8 ms·

Introducing Ubuntu Web Apps: setting the web free of the browser

138 points by sciurus 14y ago

johnernaut 14y ago
So... aside from the HUD integration, which is cool, what's the difference between what they've made and having multiple browser windows open?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  It seems they managed to integrate the desktop controls with the web apps - you get unread message counts from Gmail on the messages menu and can control Last.fm from the sound indicator (and, presumably, from its kebyboard bindings). I imagine Google Calendar reminders are included.
- rcthompson 14y ago
  I assume that one major difference is that the web apps are treated as separate applications from the main browser, so they get put in their own icon on the Unity side bar, which gives them their own keyboard shortcuts and the ability to pull up just the windows related to a single webapp. For example, maybe Super+5 would be the shortcut to either activate your existing Twitter webapp window or open it if it isn't already running, regardless of whether your regular browser happens to be running or not at the time. If you just had multiple browser windows open, they would all be together on the Firefox (or Chrome) icon and it would be difficult to distinguish them. The important part is that the name of the executable associated with a window (i.e. firefox/chrome) is no longer synonymous with the identity of the application running in it (i.e. Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, etc.).
diminish 14y ago
A smooth user experience on Unity is needed in order to ensure the well functioning of the web apps and browsers together. Encapsulating the browser process, is what usually kills web widget performance, and I end up going back to the browser..
pluc 14y ago
How is it different than Prism and the likes?
- sciurus 14y ago
  Examples they provide are "Launch online music site Last.FM directly from the Dash and control the music from Ubuntu’s sound menu Access and launch your social media accounts (Google+, Twitter, Facebook) from the Launcher, and get native desktop notifications Quickly and seamlessly upload photos to Facebook from Shotwell Pause and play the video you are watching on Youtube See how many unread messages you have in your GMail account, in Ubuntu’s messaging indicator"
ilaksh 14y ago
This is great! Does all of this stuff work with Chrome?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  I think the whole point of this is not to use the browser.
  - king_magic 14y ago
    But it seems to be mostly just links to web sites, that open in a browser.
- jcastro 14y ago
  Not currently, there are extensions for Chromium and Firefox but it doesn't appear to work in Chrome yet.
skimmas 14y ago
Currently I can only see these as yet another way to lose a little bit of your privacy. But I'm also a debian kind of guy so... :P
- notatoad 14y ago
  what? how does this impact privacy in any way?
  - skimmas 14y ago
    every time you turn on the computer it will log you in. So there's info sent to the server... As time goes by I'm pretty sure these service providers will find more ways to get more info from you and more useful ways to analyze that data. I know my view on the matter is pretty extreme, but I can't feel comfortable not knowing exactly what is being done with my data.
- mindstab 14y ago
  Only if you use these services. They are offering integration with them, far from forcing you to use them. And if you were already using them these features are an amazing boon and don't affect your privacy at all. Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this.
  - skimmas 14y ago
    "Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this." Yes, you're probably right. But will ubuntu be developing code for specific apps like gmail and twitter or will that be codded by the web app developers? If it's the former than you'll probably not have many choices.
    - notatoad 14y ago
      Regardless of who writes the code, as you can clearly see the browser prompts you to allow integration for each service that has it. If you don't want desktop integration, don't click yes.
jiggy2011 14y ago
What web apps need desperately in order to become true first class citizens is support for keyboard shortcuts across the board. Doing Alt + <Key> should bring up the appropriate menu in the web app not the web browser. Doing Ctrl + S should ask the web app to do a save , not ask the browser to save the .html page. Of course this is all stuff that could be abused by aggressive websites so there needs to be a distinction between apps and pages.
- lukifer 14y ago
  That's one important area; also significant are full-screen interfaces (which is improving), and streamlined payment for apps/services (which is improving, slowly).
- tysonjennings 14y ago
  Google Docs has both of the shortcuts you mention working correctly and many more so it is definitely possible.
- SeppoErviala 14y ago
  Accessing web application features with Alt + <key> is one of the things this Ubuntu feature is about.
mindstab 14y ago
Android was leading the way in this (best sharing between online services etc). This looks like the first other OS to "get it" and push hard to integrate with the cloud. I think in some ways this surpasses Android. Mean while we have iOS that's just congratulating itself for allowing photo uploads to twitter, meanwhile my Android phone has integration with services I've never even heard of. And MacOS and Windows... nothing. Stupid silent sitting on the internet. It's nice to see some real innovation in the Linux camp on the user end front.
- tysonjennings 14y ago
  Exactly right and one of the main things I missed about Ubuntu on my desktop over Android on my Xoom was Android's seamless integration of "cloud" data and the operating system. In comparison desktop OSs feel like a collection of silos. I'm very excited about the future of Ubuntu and am beginning to think that Canonical actually do "get it".
- jcheng 14y ago
  Win7 and IE9 had some integration, not sure if anyone used it but they are trying. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222712/how_to_prepare_your_website_for_ie_9.html http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222712/how_to_...
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    That looks like a copy of chrome's "create application shortcut" and is less than a tiny percentage of what ubuntu is announcing. Am I missing something?
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      Last time I used it, Chrome's shortcut was just a shortcut and nothing more (which launched into a chromeless browser window). Perhaps that has changed. The Windows 7 stuff integrates more deeply into the OS, so you can pin a site to the taskbar and its icon will appear like any other app, you can create what they call "jump lists" which are available on right click of the taskbar icon, and from those you can visit deep links inside of a web app. So it's much more than the Chrome thing, but not quite as deep as this Ubuntu announce.
rbanffy 14y ago
My biggest worry is tying the HTML and JS engines too deeply into the desktop and end up with drive-by exploits that can do more than a browser would ordinarily be able to do.
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Agreed. They mention security once. Not enough. Odds of me using this over the hardened Chrome/ium are pretty slim. Having said that, as a long-time Ubuntu user, kudos to them for doing something new and interesting.
  - fingerprinter 14y ago
    * Odds of me using this over the hardened Chrome/ium are pretty slim. What are you saying here? This isn't a new browser, rather a plugin on the browsers. You still use Firefox or Chromium.
    - SkyMarshal 14y ago
      Ah, looked more like a native app using the browser rendering engine or something. Will take a closer look later when I upgrade to 12.10.
- trentonstrong 14y ago
  I think this is a valid concern, but as JS engines start implementing more and more of the rich web client working drafts like FileAPI (http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/), those same concerns will be valid for your browser too. I can only imagine that developers of desktop platforms like this are aware of these drafts too and are planning to utilize as much as they can of the functionality provided. As with most security, our best hope lies in open implementations which can be audited for such problems, with consideration being drawn in during design and implementation stages from security experts. Hopefully some lessons were learned from the ActiveX desktop days!
  - rbanffy 14y ago
miratom 14y ago
Uh, desktop web shortcuts? Didn't I have this in Windows 98 and IE 5?
- streptomycin 14y ago
  Watch more than the first 15 seconds of the video.
  - king_magic 14y ago
    Honestly, I'm not really impressed. The demo of Shotwell was the only thing that seemed to be more than a link to a web app, and even then, it just looked like a normal app.
    - pserwylo 14y ago
      I was thinking glorified bookmarks at the beginning too, but then I saw how it integrated the last.fm controls into the media widget in the panel. I am also currently using the Online Accounts functionality in Gnome, and it is pretty cool how it will automatically use the credentials from each account I specify in applications which support it. My main use case is my multiple Google accounts (work, uni, personal) and their respective calendars. I just fire up evolution, it automatically connects to Google and the calendar widget in the panel populates with my events. Its just a shame that only evolution does this, and Thunderbird does not seem to integrate with it. This is pretty similar to Android, how you specify your online accounts, and it is up to individual applications to make use of those credentials if they please. There just seems to be much more usage of this in Android than in Gnome.
    - yobbobandana 14y ago
      Gmail and Google+ came up under the communications menu, and last.fm was integrated with the sound menu. App menus and features seem to be available from the HUD. Seems pretty well integrated to me.
sp332 14y ago
This is something that might highlight the serious deficiencies of the current HTTP model and drive discussion of HTTP/2.0 with real examples.
scribu 14y ago
I know this is a prototype, but if each app is going to load in a new Firefox window, with the full chrome, no thanks. If it opens a new window without the chrome (or at least without the tabs), it might be ok.
- rcthompson 14y ago
  Well, for some web apps tabs could make sense. For example, in Gmail I often open multiple messages in tabs when I need to refer to their content at the same time.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Gnome 3 opens them chromeless, albeit it doesn't have as deep of integration as this appears to.
- ralfn 14y ago
  Well, most of those webapps will likely navigate/open external websites. I would love to have a hacker news window by default, so that external links i open there are nicely managed within the hackers news app. So, the tab bar is a plus, if you ask me. The address bar and the new tab icon, should be removed though. Better yet, the new tab icon, should open he base url, or some other logical url: for gmail it could be a compose windows, for example. And "mozilla firefox" should not be part of the window title. Other than that, actually hiding the fact its a browser is not really usefull. The tab bar, the menu .. No reason to remove those by default. But i suspect, these apps are running in their own profile, and it is firefox, so we could always tweak the chrome ourselves.
  - repsilat 14y ago
    To be honest if I clicked on a link in a "GMail app" I'd expect it to open a new "full" browser window (or a new tab in an existing browser window). You'd have to be able to distinguish between internal and external links, of course, but the domain name is a workable heuristic. The ability to open new tabs should probably be configured on an app-by-app basis. Opening tabs of mail is a pretty sensible idea, but a game developer using HTML5 would likely want to prevent that. Ditto the location bar. (I agree that the user should be able to override these settings.)
hell0_th3r3 14y ago
this could only happen in ubuntu, not in osx or windows or android. apple and microsoft and google all have turf wars, ownership issues, and general crankiness that precludes any meaningful and neutral integration of the web into the desktop
daleharvey 14y ago
This is awesome by ubuntu. But its incredibly frustrating that it has taken this long for browser vendors and/or operating systems to push the possibility for webapps as first class desktop apps. (not really counting air) Firefox is starting to introduce this functionality at last, I imagine chrome have similiar functionality coming (this used to work on linux!) Prism was nice when it existed, and fluid I used to use from time to time but there was just too many hassles with it not being mainstream
ww520 14y ago
Isn't this a throwback to the Windows Active Desktop? Windows actually had led the way to integrate webapp/webpage with the OS, but everyone hated it back then.
- alttab 14y ago
  Although they get a bad wrap, MS has likely been too early on many things. Things they got right: Commodity hardware, office, and directx. Active desktop put those things behind the icons of their applications making the desktop area dual purpose and thus confusing or distracting. Given the state of HTML, the newbies inability to write proper HTML, and early browsing technology and you have a recipe for instability and system crashes. They were too early technology wise, and also because they couldn't see entire application experiences being delivered that way.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  I don't think this is like Active Desktop. It's not about rendering the desktop with a browser engine, but allowing the desktop apps to interact more completely with thin envelopes around browser engines that run HTML-based applications.
abc_lisper 14y ago
If ubuntu 12.04 is any indication, I personally wouldn't go near it again ever.
zimbatm 14y ago
It would be great to be able to easily and privately install the server part of the webapp. My hope by seeing the title is that canonical would have come with a system to do that.
akoumjian 14y ago
It's not a new idea, but I think it is finally the idea's time. There was Prism, and there's FluidApp for OS X. There was also MS's active desktop as others have pointed out.
DeepDuh 14y ago
I hate to nitpick, but that choice of background music strikes me as rather.. poor.
ekianjo 14y ago
You can install a preview version of this Web Apps already the current Ubuntu 12.04 : http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus-new-web-apps-feature http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus-ne...
pjmlp 14y ago
I don't care, I only use web based applications in the few cases I am forced to do so. For me, the control over my data, operating system integration, taking advantage of my hardware will win every day over dumb web applications.
- wavephorm 14y ago
  You're probably in the minority. My usage of desktop software has been dropping dramatically over the years. I'm basically left with 5 or 6 apps, including a browser, a file picker, a code editor, and a command prompt. The more powerful the web/internet apps become the more the desktop gets sidelined, and any reason to Ubuntu over any other desktop becomes a pretty moot point.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    I'm used to it, Linux was also a minority for many years.
mwill 14y ago
Sort of unrelated, but it was my first thought: I sort of wish there was a cross platform store for wrapped web apps that could make them look sort of native-ish, that was widely adopted. Not because this is actually something I want or think would be better than a browser, but simply because seems to be significantly easier to get users to pay for something that behaves like a native app, ie, turns up on their dock. I have a theory if you wrapped a web view and put it on the mac app store, the average user (ie one who has no idea what web view means) would pay more for it than the same product in a browser.
jorangreef 14y ago
The OS needs to provide machine power to trusted installed web apps. i.e. raw UDP, TCP, POSIX, device APIs.
hotice 14y ago
This can already be installed in Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps-technology.html http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps-te...

138 points by sciurus 14y ago

So... aside from the HUD integration, which is cool, what's the difference between what they've made and having multiple browser windows open?

rbanffy 14y ago
It seems they managed to integrate the desktop controls with the web apps - you get unread message counts from Gmail on the messages menu and can control Last.fm from the sound indicator (and, presumably, from its kebyboard bindings). I imagine Google Calendar reminders are included.
rcthompson 14y ago
I assume that one major difference is that the web apps are treated as separate applications from the main browser, so they get put in their own icon on the Unity side bar, which gives them their own keyboard shortcuts and the ability to pull up just the windows related to a single webapp. For example, maybe Super+5 would be the shortcut to either activate your existing Twitter webapp window or open it if it isn't already running, regardless of whether your regular browser happens to be running or not at the time. If you just had multiple browser windows open, they would all be together on the Firefox (or Chrome) icon and it would be difficult to distinguish them. The important part is that the name of the executable associated with a window (i.e. firefox/chrome) is no longer synonymous with the identity of the application running in it (i.e. Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, etc.).

diminish 14y ago

A smooth user experience on Unity is needed in order to ensure the well functioning of the web apps and browsers together. Encapsulating the browser process, is what usually kills web widget performance, and I end up going back to the browser..

pluc 14y ago

How is it different than Prism and the likes?

sciurus 14y ago
Examples they provide are "Launch online music site Last.FM directly from the Dash and control the music from Ubuntu’s sound menu Access and launch your social media accounts (Google+, Twitter, Facebook) from the Launcher, and get native desktop notifications Quickly and seamlessly upload photos to Facebook from Shotwell Pause and play the video you are watching on Youtube See how many unread messages you have in your GMail account, in Ubuntu’s messaging indicator"

ilaksh 14y ago

This is great! Does all of this stuff work with Chrome?

rbanffy 14y ago
I think the whole point of this is not to use the browser.
- king_magic 14y ago
  But it seems to be mostly just links to web sites, that open in a browser.
jcastro 14y ago
Not currently, there are extensions for Chromium and Firefox but it doesn't appear to work in Chrome yet.

skimmas 14y ago

Currently I can only see these as yet another way to lose a little bit of your privacy. But I'm also a debian kind of guy so... :P

notatoad 14y ago
what? how does this impact privacy in any way?
- skimmas 14y ago
  every time you turn on the computer it will log you in. So there's info sent to the server... As time goes by I'm pretty sure these service providers will find more ways to get more info from you and more useful ways to analyze that data. I know my view on the matter is pretty extreme, but I can't feel comfortable not knowing exactly what is being done with my data.
mindstab 14y ago
Only if you use these services. They are offering integration with them, far from forcing you to use them. And if you were already using them these features are an amazing boon and don't affect your privacy at all. Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this.
- skimmas 14y ago
  "Using cloud based apps may affect your privacy but that is independent of this." Yes, you're probably right. But will ubuntu be developing code for specific apps like gmail and twitter or will that be codded by the web app developers? If it's the former than you'll probably not have many choices.
  - notatoad 14y ago
    Regardless of who writes the code, as you can clearly see the browser prompts you to allow integration for each service that has it. If you don't want desktop integration, don't click yes.

jiggy2011 14y ago

What web apps need desperately in order to become true first class citizens is support for keyboard shortcuts across the board. Doing Alt + <Key> should bring up the appropriate menu in the web app not the web browser. Doing Ctrl + S should ask the web app to do a save , not ask the browser to save the .html page. Of course this is all stuff that could be abused by aggressive websites so there needs to be a distinction between apps and pages.

lukifer 14y ago
That's one important area; also significant are full-screen interfaces (which is improving), and streamlined payment for apps/services (which is improving, slowly).
tysonjennings 14y ago
Google Docs has both of the shortcuts you mention working correctly and many more so it is definitely possible.
SeppoErviala 14y ago
Accessing web application features with Alt + <key> is one of the things this Ubuntu feature is about.

mindstab 14y ago

Android was leading the way in this (best sharing between online services etc). This looks like the first other OS to "get it" and push hard to integrate with the cloud. I think in some ways this surpasses Android. Mean while we have iOS that's just congratulating itself for allowing photo uploads to twitter, meanwhile my Android phone has integration with services I've never even heard of. And MacOS and Windows... nothing. Stupid silent sitting on the internet. It's nice to see some real innovation in the Linux camp on the user end front.

tysonjennings 14y ago
Exactly right and one of the main things I missed about Ubuntu on my desktop over Android on my Xoom was Android's seamless integration of "cloud" data and the operating system. In comparison desktop OSs feel like a collection of silos. I'm very excited about the future of Ubuntu and am beginning to think that Canonical actually do "get it".
jcheng 14y ago
Win7 and IE9 had some integration, not sure if anyone used it but they are trying. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222712/how_to_prepare_your_website_for_ie_9.html http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222712/how_to_...
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  That looks like a copy of chrome's "create application shortcut" and is less than a tiny percentage of what ubuntu is announcing. Am I missing something?
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    Last time I used it, Chrome's shortcut was just a shortcut and nothing more (which launched into a chromeless browser window). Perhaps that has changed. The Windows 7 stuff integrates more deeply into the OS, so you can pin a site to the taskbar and its icon will appear like any other app, you can create what they call "jump lists" which are available on right click of the taskbar icon, and from those you can visit deep links inside of a web app. So it's much more than the Chrome thing, but not quite as deep as this Ubuntu announce.

rbanffy 14y ago

My biggest worry is tying the HTML and JS engines too deeply into the desktop and end up with drive-by exploits that can do more than a browser would ordinarily be able to do.

SkyMarshal 14y ago
Agreed. They mention security once. Not enough. Odds of me using this over the hardened Chrome/ium are pretty slim. Having said that, as a long-time Ubuntu user, kudos to them for doing something new and interesting.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  * Odds of me using this over the hardened Chrome/ium are pretty slim. What are you saying here? This isn't a new browser, rather a plugin on the browsers. You still use Firefox or Chromium.
  - SkyMarshal 14y ago
    Ah, looked more like a native app using the browser rendering engine or something. Will take a closer look later when I upgrade to 12.10.
trentonstrong 14y ago
I think this is a valid concern, but as JS engines start implementing more and more of the rich web client working drafts like FileAPI (http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/), those same concerns will be valid for your browser too. I can only imagine that developers of desktop platforms like this are aware of these drafts too and are planning to utilize as much as they can of the functionality provided. As with most security, our best hope lies in open implementations which can be audited for such problems, with consideration being drawn in during design and implementation stages from security experts. Hopefully some lessons were learned from the ActiveX desktop days!
- rbanffy 14y ago

miratom 14y ago

Uh, desktop web shortcuts? Didn't I have this in Windows 98 and IE 5?

streptomycin 14y ago
Watch more than the first 15 seconds of the video.
- king_magic 14y ago
  Honestly, I'm not really impressed. The demo of Shotwell was the only thing that seemed to be more than a link to a web app, and even then, it just looked like a normal app.
  - pserwylo 14y ago
    I was thinking glorified bookmarks at the beginning too, but then I saw how it integrated the last.fm controls into the media widget in the panel. I am also currently using the Online Accounts functionality in Gnome, and it is pretty cool how it will automatically use the credentials from each account I specify in applications which support it. My main use case is my multiple Google accounts (work, uni, personal) and their respective calendars. I just fire up evolution, it automatically connects to Google and the calendar widget in the panel populates with my events. Its just a shame that only evolution does this, and Thunderbird does not seem to integrate with it. This is pretty similar to Android, how you specify your online accounts, and it is up to individual applications to make use of those credentials if they please. There just seems to be much more usage of this in Android than in Gnome.
  - yobbobandana 14y ago
    Gmail and Google+ came up under the communications menu, and last.fm was integrated with the sound menu. App menus and features seem to be available from the HUD. Seems pretty well integrated to me.

sp332 14y ago

This is something that might highlight the serious deficiencies of the current HTTP model and drive discussion of HTTP/2.0 with real examples.

scribu 14y ago

I know this is a prototype, but if each app is going to load in a new Firefox window, with the full chrome, no thanks. If it opens a new window without the chrome (or at least without the tabs), it might be ok.

rcthompson 14y ago
Well, for some web apps tabs could make sense. For example, in Gmail I often open multiple messages in tabs when I need to refer to their content at the same time.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Gnome 3 opens them chromeless, albeit it doesn't have as deep of integration as this appears to.
ralfn 14y ago
Well, most of those webapps will likely navigate/open external websites. I would love to have a hacker news window by default, so that external links i open there are nicely managed within the hackers news app. So, the tab bar is a plus, if you ask me. The address bar and the new tab icon, should be removed though. Better yet, the new tab icon, should open he base url, or some other logical url: for gmail it could be a compose windows, for example. And "mozilla firefox" should not be part of the window title. Other than that, actually hiding the fact its a browser is not really usefull. The tab bar, the menu .. No reason to remove those by default. But i suspect, these apps are running in their own profile, and it is firefox, so we could always tweak the chrome ourselves.
- repsilat 14y ago
  To be honest if I clicked on a link in a "GMail app" I'd expect it to open a new "full" browser window (or a new tab in an existing browser window). You'd have to be able to distinguish between internal and external links, of course, but the domain name is a workable heuristic. The ability to open new tabs should probably be configured on an app-by-app basis. Opening tabs of mail is a pretty sensible idea, but a game developer using HTML5 would likely want to prevent that. Ditto the location bar. (I agree that the user should be able to override these settings.)

hell0_th3r3 14y ago

this could only happen in ubuntu, not in osx or windows or android. apple and microsoft and google all have turf wars, ownership issues, and general crankiness that precludes any meaningful and neutral integration of the web into the desktop

daleharvey 14y ago

This is awesome by ubuntu. But its incredibly frustrating that it has taken this long for browser vendors and/or operating systems to push the possibility for webapps as first class desktop apps. (not really counting air) Firefox is starting to introduce this functionality at last, I imagine chrome have similiar functionality coming (this used to work on linux!) Prism was nice when it existed, and fluid I used to use from time to time but there was just too many hassles with it not being mainstream

ww520 14y ago

Isn't this a throwback to the Windows Active Desktop? Windows actually had led the way to integrate webapp/webpage with the OS, but everyone hated it back then.

alttab 14y ago
Although they get a bad wrap, MS has likely been too early on many things. Things they got right: Commodity hardware, office, and directx. Active desktop put those things behind the icons of their applications making the desktop area dual purpose and thus confusing or distracting. Given the state of HTML, the newbies inability to write proper HTML, and early browsing technology and you have a recipe for instability and system crashes. They were too early technology wise, and also because they couldn't see entire application experiences being delivered that way.
rbanffy 14y ago
I don't think this is like Active Desktop. It's not about rendering the desktop with a browser engine, but allowing the desktop apps to interact more completely with thin envelopes around browser engines that run HTML-based applications.

abc_lisper 14y ago

If ubuntu 12.04 is any indication, I personally wouldn't go near it again ever.

zimbatm 14y ago

It would be great to be able to easily and privately install the server part of the webapp. My hope by seeing the title is that canonical would have come with a system to do that.

akoumjian 14y ago

It's not a new idea, but I think it is finally the idea's time. There was Prism, and there's FluidApp for OS X. There was also MS's active desktop as others have pointed out.

DeepDuh 14y ago

I hate to nitpick, but that choice of background music strikes me as rather.. poor.

ekianjo 14y ago

You can install a preview version of this Web Apps already the current Ubuntu 12.04 : http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus-new-web-apps-feature http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-install-ubuntus-ne...

pjmlp 14y ago

I don't care, I only use web based applications in the few cases I am forced to do so. For me, the control over my data, operating system integration, taking advantage of my hardware will win every day over dumb web applications.

wavephorm 14y ago
You're probably in the minority. My usage of desktop software has been dropping dramatically over the years. I'm basically left with 5 or 6 apps, including a browser, a file picker, a code editor, and a command prompt. The more powerful the web/internet apps become the more the desktop gets sidelined, and any reason to Ubuntu over any other desktop becomes a pretty moot point.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  I'm used to it, Linux was also a minority for many years.

mwill 14y ago

Sort of unrelated, but it was my first thought: I sort of wish there was a cross platform store for wrapped web apps that could make them look sort of native-ish, that was widely adopted. Not because this is actually something I want or think would be better than a browser, but simply because seems to be significantly easier to get users to pay for something that behaves like a native app, ie, turns up on their dock. I have a theory if you wrapped a web view and put it on the mac app store, the average user (ie one who has no idea what web view means) would pay more for it than the same product in a browser.

jorangreef 14y ago

The OS needs to provide machine power to trusted installed web apps. i.e. raw UDP, TCP, POSIX, device APIs.

hotice 14y ago

This can already be installed in Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps-technology.html http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/install-new-ubuntu-webapps-te...