I tend to avoid web apps because I don’t like having my apps stuck in a tab in a web browser. This makes it hard to command+tab to the app and impossible to assign that app to a particular space. I don’t use GMail but if I did I’m pretty sure I’d be using MailplaneExternal Link Icon to access it. FluidExternal Link Icon is not as advanced as Mailplane but it does allow most webapps to be liberated from your browser.

[tags]Fluid, web applications[/tags]

You enter a URL and a name and specify an icon and a location and Fluid will create a custom application for your webapp. It does this using WebKit so each of these apps is really just a dedicated browser window but without the address bar and menubars and with its own dock icon. This lets you command+tab to the web app and also assign the web app to a particular space.

Fluid is not perfect. When a webapp tried to leave the domain it starts in Fluid interprets that as a call to an external URL and opens the page in your default browser. This is great when you’re using Fluid to access web mail because when you click a link in your mail you end up in your browser just like you would with a regular desktop mail client. However, when I tried to set up Flickr as a Fluid App it wouldn’t work because Flickr redirects to yahoo to deal with your login.

Despite this one flaw I still live Fluid and have a few custom applications set up with it.