Mango

Computer activities are migrating to the Internet at a fast pace. Now, you can play in your browser, create various document types, and even save files in Cloud services. However, web browsers tend to gobble up a lot of resources, and you might want a dedicated environment for a particular page. You can easily create one with Mango.

It takes only a little while to get the application installed on your computer, so you might want to start thinking of a few websites to bundle in desktop programs. However, before you deploy it on your computer, you need to make sure .NET Framework is already installed, even though recent Windows builds come with it included.

Upon launch, a compact window shows up and lets you either create a new project, open an existing one, or access the download manager. Needless to say that you first need to create a program to actually understand what it’s all about.

Doing so mostly requires you to specify a name and target URL, but it’s also possible to embed HTML, minimize to system tray, whether or not to get an exit confirmation, show working indicator, stay on top of everything else, and allow only one instance.

The core function is to create a desktop application for any kind of web page. This puts the content of the specific website in a simple window frame for a more comfortable navigation experience. It’s also possible to create a stand-alone EXE file that launches the web page applet with the configurations you made.

More options can be managed before the application is created. The general settings menu lets you set common details like developer, description, category, icon, and even a splash screen to greet you. Some interface-related options can be managed, such as window position and other technical elements.

The new application you create can be set to automatically launch at startup. However good intentions may be, Mango isn’t fully capable of loading all types of content, with changes for sophisticated pages not to properly load, for instance those that require Unity Web Player.

To sum it up, Mango manages to live up to expectations and gives you the possibility to create a desktop application out of virtually any web page. This skips you a great deal of effort and time spent on navigation via web browsers, also saving some system resources in the process. Customization options can even make it run on startup, being worth a try overall.