Rob_Warwick's Journal: Web 2.0 On The Desktop

This morning CmdrTaco said:

The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

in response to the Google Office story.

This makes sense to me. I'm fond of desktop applications. CmdrTaco wants to be able to treat each web app like a separate application, so I decided to give it to him.

"WebToDesktop" is something I put together this morning. You enter in a name for the application, the URL it's loaded from, and a picture you want for an icon. Click "Create Application" and have it show up in your Applications folder.

The application it creates is a webkit view that loads up your URL. There's no browser navigation, but "web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs" tend to break those anyhow. It does the job though, allowing you to pretend that a Web 2.0 app is a regular app.

You can download a copy of it here with the source available too.

Partially inspired by Michael Mccracken's Webmail is not web browsing. I'd seen this before, but had forgotten about it until I saw it linked to in the Google Office discussion thread.