Fluid – Create Site Specific Browsers

Have you ever wished that you could have one copy of Safari for Facebook, and a different copy for your “serious” work? With Fluid, you can! Fluid is a nifty utility which lets you create site-specific web browsers (SSBs). These are web browsers which only work on one (or a few) specific websites. If you click on a link for any other website, it will open in your regular browser. From the website:

Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity, and many other goodies.

As you can see here, I’ve got one on my dock for Facebook and one for Twitter:

Facebook and Twitter SSBs on my dock

I find this really helpful to keep my Tweeting and Facebook messing around to those browsers – I don’t even have bookmarks for Twitter or Facebook in my regular browser, because I only use them in these specific browsers. It means that when I close those two I quit doing Twitter and Facebook stuff and get back to writing ATMac articles for you all – I find in really helps me keep the activities separate in my head.

Other things people have mentioned using SSBs for include:

• GMail, Hotmail, or whatever web-based email you use
• GCal, Remember The Milk, or any other online calendar/to do list that you use
• Your favourite online games
• Your school library’s website
• Your online banking and bill paying

I’m sure there are many more uses – what could you use it for?

- Ricky Buchanan