Basics4Mac - Cool Tools: Fluid

Turning web pages into apps

Fluid is a simple little app that turns a web page into an app that has its own icon on the Dock.

Why would you want that? The best reason that I have found is for web-based email like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. Rather than have your email in a tab in Safari that gets lost among all of the other tabs, your email has its own window and Dock icon for easy access.

(I'm not going to name names, but I know someone who usually has Yahoo! Mail open in several Safari tabs at once because he opens a new tab and reloads Yahoo! Mail every time he wants to check his mail.)

Creating an app from a website couldn't be easier. All you do is give Fluid the URL of the website you want to turn into an app, give it a name and tell it where to store the new app.

Once created, the app acts like any other app. You can open it, close it, keep it in the Dock, etc. One thing you can't do with a Fluid app is drag files to it to create email attachments like you can in Mail.

Fluid is free and available here. There is a $5 version that adds a few more features. More details about Fluid are on their website.

NOTE: Another behavior I have noticed among people who use Yahoo! Mail and Gmail is that they often go to the Yahoo! or Google home page and then click the link to Mail. You can skip the homepage and go directly to your Yahoo! or Gmail inbox. Use these URLs when you create an app in Fluid:

Yahoo!: http://mail.yahoo.com
Gmail: http://mail.google.com

(If you don't use Fluid, you can still use these shortcut URLs as bookmarks to get directly to your Yahoo! and Gmail inbox.)