Trillian Astra Web - Bringing Web Apps To The Desktop

The new and upcoming version of Trillian, Astra is also coming with a web client like Meebo. However, Cerulean Studios has been experimenting with some new technology they call "OS Layer Technology". What it does is lets you launch Trillian from the web, and it acts like a regular application! An icon in the system tray, and on your taskbar. Looks and acts like a real application, which is very neat since you can even close your browser window and it will still work!

Since revealing this in a video, many have wondered just how they did it. Thoughts from Flash to Java have come into mind, and finally they have told us it is actually (as of now) a Firefox Extension that lets them make a customized window and act like a regular application. Cerulean Studios has also said they hope to do this on other operating systems than Windows. This is also not part of any beta or alpha testing yet.

Source: Cerulean Studios' Blog