Ubuntu Webapps

Ubuntu webapps are something that get highlighted on the Ubuntu website. Webapps are becoming quite popular, I actually make use of a couple of them daily with the Google Drive Chrome Webapp and the Hootsuite one.

Ubuntu 12.10 brings with it the ability to use Unity webapps and integrate them directly with your desktop. But what does that mean?

Different webapps work in different ways that make sense to the specific service. Webapps for news sites, like BBC News (bbc.co.uk/news), will give you notifications of the latest and breaking news on your desktop. The Facebook webapp and other social apps gives pop-ups about messages and tells you when there's other updates in your social streams to check. Music site webapps allow you to play music in your desktop from the web by hooking into the notifications menu. There's a load of sites that already have Unity webapps but thousands more websites could be turned into Ubuntu webapps too.

One of the awesome things about installing sites as webapps is that they appear as their own icon in the task bar. You can click it and it will take you right to the tab that the site is in, or close the tab using the taskbar icon if you wish. The icons also update with counts of how many unread messages or tweets you have. And you can open them from the Dash Home.

Different Ubuntu Webapp Types

While the list of webapps is still small there are actually already quite a few different types that interact with your desktop differently.

The news webapps give on-screen notifications of the latest or breaking news. They appear as standard Ubuntu notifications. The news apps that you can get include BBC News, Reddit and NewsBlur.

The music webapps hook right into your sound menu and let you play/pause/skip as you please. Just click the sound icon and navigate the music available on the site - the webapp will send your commands to the site and skip/play/pause as you please. Last.fm and GrooveShark are two that work well.

There's even a YouTube webapp that allows you to play/pause your video and skip back and forth through playlists directly from the sound menu. It can be used to watch videos but it's mostly used to turn youTube into a WebRadio.

There's a bunch of different email webapps to try. They integrate into the ordinary mail menu of Ubuntu keeping a running total of how many unread messages you have and how long ago that mail was first noticed in your folders. The taskbar icon shows the number of unread mails you have next to the icon. Gmail, Yahoo and Live mail all have their own apps.

Social Webapps

The social webapps are probably the ones used most. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all have unity webapps. The Facebook webapp gives you messages as on-screen notifications and keeps the rest of your updates in the mail menu with a count of how long it's been since it was discovered. The Twitter and Google+ apps work in a very similar way too. There's even a Linked-in and a Tumblr app to try out.

In conclusion

While there aren't exactly thousands of webapps available yet the ones that are available are the best ones to have been done first. All your social networking, email, music and news can be found through your desktop on Ubuntu and it's something that now I've gotten so used to having there I would soarly miss it if it was gone.

William uses Ubuntu Linux as his primary operating system. One of the features he was most excited about prior to launch was the new integration of the Ubuntu Webapps.