UPDATE: Helvetwitter is out! See www.josefrichter.com/helvetwitter
In a previous post, I was explaining how to enable Google Gears within Mozilla Prism to turn Gmail, Google Docs and other Google Applications into stand-alone offline applications, that may come useful e.g. when you are in plane or train.
You may know, that specifically for Mac, there is an alternative to Mozilla Prism, that is called Fluid. In principle, it is the same as Prism, i.e. “site specific browser”. It is just based on WebKit engine (like Safari) instead of Gecko engine (like Firefox).
In Prism, enabling Gears required a simple “hack”, changing the target application descriptor. I was quite surprised that in Fluid, this is not a problem. You just click the Offline link (at top right) in Gmail or Google Docs to activate Gears. You will be then redirected to Google Gears package download, which you need to install. Then you just restart Fluid applications and there you are! No problem, it just works.
It seems Fluid is much more configurable than Prism. For example, it nicely integrates with 1Password, which makes moving your favourite web applications under Fluid even easier.
What’s more, the Gmail icon (use the nice one I provided in previous post}, if placed in Dock, even shows the number of unread emails, just like Mail.app does!
Now the Helvetireader. Fluid makes it super easy to include user scripts. So here are the steps to be taken:
UPDATE: step 0. Download my new Helvetireader icon.
1. Create new Fluid app from Google Reader. Select to use the icon downloaded in step 0.
2. Download the helvetireader.user.js file.
3. In the newly created Google Reader Fluid app, click on the script icon on the top menu bar and select New Userscript…
4. Call it Helvetireader and you will get a Dashcode opened. Now copy all contents of helvetireader.user.js and paste it into this widow instead of the comment “// do yer thang!”. The result shall look like this:
5. Save & close & refresh Google Reader.
6. Activate the offline Gears mode.
Done! You should have one of the most beautiful, full fledget RSS reader around!
See a screenshot with offline Gmail, Google Docs and Helvetireader:
So if you are on Mac, your life is easier (as always 
), if you go with Fluid. Enjoy!
I am unable to make a new user script it gives me this error
“There was an error while creating a Userscript in the Userscripts directory:”
I also can’t open the user script folder. When i select that option from the script menu in my “google reader” app it does nothing. When I navigate to the application support folder there is no “Fluid” folder. Any ideas?
Wow, this just plain didn’t work. Everything went fine, no problems, no errors, it just didn’t work.
@David sorry to hear that. Could you please be more specific? Are you able to launch Fluid? Are you able to create app with it? Are you able to launch it? etc. Thanks
[...] other applications available which make GReader a desktop application. Some of them are Fluid [Instructions] and Mozilla Prism [Instructions]. Try download them to add style to your habit of reading. [...]
[...] If you don’t know how to turn Helvetireader into stand alone desktop application, please see my older post. [...]
[...] If you don’t know how to turn Helvetireader into stand alone desktop application, please see my older post. [...]
[...] are even instructions for using the scripts with Fluid. If you are not familiar with Fluid, it is a utility for creating site-specific browsers based on [...]
Thanks. It works perfect!
[...] Offline Gmail, Google Docs, Helvetireader, etc. using Fluid | Josef Richter [...]
[...] Helvetwitter. If you are having some problems making it work, please check also my older blog posts here and [...]
This is great – but for me, it’s lack one button in greader – mark all as read
regards
wow, such good clear instructions, and then you get to:
6. Activate the offline Gears mode.
huh?
@paul just click the green arrow icon in the top right corner – that will download the offline content
Sadly, gears doesn’t yet work in Snow Leopard. So, no offline for me until Google updates it.