I just discovered an interesting little project that is going on at Mozilla. They are working on a simple app for converting web applications into desktop programs.
I tried out the Mac OS X prototype, and it's quite interesting just how different websites seem once you remove the features that you become used to.
Without a navigation bar at the top of the screen I found that websites that otherwise I found perfectly acceptable to use were clunky and poorly laid out. In the absence of a forward/backward button Gmail was really awkward to use and seemed to cram too much information into an individual page.
The Flickr Photo organiser however (built in flash) on the other hand seemed like a fully realised desktop application when taken out of the web browser context. It will be interesting to see how Prism develops I hope that they add features so that there is more control over the viewing experience allowing you to add menus and control the screen size more easily.
