Fluid 0.9

Fluid is an interesting app that allows you to create desktop apps. In a nutshell, you can use Fluid to create desktop apps from any website. The developers of this app use Facebook as an example. You can tell Fluid to create an app that connects you to www.facebook.com whenever you launch it. The .app file will be stored in your applications folder and Fluid will automatically grab the Facebook icon for you and use it for your .app file.

You can use Fluid to build app files for pretty much any website. Google Reader, Google, Facebook, YouTube and more sites are used as examples on the website. There are some interesting features that are noteworthy. For example, there is a feature called Thumbnail Plug-in that basically allows you to see search results in the CoverFlow view that you see in iTunes. This is a great view for Google search, Digg, and Reddit.

In my testing, Fluid worked flawlessly. It was fast to create my desktop apps and they worked very well. I created a Facebook app and I could log in and browse Facebook as if I were on my web browser. There is support for multiple tabs and you can even tweak each app to allow browsing any URL, which turns the app into a general-purpose browser.