new extension using firefox 3 instead of my old prism install.

Well, the extension is broken on Ubuntu.. When you try to convert a website to an Application you get a desktop icon that opens a new window of firefox on your homepage. Not very useful.

I’ve searched around a bit and found a workaround. Here you go:

Workaround to get Prism firefox addon work on Ubuntu

  1. Generate the desktop icon of the web application of your choice (Tools -> Convert Website to Application)
  2. Modify the properties of the desktop launcher. In the command, change “/usr/bin/firefox-3.0.3/firefox” to /usr/bin/xulrunner

That’s it!

For references you can check this launchpad bug, this mozilla bug and where I got the feeling that this workaround is fine.

[Updated on 2009-04-05]

— Olivier Bilodeau

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Comment

  1. Slight modification to the above: change lib to bin in the xulrunner path.

    — VV · 1 April 2009, 09:50 · #

  2. You are right! I made the correction. Thanks for reporting!

    — Olivier · 5 April 2009, 15:18 · #

  3. Thank you very much for this useful hint. Now it works great :-)

    — Nico · 4 June 2009, 05:18 · #

  4. I also had this problem, googled it, found this page and now it’s working fine. Thanks.

    — kylehase · 28 December 2009, 00:12 · #

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