Ubuntu – How to put a web application on the Launcher

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Sometimes I see pictures of screenshots with people with web applications and nice icons on their launcher, how can I set this up?

Best Answer

Ubuntu has this feature built in, see:

How do I use Ubuntu's web application integration?

You can also use the more traditional webapp integration approach:

Since these can be time consuming if you use a bunch of webapps I created a "Web Applications" folder that I keep these in because I need a place to hold the icon as well. I sync this folder with Ubuntu One so that on reinstalls or new computers I have my applications all ready to go with the high resolution icons.

In chromium-browser or Google Chrome you can do this by going to the website you want to make into an application. Clicking on the Wrench icon and select, tools -> Create Application Shortcuts:

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Then select Desktop to create a shortcut on your desktop:

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You can also select "Applications Menu" in the create application shortcut, this will put it in the Dash for you, which is handy so you can use the search feature to launch the shortcut, however most web site's favicons don't scale very well so they look ugly. So instead I do this to pretty up the application:

Then move it to this "Web Applications" folder or wherever you want to keep it:

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Download a snazzy version of the icon that is good looking. I recommend the Fluid group on Flickr. Download the icon to the folder, and then right click on the shortcut and select properties:

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