Creating Applications from Web Pages
Fluid is a very interesting application that will take any web page and make into a regular Mac application that lives in the Application folder and can go in the Dock. And it is free.
After downloading and installing Fluid, run it and you will see the following window:
Copy and paste (or type) the URL/web address of any web page into the URL field, give the “application” a name and then Create it. Now you have a new application that you can run like any other on your Mac and it will bring up the web page in its own window.
There are several advantages of this compared to running an application in a browser window (or tab). You can launch it easily (from the Dock, Quicksilver, Spotlight, etc.), fix it into a Space, arrange it with other windows, etc. Another big advantage is that if your browser crashes or freezes, it won’t stop the application. I am currently running a Pandora “application” and it’s nice to know that the music will continue regardless of what happens in other applications.
One other capability of Fluid is that its applications can be placed on the right hand side of the Menu Bar (these are called Menu Extras). To do this, select the application and then from its main menu (the one under the name you gave it), select the command Convert to MenuExtra SSB…, and then OK.
Good candidates for Fluid applications are those that you use a lot and have application-like functionality. These include Google Mail, Google Docs, and Basecamp. Or just pages you access a lot, like YouTube.