Yesterday was a huge day in the world of Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth announced the integration of Web Apps into the Ubuntu desktop through Firefox or Google Chrome. Check out the photo above. The Gmail icon is easily pinned to the Unity launcher bar and will show you how many unread messages you have waiting. So far over 30 websites can be integrated in Ubuntu like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Google News, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, and many more.
You can install this on Ubuntu by adding the a PPA to your Software Sources. Open a terminal and copy and paste in each line...
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webapps/preview
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-webapps-preview
Reboot your computer to enable the new web apps feature.
Here is a list of currently supported websites...
Angry Birds, Baidu, Baidu Mail, Baidu News, BBC, Blogger, CNN, Cut the rope, Drupal, Facebook, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google News, Google +, Google Reader, Grooveshark, Hotmail, Hulu, Last,fm, Launchpad, Linkedin, Lord of Ultima, Mail 163, Mail qq, Mail ru, MSN, News Mail ru, News Sohu, Reddit, Sina, Tiberium Alliances, Twitter, Vkontakte, Wordpress, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yandex Mail, Yandex Music, Yandex News, Youtube
Go ahead and visit one of the supported websites and you should be prompted with a message "Do You Want to Integrate This Website With Your Ubuntu Desktop?". Click on "integrate" and it should add the icon onto the Unity launcher. Ive noticed a few websites not working for me (like Facebook) but I'm sure this will be fixed soon enough.
What do you think of this news? Are you excited with the cutting edge technology Ubuntu continues to deliver? What web apps would you be interested in? How about Google Music? That would be a great addition!
This makes a lot of sense in regards to Ubuntu TV coming soon also. That would surely feature Web Apps.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I can't get it to install, it fails with the following message (and 'sudo apt-get install signon-plugins' fails as well):
ReplyDeleteThe following packages have unmet dependencies:
unity-webapps-preview : Depends: signon-plugins but it is not going to be installed
The PPA will probably only work on 12.04 and newer
ReplyDelete(like 12.10 alpha). Do you have at least one of those? 11.04 or 11.10 might not work.