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!