Fluid vs. Fluidium vs. Cruz
A lot of folks are asking, “what’s the difference between Fluid, Fluidium, and Cruz“? Here goes:
- Fluid is a 2-year-old application for creating Site-Specific Browsers (or SSBs). It consists of Fluid.app (the SSB creator) and a WebKit-based browser which is the template for any SSB you create with Fluid. Until recently, Fluid was entirely closed-source (more on that in a sec).
- Cruz is a one-year-old general-purpose web browser based the same code as Fluid SSBs. Until recently, it was also entirely closed source.
- Fluidium is:
- An open source (Apache License) WebKit-based browser hosted oh GitHub.
- The name I’ve chosen for an Adobe Air-like product based on the Fluidium source code. Basically, a developer platform for creating Rich Internet Applications for Mac OS X only. This product is in the very early stages.
If you are a developer, and you want to create and redistribute an SSB for your web app, please start with the Fluidium source code on GitHub, not with Fluid downloaded from http://fluidapp.com. It’s the same, only better. Trust me.
The Fluidium source code on GitHub is basically the original code behind Fluid SSBs and Cruz. However, I did a significant rewrite of several parts of that code base starting in November. The result is the Fluidium source code now found on GitHub.
A few things to note:
- I haven’t yet released a new version of Fluid based on the new Fluidium source code. I’ll do that eventually. But first, I’ll probably do a much smaller Fluid maintenance release based on the old (pre-November) Fluid code, just to get some important bug fixes out the door.
- A new version of Cruz based on the Fluidium source code is coming soon.
- The “SSB Creator” part of Fluid (basically, Fluid.app) is still closed-source and will probably remain that way. I don’t see much value in open sourcing this, honestly.
Bottom line: The Fluidium source code on GitHub will be the foundation of three products (Fluid, Cruz, Fluidium).
Clear as mud, right?
January 14th, 2010 at 02:45
Clear as mud.
So if I (average user) want to create a SSB, I still use Fluid.
Cruz is either nothing special or an up-and-coming browser.
Fluidium is either an up-and-coming browser or just something for developers.
January 14th, 2010 at 02:55
Yep.
Fluid will remain the “user-centric” or “consumer-targeted” app for creating SSBs for personal use.
And if you’re not a developer, you can ignore Fluidium except that it will be a sort of “Fluid Nightly” to Fluid, as “WebKit Nightlies” are to Safari.
January 14th, 2010 at 03:10
How will automatic updates of SSBs work? If a SSB is built with Fluidium will it auto-update from Fluid’s updates & vice versa? Can a SSB be made to update to either ‘Fluid Nightlies’ or stable releases?
January 14th, 2010 at 03:20
Hey Mike. Hm, interesting question. And the answer is rather complicated I’m afraid.
The auto-upgrade story for Fluidium SSBs created by developers for their own apps is kinda fuzzy right now. I’m not certain yet whether devs would prefer to have me basically centralizing the updates for everyone or whether they would like to handle that for themselves. Both will have benefits and drawbacks. And some devs will probably not like the idea of someone else controlling their update cycle. And I understand that.
So I guess Fluid’s Sparkle update schedule will be basically independent of Fluidium’s. I’m really still figuring this stuff out tho.
As for devs who download the Fluidium builds from GitHub or build a Fluidium SSB/browser from source, I don’t plan on ever offering auto updates for those.
January 14th, 2010 at 08:42
I’m a Cruz fan, it became my default browser, I love BrowsaBrowsa plug-in speeding up my Twitter and RSS fedd addiction. Happy to know that a new version of Cruz based on the Fluidium source code is coming soon. Hope it will release also as FOSS.
January 14th, 2010 at 08:46
Thanks Gand, glad you like Cruz! I also live on it as my daily browser, and it’s my favorite personal project.
To answer your request, yes Cruz is now effectively open source. the difference between Cruz and the Fluidium source will be extremely minor.